Book award betting
Betting on book awards is a fascinating sideline to both the bookmaking and book publishing industries.
Literary betting has grown from its origins as a type of novelty bet pioneered by Graham Sharpe, William Hill’s legendary PR man (and author in his own right) in the 1980s.
Journalists now inevitably turn to the bookies’ odds when a book award shortlist is published. They use them on as an easy way to indicate which book is most likely to win.
And if the bookies haven’t got a book on it, then the publisher’s public relations team probably isn’t doing its job properly.
Publishers increasingly use prices from firms like Hills and Paddy Power as the cornerstone of their PR offerings. How long before a well-known publisher is caught lumping on its entry in an attempt to generate a news story like “Hills close book on Booker after massive gamble on [insert title]”?
And for fans of literature and betting – what you might call, ahem, a ‘gambling culture’ – betting on book awards provides a way to spice up what are quickly becoming fairly dreary, corporate, media-orientated exercises in PR for the publishing industry.
Follow the links to read more about the book awards that the major bookies usually offer prices on.
- The Nobel Prize in Literature
- The Man Booker Prize
- The Costa (formerly Whitbread) Awards
- The William Hill Sports Book of the Year
- The Orange Prize for Fiction
Love books, love betting, love both.