NEW ZEALAND POST BOOK AWARDS
BOUQUETS AND BRICKBATS

BOUQUETS
Warm welcome on arrival.
Glamour factor as befitting the  book industry's premier annual event.
Spectacular location - The Long Room, Langham Hotel, Auckland.
Convenient pocket-size booklet featuring shortlisted titles provided at the time the appealingly designed tickets were mailed out.
Beautifully designed and useful notebook, (in several different designs), each one personalised with the guest's name printed thereon.
The MC - Jennifer Ward-Lealand did a superb job.
The judges - appropriate and succinct remarks.
The humility of fiction-award winner Alison Wong.
The audio visuals.
The overall organisation.

BRICKBATS
The $130 ticket price - were those of us who paid subsidising many who didn't?
Buffet meal rather than table service. Inexcusable for such a major black tie event, and especially at the price.
Two authors who hijacked the show by taking 15+ minutes to express their thanks instead of the expected and customary two minute maximum.
The standard of dress of some guests. Don't they know what Formal-Black Tie means?

GENERAL COMMENTS

While I am delighted for Judith Binney, only recently recovered from an awful traffic accident, and her feisty, small independent publisher Bridget Williams, I think it is fair to say that this will probably be the smallest-ever seller  of the winner of the overall book year of the award title.
Because of the limited interest in the subject matter and the density of the writing, it is essentially an academic thesis by an outstanding academic NZ historian, one cannot imagine the public lining up to buy the book on Monday morning. I acknowledge that it is a superb piece of publishing, an important, wonderfully designed book, with a stunning cover too, but most punters will find it impenetrable and I am sure booksellers will be disappointed if they are expecting extra sales as a result of this win. Normally with the winners of this Award there are immediate and significant new sales.
Oh well, extra sales aren't everything............

The full list of 2010 New Zealand Post Book Awards winners:


New Zealand Post Book of the Year and General Non-fiction Award winner:
Encircled Lands: Te Urewera, 1820-1921 by Judith Binney (Bridget Williams Books)

Fiction Award winner: As the Earth Turns Silver by Alison Wong (Penguin Group (NZ))

Poetry Award winner: Just This by Brian Turner (Victoria University Press)


Illustrated Non-fiction Award and People’s Choice Award winner: Go Fish: Recipes and stories from the New Zealand Coast by Al Brown (Random House NZ)