When I kicked off this year’s Not the Booker prize, I made some fairly big claims about the prize’s stability and how well our system of democracy works. There’s a chance that I will come to regret this hubris and end up eating my words – but I’m reasonably confident it’s a slim one.
A good deal of this confidence comes from good sense that our judging panels have always. They form an interesting counterweight to the public vote – and help ensure that there are people other than me reading most of the books on the shortlist. So far, I’m glad to say that it’s worked superbly. We have had some terrific judges in the past three years – who have added wit, wisdom and meaningful debate to our proceedings. You can see for yourself how impressive they have been by clicking through to these videos from 2013, 2014 and 2015.
In the past, the judging panels have both out-argued and outvoted me. They have sometimes agreed with, and sometimes overruled, the popular vote. They have always added intelligence, knowledge and class. They’ve consistently made the whole thing more fun. And they’ve helped to insure that winning the Not the Booker counts as a serious achievement.
I’m gushing, I know. But that’s because this is one of my favourite aspects of the prize. And one of the things I most like about the judging panel is that it’s open to anyone. As I note every year, you don’t have to be in any way famous or any kind of mover and shaker in the book industry. You just have to have a few opinions about books and be prepared to express them on our forums. Our judges can come from anywhere. One of them, in fact, could be you.
Having said that, I have also begun to realise that taking part in the panel can also point the way to an interesting future. While writing this article, I took a glance at our first panel from 2013 and was pleased to realise that our judges from that year have all gone on to shine within the book industry in various ways. Simon Savidge’s superb Savidge Reads blog has gone from strength to strength and he has recently taken up an important role at Wiedenfeld & Nicolson as an editorial consultant for a list aiming to give voice to underrepresented regions in the UK. Simon Moore has had a book published with the prestigious and brilliant indie publisher, Salt. And Vic James is on the verge of conquering the dystopian fantasy universe with her first novel, Gilded Cage.
But you don’t need any similar ambitions to take part. Reading, enjoying and discussing the books will hopefully be reward enough in itself. All you need to do if you do want to become a judge is follow the relevant section from our always victorious, happy and glorious Terms and Conditions:
Three readers will be selected by the Guardian to form a panel of judges from those readers who have made substantial contributions to the discussion of the shortlisted books. The process by which these readers are chosen is left studiously vague and is at the Guardian’s discretion. These judges undertake to read at least three of the six-book shortlist before the final judging meeting.
In practice, what we’d like would be for you, too, to join in when I read the books on the shortlist. Please comment and review as much as you can and, if you enjoy the process, please throw your name into the ring at the end when I ask for volunteers.
As ever, our hope is that we will attract dedicated, eloquent readers with strong opinions and the ability to back up those opinions. We could happily just invite any of our previous judges again since they all fitted the bill admirably. I’m hoping they’ll be reading along and that we may be able to call on them again – but we also want to see new faces. We want to be kept on our toes and we want to keep things diverse. So please think about joining in, whoever you are and wherever you come from. You will be more than welcome.
