BookBrunch

Still, in the end I'd rather have the sales, concludes Peter James

Well, it was groundhog day again last night at Harrogate. There I was, a shortlisted author for the third year running for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel Of The Year, sitting in the auditorium as the winner was announced (the very charming RJ Ellory) with my Happy Loser Smile on my face.

That same smile has come out more times than I can count in the past few years, although on one occasion, at the televised Galaxy awards hosted by Richard and Judy, when I failed to win I screwed up my face into a scowl - and five million viewers saw it! I remember the following year, this time at the ITV Crime Thriller Awards, for which I was also shortlisted, along with Lee Child and Jeffery Deaver and others, seeing Lee caught on camera mouthing a silent expletive, accompanied by a face like thunder, when the winner was announced. I spoke to him later and told him I’d done something similar a year earlier. "Well," he replied, "If I’m shortlisted, I damned well hope to win and I'm going to hacked off if I don’t." I have to confess, I admire his attitude, but more often than not I still revert to my smile, as phoney as a fake tan…

It is a very happy moment when the Chair of the judges - it was Michael Doggart - introduces the winner, and he says that it has a historical theme, and you note that none of the other shortlisted titles is historical, and you realise: "Bloody hell! That's my book!" And it beats not winning.

I won Best New Writer at the British Sports Book Awards last Thursday (11 March). Being described as "new" when you're 52 is also a fillip. "What about Don't Sweat the Aubergine?" my chum Sean Magee complained. I pointed out that fellow contender Graham Joyce (Simple Goalkeeping Made Spectacular, which had also competed with my Eclipse for the Wm Hill Sports Book of the Year), who sits alongside me at Society of Authors committee meetings, has some 15 sf novels under his belt.

Publishers are increasingly reluctant to take on interesting new talents, we often hear. Is Cape an exception, or an exception that disproves the rule? Cape author Adam Foulds won a Somerset Maugham Award, for writers under 35, and was shortlisted for the Booker; Cape author Samantha Harvey won a Betty Trask, also for writers under 35; and now a third under-35s award, the John Llewellyn Rhys, has gone to Cape author Evie Wyld (BookBrunch story).

You might counter that the big publishers like young authors, but are less welcoming to the middle-aged. Well, Cape's stablement Chatto published this year's McKitterick Prize (first novel by a writer over 40) winner, Chris Hannan.

Someone should start a contest for the actual worst opening sentences of novels. The annual Bulwer-Lytton contest invites people to create their own examples of bad writing, and each year receives entries that are more outlandish, thus losing its satirical edge. The 2009 winner, from David McKenzie, 55, of Federal Way, Washington, is:

Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the "Ellie May," a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.

Better, in my view, was the winning sentence in the Detective category, from Eric Rice of Wisconsin:

She walked into my office on legs as long as one of those long-legged birds that you see in Florida - the pink ones, not the white ones except that she was standing on both of them, not just one of them, like those birds, the pink ones, and she wasn't wearing pink, but I knew right away that she was trouble, which those birds usually aren't.

The Man Booker International Prize and the David Cohen Prize for Literature, despite the eloquent and sympathetic words about the latter from Seamus Heaney on Front Row yesterday evening (18 March), and despite the good causes the Cohen Prize helps, bring out the Scrooge in me. As did the $1m Nilsson prize for classical musicians - inaugural winner, Placido Domingo. What need of these prizes do the winners have? What impact do their victories make? The answer to both questions is, very little.

I wrote at greater length about what I considered to be the absurdity of the Booker International in this piece in the New Statesman.

Tindal Street turns out prizeworthy fiction the way Wales used to turn out fly halves. There was Clare Morrall, then Catherine O'Flynn (the subject of a bidding war at the moment, I gather) and now Gaynor Arnold, who has added an Orange longlisting to the Booker longlisting she received last year. There have been numerous other fine Tindal Street novels, such as Careless Talk by Michael Richardson, Shawnie by Ed Trewavas, and Piggy Monk Square by Grace Jolliffe. I am prepared to take on trust the claims now being made about Anthony Cartwright's Heartland (7 May) - and not many publishers inspire that confidence.

One publisher that did not inspire total confidence, when I reviewed its first four titles for the TLS, was Macmillan New Writing. Yet "the Ryanair of publishing" (Hari Kunzru's memorable phrase) has found several authors for the main Pan Macmillan list, and now has an endorsement from the Orange judges.

Tindal Street is a subsidised publisher, while MNW is part of a conglomerate operating on a low-cost model. Traditional publishing models are facing increasing challenges, and the mainstream imprints' share of excellence is likely to decline.

The announcement of the Andre Simon awards prompts Jancis Robinson to suggest that drinks book publishing is in a "parlous state". While the Simon judges considered 111 food books, they received only 13 entries in the drinks category. Their shortlist included just one book on wine, Charles Sullivan’s Napa Wine: A History from Mission Days to Present (Wine Appreciation Guild) - a revised edition.

Is it because previously published books weren't good enough? Because publishers are too cautious? Because of the growth of online comment about wine?

Commentators on Robinson's site are inclined to blame publishers, particularly Mitchell Beazley. Publishers would no doubt reply that the market has declined. Why has it declined? There has been no diminution of our thirst for wine and other drinks. But in the 1980s and early 90s, British consumers were learning about the subject, as the supermarkets expanded their drinks ranges. There was the excitement of discovery. Now, it all seems more familiar.

The subsidy publisher The Book Guild is thrilled with the listing of one of its titles, Triptych of a Young Wolf by Ann Allestree, for the "prestigious" Literary Review Bad Sex Awards, putting out a press release and announcing the news on the front page of its website. Allestree joins distinguished names including James Buchan, John Updike, and Isabel Fonseca - as well as, for added publicity value, Alastair Campbell.

Ann Allestree, as the listing of her novel on the Book Guild site reveals, is the pseudonym of a journalist, Penelope Ann Craig. Triptych of a Young Wolf is the story of Louis-Loup, a wolf nurtured at a grand house on a Mediterranean island.

The award will be announced on 25 November at the Naval and Military Club (a.k.a. the In and Out).

Joseph O'Neill, hotly tipped for the Booker but omitted from the shortlist, has also missed out on a shortlisting for the US National Book Award, notes the New York Times. O'Neill, born in Ireland and now a US citizen, is in the rare position of being eligible for both awards.