Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year

The Bookseller / Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year ( in the German language area referred to as Diagram Prize ) is an undoped Literature Prize, which is awarded annually for the most unusual book title of the year. The award was initiated in 1978 and donated by the British trade magazine The Bookseller since 1979.

History

The idea for a literary prize for the most unusual book title was in 1978 by Bruce Robertson ( 1934-2014 ), a bookseller of the Diagram Group, during the Frankfurt Book Fair from boredom developed. The implementation of the idea has been adopted by the industry magazine The Bookseller, acted as curator of the fictional columnist " Horace Bent ." As the first prize winner in 1979 retrospectively for the year 1978, the Conference Report, Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice ( "Reports of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice ") was excellent.

The book titles were proposed initially only from booksellers, publishers and librarians, as of 1993, the readers of The Bookseller have been involved in the selection. Awareness comic titles, for example, from humorous books, however, were excluded from the election. By 1999, the winner was chosen by a jury that was hiding behind the name " Horace Bent ." Since 2000, the choice of the winning title by a vote in the Internet is, Horace Bent will continue to be responsible for the selection of the selection list. Thanks to the quirky theme of the Diagram Prize has an unusually high popularity in the UK. Thus, the participation was on the internet at the election of the winner of the 2007 higher than in the choice of the Best of the Booker Prize, a special prize of the most important British literary award, the Booker Prize.

The Diagram Prize is undoped, only the person who had suggested as the first title of the book will be rewarded for their discovery with a magnum of champagne. The awarded authors and publishers remains only the prospect of rising sales thanks to the awareness of the literary prize in the English-speaking world.

List of winners

Special rates Diagram of Diagrams

For the 15th and 30th anniversary of the Diagram Prize each of the best winners from previous years was awarded the special prize Diagram of Diagrams. In 1993 the special price to the first winner of the Diagram Prize, Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice, was awarded. To mark the 30th anniversary of the Diagram Prize, the Greek Rural Postmen and Their monograph Cancellation Numbers, winner of 1996, was considered the best winning titles awarded the Diagram of Diagrams.

Choice of the most curious German title

Since 2008, a prize for the oddest book title is awarded to German based on the Diagram Prize. It was donated by the trade journal for the German Book Trade with Ben Schott, the publisher of bulkhead smorgasbord and will be presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair.