Will Obama's memos get the Booker Prize?

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Obama memos

Jared Bernstein the former chief economist and the economic advisor to Vice President Joe Biden said the story, "Obama's Memoirs" by Ryan Lisa, includes "perhaps the most practical that we've seen in the White House reports" about the Obama administration.

Depending on hundreds of pages of previously classified White House diaries, author Ryan Lisa writes that Obama is "cunning and difficult but not the president his more idealistic supporters thought they elected."

Literary Awards season kicks off every fall, with the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Booker Prize, and National Book Awards often landing in quick succession. 

This year, however, another major literary event threatens to make the already busy autumn publishing season even more chaotic: the release of former President Barack Obama's memoir, "The Promised Land."

The Booker Prize on Tuesday said it would move the award ceremony that was scheduled for November 17 to November 19 to avoid interfering with the publication of Mr Obama's book.

"We thought it was regrettable that two of the most exciting literary events of the year the announcement of the 2020 Booker Prize winner and the publication of Barack Obama's memoirs were slated to fall on the same day, so we decided that we decided, Gabi Wood, Literary Director of the Booker Prize Foundation, in a statement:" Giving readers breathing space for two days. "

It is unusual for Booker, one of the most prestigious literary prizes in the world, to delay announcing its award for the release of a single book. 

The history change highlights just how much ugly Obama's book has, with first print 3 million copies and a case guaranteed as a bestseller.

Booker's decision to walk away from Mr Obama may spark new criticism that the prize, originally created in 1969 to honour writers from the Commonwealth countries and the Republic of Ireland, is becoming over America and increasingly focused on the US book market. 

Booker candidates have been dominated by US authors in recent years, after a rule change in 2014 that qualified any novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom.

Since the change, American novelists Paul Beatty and George Saunders won the award; This year, of the six books on the shortlist, three are by American writers, while the fourth author holds both Scottish and American nationalities. 

Two years ago, a group of prominent writers argued that the foundation should bar American authors from eligibility, but the foundation was not doing well.

The Booker, which was announced in previous years in October, will now be awarded right after the National Book Awards, which will be held at an online ceremony on November 18, potentially triggering a coverage crisis that could dampen the awards' impact.

“As they approach us, we are of course worried, we are worried about our authors,” said Lisa Lucas, executive director of the National Book Foundation, which administers the National Book Awards.

 "It's hard to get an award like Booker, who didn't need to be involved in the American scene in the years before it changed, but now you have American books dominating the Booker list. Now they have to work at some level alongside our awards."

Both Booker and National Book Awards usually provide an increase in sales to winners, but the proximity to the awards can lead to less press coverage and fewer sales, in a year when early and lesser-known authors struggle for attention. 

As the pandemic and lockdowns forced many independent booksellers to close or switch to online sales, an important outlet driving the discovery of new authors, poets, and non-fiction writers has nearly vanished.

This year, the first novels represent four of Booker's six shortlisted books, including Douglas Stewart's "Shogi Pine" novels, which are about a child who grew up in Scotland in the 1980s. And Brandon Taylor's "Real Life", which focuses on a gay black graduate student. 

Mr Stewart is also included in the long list of the National Book Award for Fiction, along with first author Megh Majumdar for her famous novel "Burning". 

The other four long lists of the National Book Awards realism, poetry, and literature in translation, and youth literature including junior authors as well.

The collision of awards and major literary events is not only bad for marketing and advertising efforts. This year, it may cause significant logistical hurdles as well. 

The severe shortage of printing houses, which is under financial pressure, has made it more difficult than usual for publishers to meet the increase in demand for certain addresses. 

Awards often lead to increased sales and are often for titles that have not had apparent commercial success, so publishers and booksellers may be left short.

Awards administrators are tackling unprecedented challenges this year by taking their ceremonies online and holding juries on Zoom. However, many in the literary world feel there is a lot to celebrate in 2020, with many new books to stand for.

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