Have You Heard Of The Diagram Prize?

Until this morning, I hadn’t. That is I hadn’t heard of the Diagram Prize. A small item in today DNA newspaper caught my attention. It said “Judge The Book By It’s Title.” It went on to speak of an annual award run by the trade magazine, The Bookseller for the oddest title of the year. Apparently, in the race for this year’s award are titles like, ” Was Hitler Ill”, “How Tea Cosies Changed The World”, and “Goblinproofing One’s Chicken Coop.”

I was amazed to hear the award is in its 35 th year and is a “celebration of the quirkiest, most unexpected book titles published in the last year.”

A Google search brought me to the Wiki entry for the Bookseller/Diagram Prize for the Oddest Title of the Year. This made interesting reading. I have no idea of the other entries but I did find that the 2012 prize went to “Cooking With Poo.” I was horrified until I discovered that this is a Thai cook book. Compared to the tiles listed, the ones for my books namely, “It Can’t Be You,” “Lucky For Some, 13″ and ” Let The Dead Stay Dead” seemed terribly lame.

Other winners in the past have been: “People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It” in 2005 and “Natural Bust Enlargement with Total Power: How to Increase the Other 90% of Your Mind to Increase the Size of Your Breasts” in 1985.

But really you must see the titles for yourself. So if you want to hit the headlines, even before you start on that next book, think of some outlandish or whacky title. If nothing else, it might get you a lot of attention, and who knows may be even the Diagram Prize.