Next year the number of shortlisted works in the NZ Post Book Awards – formerly sponsored by Montana wines – will be reduced by 10 and the number of categories cut from 8 to 4 although the same amount of prize money will be handed out. The shortlist for fiction works has been reduced from five to three, and a new Book of the Year prize will be awarded to the judges' choice across all categories - poetry, fiction and non-fiction works.
Booksellers New Zealand chief executive and awards committee spokesman Lincoln Gould said the cuts had been made to streamline the awards, which had become cumbersome and difficult to understand.
This last comment might be true if bookbuyers had the intelligence of monkeys.
Getting shortlisted in book awards is important to publishers and authors as many bookshops make a point of making a prominent display of the nominees, and can be the first time that the books involved have been displayed at all in some bookshops. For winners, of course, it means a huge increase in sales. Now the chances of getting shortlisted and winning have been cut in half. If the same total amount of money is being handed out, then why?
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