National Book Award 2024: Need to balance professional and market criteria

The seventh National Book Awards in 2024 will have an additional award in the Readers' Favorite Book category to honor books of good quality, impressive in terms of circulation quantity and large readership.

The 2024 National Book Awards Conference was organized by the Department of Publishing, Printing and Distribution.

This is considered one of the new features of the seventh National Book Awards. Specifically, the Readers' Favorite Book Award can be in any of the five categories, including: Politics, economics ; natural sciences and technology; social sciences and humanities, culture; literature and arts; children. The nominated works in this category will be partly decided by readers, along with objective assessments of many other factors, such as: Scientific, practical, aesthetic... from the professional council.

At the conference to disseminate the decisions of the Ministry of Information and Communications approving the Charter and Regulations of the National Book Award, Vice President of the Vietnam Publishing Association, Director of the Department of Publishing, Printing and Distribution Nguyen Nguyen shared: Many of the previously awarded books were academic and unfamiliar to the public; some were ordered books, not popular in the market... Meanwhile, over time, the National Book Award wants to reach out to readers and the market, demonstrated through books that are highly appreciated by the market. Of course, works awarded the Readers' Favorite Book Award must ensure harmony between market value and quality of content and form. This adjustment is considered appropriate by experts, but we still need to wait for specific results to have an overall view of its effectiveness.

In addition, this year's National Book Awards also have changes in the award structure. The number of awards has increased in all five book categories; in which, the A prize has been increased from one to two prizes for each book category. The Organizing Committee believes that in recent years, the number of translated books participating in the awards has increased sharply, many high prizes have been awarded to translated books by foreign authors, so it is necessary to discover and give more opportunities to books by Vietnamese authors. The number of B, C, and Encouragement prizes has also increased. In addition, this year, there will be awards for editors and illustrators who have directly contributed to the books and book series that won high prizes.

At the conference, representatives of publishers and affiliated units gave some opinions and constructive contributions to the National Book Awards and pointed out the remaining limitations. Many opinions said that a prestigious and prestigious award needs to have its own news platform to ensure accurate information, updated to the press, media and readers in a proactive and independent manner. This separate platform is also convenient, helping the evaluation process according to the progress of the seasons to be both general and detailed. Currently, the National Book Awards does not have its own news platform, previous seasons had to be updated indirectly through other press platforms and when there were changes in these platforms, the problem of looking up and finding information became inappropriate.

Some publishers and book companies expressed: After the award ceremony, there were disputes and conflicts between groups implementing the book content about the distribution of the prize ratio, which was considered unsatisfactory. This not only affected the spirit of solidarity and cohesion, but also caused the communication for the winning work to lack unity or stagnation. For example, there were translated works in which the proofreading part played an important role and contribution, but when there was an award, the proofreader was not recognized. Regarding the contribution of the solution, experts said that it is very difficult to apply a specific and detailed guideline for this. However, publishing and distribution units can consider right from the stage of signing the contract and printing agreement, aiming for strictness and satisfaction with the author/group of authors, including the provision on the distribution ratio of the prize.

Representatives of press and media agencies also made recommendations: Before and during the award ceremony, publishing and distribution units are often quite active, but after winning the award, many units show a lack of initiative, indifference, and lack of coordination in promoting and spreading to readers in a specialized direction. This creates many disappointments and certain gaps. The leaders of the Department of Publishing, Printing and Distribution agree with this reflection, and at the same time point out a fairly common phenomenon: There are publishing and distribution units that are not yet interested in the National Book Award, and even when they know the information and are suggested to participate, they are still "lazy" to send copies of their books to the Organizing Committee to attend. Although the specific reasons for each case are not yet known, these phenomena are considered irresponsible, lacking in aspiration, and there also needs to be more connections and spreads so that the award can truly create a more worthy attraction ■

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