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Don’t judge a Booker by its cover

By Matt | June 20, 2008

The Man Booker ‘Best of the Booker award’ will be awarded on 10 July this year – and the bookies are taking it as read that Salman Rushdie’s reputation will win him the gong.

But with the general public voting for this book award, rather than a judging panel, and Waterstones devoting a shelf over to flogging the entire shortlist, Midnight’s Children might not be judged the literary tour de force the layers are expecting.

Rushdie the favourite
A similar contest was held in 1993 and was won by Rushdie – a fact not lost on William Hill, which made Midnight’s Children its 6/4 favourite as soon as the Best of the Booker shortlist was announced.

The 1981 novel has held its appeal, and, at the time the shortlist for the book award was announced it probably was the best-known book on the list. It still features at number 583 on Amazon’s sales rank – J M Coetzee’s Disgrace, the second favourite, is 1,081 in comparison.

Rushdie’s novel is now odds-on favourite with Bet365 – largely, one would suspect, on the basis of the Amazon rankings, which are easily accessible by any punter who fancies a bet on a book award. But Amazon is yet to fully reflect the nation’s literary shopping habits – especially those of people who vote in book awards. And, thanks to sales displays like those in Waterstones, a whole new generation of readers will be discovering the other books on the shortlist – if they weren’t aware of them already.

A different story on the betting exchanges
A look at the exchanges shows a totally different picture to that painted by the bookies. Midnight’s Children currently trades at 2.26 on Betfair – good value for anyone who wants a punt on Rushdie – but Pat Barker’s The Ghost Road is only just behind it at 2.28 (compared to 5/1 at Paddy Power).

Pat Barker’s novel is part of a trilogy – and as such, it is difficult to judge its popularity purely from Amazon’s sales rank. It was also published in 1995, two years after the first ‘Best of the Booker’ and so cannot be judged against Rushdie in terms of that contest.

The recent big-screen adaptation of Ian McEwan’s Atonement will have whetted the public’s appetite for First World War stories like The Ghost Road (always a popular subject, as Sebastian Faulks pre-Bond career shows), and it has an appeal outside the bookish circles that some of its rivals (Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda, for example) do not.

The Ghost Road is still offered at 5/1 third favourite at Paddy Power – for now. If it continues to trade at such a markedly lower price on Betfair the Irish layer is bound to cut its prices, but for now it has to be tipped as worth a bet.

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