National Book Award

The first National Book Awards were presented in May 1936 at the annual convention of the American Booksellers Association, one month after The New York Times reported institution of the "new annual award". The winners were authors of four 1935 books selected by a vote of ABA members. Virginia Kirkus chaired the central committee of seven including the ABA president, three bookshops, Publishers Weekly, and American News Company. Three were called "the most distinguished of 1935" (novel, biography, and general nonfiction) and one "the most original" (novel).[3][4] Two of the books were advertised by their publishers as "The most distinguished autobiography of 1935" and "The most distinguished general non-fiction book of 1935" in NYTimes on May 12, the same day that the newspaper reported yesterday's awards.[note 1]

For the next six years, 1937 to 1942, the awards were announced from mid-February to early March.[14][15][16][17][18][19]

The "Most Distinguished" Nonfiction, Biography, and Novel (for 1935 and 1936)[3][4][14] were reduced to two and termed "Favorite" Nonfiction and Fiction beginning 1937. Master of ceremonies Clifton Fadiman declined to consider the Pulitzer Prizes (not yet announced in February 1938) as potential ratifications. "Unlike the Pulitzer Prize committee, the booksellers merely vote for their favorite books. They do not say it is the best book or the one that will elevate the standard of manhood or womanhood. Twenty years from now we can decide which are the masterpieces. This year we can only decide which books we enjoyed reading the most."[15]

The Bookseller Discovery officially recognized "outstanding merit which failed to receive adequate sales and recognition" (quoted by NYT)[16] Finally that award stood alone for 1941 and the New York Times frankly called it "a sort of consolation prize that the booksellers hope will draw attention to his work."[19]

The winning authors and books were selected by a nationwide poll of booksellers (ABA members); during the 1937/38 cycle, ballots were received from 319 stores, triple the number who voted in the first rendition early in 1936.[15] In a 1941 advertisement, the Booksellers described the "significance of the awards" thus:[20]

In effect, his ballot says, "Of all the books of the year these are the three I enjoyed most – in two ways! I enjoyed reading them; and I enjoyed selling them." And that to a bookseller means people who, on his recommendation, read and enjoyed – and sent in other people who also read and enjoyed. The National Book Awards give you perhaps a greater guarantee of reading pleasure than any other literary prizes.

In January 1950 three book industry organizations announced that "works by Americans published here" would be recognized by three awards in March (at the annual convention?). There would be three distinct panels of five judges.[21] The fifteen judges were "Elmer Davis, John Kieran, Henry Steele Commager, Fairfield Osborn and Norman Cousins for non-fiction; Mary Colum, Glenway Wescott, Max Gissin, W. G. Rogers and Malcolm Cowley for fiction; and W. H. Auden, Louise Bogan, Babett Duetsch, Horace Gregory and Louise Untermeyer for poetry."[22]

That winter Harper placed several advertisements promoting the awards.

"first annual NBA dinner of the book industry in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on Thursday" [March 16] with speakers Senator Paul Douglas, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Frederick Lewis Allen. A one-half hour program from the Awards Dinner, including Mrs. Roosevelt's address, was broadcast locally at 9:30 and again at 10:00pm.[23]

The awards were administered by the National Book Committee from 1950 to 1974, when the Committee disbanded after publishers withdrew support.[24][25]

In 1950 and 1967, at least, the prize sponsors were three book-industry organizations American Booksellers Association, the American Book Publishers Council and the Book Manufacturers Institute.[21][24]

In 1973 NYTimes still called the National Book Committee a nonprofit funded "by publishers and by organizations involved in the book trade"[26] A temporary Committee on Awards Policy handled 1975.[25]

In 1964 Nonfiction was divided in three.[27]

The National Book Award for Translation was introduced in 1967 and split between two books,[28] the first split.[26]

Children's literature was first recognized as one of seven categories in 1969.[29]

Two awards were split in 1973 for the first time.[26]

Publishers dropped their support after 1974 and the National Book Committee was disbanded.[25] In 1975 the temporary administrator "begged" judges not to split awards.[25]

Three of 27 awards were split in 1983[30] before the drastic cutback that also required selection of a single winner in all three categories for 1984.[31][32]

The currently active Poetry category was added in 1991, followed by Young People's Literature in 1996, and Translated Literature in 2018.[33]

In 1980 the "National Book Awards" were canceled and replaced by "American Book Awards" on the film industry model (Oscars). "It will be run almost exactly the way the Academy Awards are run," a spokesman told reporters."[34] There would be nearly 30 awards presented in an extravagant TV-friendly ceremony, to winners selected by a standing "academy" of more than 2,000 people in the book industry.[34] Implementation was poor, the episode a disaster.[34]

Most new categories survived only one to four cycles, 1980 to 1983. There were seven awards categories in 1979, twenty-eight in 1980, nineteen in 1983 (plus graphics awards, see below), three in 1984.[35][36]

In 1983 there were 30 award winners in 27 categories including 14 categories of literary achievement in writing for adults; in turn, five for hardcover editions, six for paperback editions, and three general.[30]

1983 awards categories (27)

• 8 for graphics: Pictorial Design, Typographical Design, Illustration Collected Art, Illustration Original Art, Illustration Photographs, Cover Design, Jacket Design[note 2]
• 5 for children's literature: (Children's) Fiction hardcover and paperback, Nonfiction, Picture Books hardcover and paperback
• 14 for adults' literature: General Nonfiction hardcover and paperback, History hardcover and paperback, Biography hardcover and paperback, Science hardcover and paperback, Translation, Fiction hardcover and paperback, Poetry, First Novel, Original Paperback

Late that year, the AAP Board voted to fund a new version of the Awards, which had been "close to expiring from lack of support". At the time, AAP and Harper & Row president Brooks Thomas anticipated "probably fewer than ten" categories, including some "only for original paperbacks, not reprints". Edwin McDowell reported that "many book-industry officials hope ... [to] rank in importance with the $15,000 Booker McConnell Prize for Fiction" (British).[37]

For 1983 publications (January to October) there would be no awards. A committee comprising American Book Awards executive director Barbara Prete and four publishers designed the new and improved program, implemented fall 1984 for a publication year beginning November 1983. They cut the roster to merely three (Nonfiction, Fiction, and First Work of Fiction), moved the ceremony from early spring to late fall, and redefined eligibility to require publication during the calendar year of the awards (roughly, see Annual eligibility).[31] There were only fiction and nonfiction awards in 1986.[38]

In 1987 the "National" award returned in name. Covering the November ceremony, Edwin McDowell of The New York Times remarked upon the recurring changes in format and contrasted 1983 in particular, when there were 96 finalists in 27 awards categories (listed above).

The surviving awards for general Fiction and Nonfiction, now with precisely five finalists each, were administered by National Book Awards, Inc., whose Chairman of the Board was the president of Hearst Trade Book Group. He declaimed that "Book people are really not actors, and there's a realization now that we should not try to reward things like who did the best book blurb."[39] The fixed number five finalists was retained through 2012,[40] while the number of book categories has doubled with the addition of Poetry in 1991 and Young People's Literature in 1996.[8] Beginning with 2013, the Foundation announced there would be a "longlist" of 10 titles in each of the four categories in September (40 titles), followed by a "finalist" list of 5 titles in October (20 titles), and then the winners in November (4 titles).[11] In 2018 a fifth award category was announced, the National Book Award for Translated Literature.[41] It is for living translators and authors and for fiction and non-fiction. The foundation previously gave a translation award from 1967-1983, but did not require the author to be living and was for fiction only.