The votes for the 2017 Not the Booker prize have been counted and we have five books are going through to the shortlist stage of our competition. Here they are, ranked by the net number of votes:

Not Thomas by Sara Gethin (Honno Press) – 87

Dark Chapter by Winnie M Li (Legend Press) – 85

Man With a Seagull on His Head by Harriet Paige (Bluemoose Books) – 85

The Threat Level Remains Severe by Rowena Macdonald (Aardvark Bureau) – 64

The Ludlow Ladies’ Society by Ann O’Loughlin (Black and White Publishing) – 53

Congratulations to the shortlisted authors – and commiserations to all the others. It’s been another extraordinary year of competition. The longlist page received a record-breaking tally of comments (1815), almost all of them votes, and the vast majority of those valid. Thank you to everyone who has taken part so far and thank you to our vote counter, Lisa L Jones. I must also express deep admiration and gratitude to our friend from Tips, Links and Suggestions for trawling through the votes, building an amazing spreadsheet of valid and non-valid votes and helping to ensure the process ran fairly and smoothly.

Thanks to Lisa, we can soon get to the serious but enjoyable business of reading and reviewing the shortlisted books. Before we do, there’s the intriguing matter of our wild-card entry. Our three judges from last year are deep in discussion about the extra book they’re going to add to our shortlist. I’ll make an announcement about that early next week.

In the meantime, I will start to work through our shortlist in alphabetical order by author surname, beginning with Sarah Gethin’s Not Thomas. I’ll post my thoughts about that book some time around 21 August, so please get reading and share your own thoughts about it then.

We will once again look for three excellent judges whose opinions will be counted alongside the public vote in the final round – more about that next week.

For now, anyone interested in participating should review this section from our gracious, noble and victorious Terms and Conditions:

11. 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 also left studiously vague and at the Guardian’s discretion. These judges undertake to read at least three of the six-book shortlist before the final judging meeting.

OK, we have a serious competition on our hands – on to the next stage!