At Treehugger Dan’s we have several customers that are systematically reading through the Booker Prize winners and the Nebula Award winners and other book prizes. Before I started a bookstore, I had never heard of half of these, but it seems every 10th book has won something, be it a Whitbread, Orange, Edgar or Pulitzer. Here is what some of the major prizes mean:

Nobel Prize in Literature The very first Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded in 1901 to the French poet and philosopher Sully Prudhomme, who in his poetry showed the "rare combination of the qualities of both heart and intellect". The Pulitzer Prize has several literary categories. The winners in 2008 included:

• Biography or Autobiography: Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father by John Matteson
• Drama: August: Osage County by Tracy Letts
• Fiction: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
• General Nonfiction: The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 by Saul Friedländer
• History: What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 by Daniel Walker Howe
• Poetry: Time and Materials by Robert Hass

National Book Award (US) On March 15, 1950, a consortium of book publishing groups sponsored the first annual National Book Awards Ceremony and Dinner at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. Their goal was to enhance the public's awareness of exceptional books written by fellow Americans, and to increase the popularity of reading in general. Since then, The National Book Awards have become the nation's preeminent literary prizes. Today, the Awards are given to recognize achievements in four genres: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People's Literature.
In 2007, the following won for fiction:

• Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke 
• Mischa Berlinski - Fieldwork 
• Lydia Davis - Varieties of Disturbance 
• Joshua Ferris - Then We Came to the End 
• Jim Shepard - Like You’d Understand, Anyway 

The O. Henry Award is the only yearly award given to short stories of exceptional merit. The award is named after the American master of the form, O. Henry. The O. Henry Prize Stories is an annual collection of the year's twenty best stories published in U.S. and Canadian magazines, written in English. The O. Henry Prize Stories 2007 was dedicated to Sherwood Anderson, a U.S. short-story writer.

Newbery Medal Sponsored by the American Library Association, the Newberry Medal is given to the author of the most distinguished contribution to children's literature published during the preceding year. Only U.S. citizens or residents are eligible. The Newbery Medal was named for eighteenth-century British bookseller John Newbery. The 2008 Newbery Medal winner is Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village by Laura Amy Schlitz, illustrated by Robert Byrd.

Whitbread/Costa Book Awards The Costa Book Awards are among the United Kingdom's most prestigious literary awards. However, they are also open to writers from the Republic of Ireland. They were known as the Whitbread Book Awards until 2006, when Costa Coffee, a subsidiary of Whitbread, took over sponsorship. The awards, launched in 1971, are given both for high literary merit but also for works that are enjoyable reading and whose aim is to convey the enjoyment of reading to the widest possible audience. As such, they are a more populist literary prize than the Booker Prize. The winners in 2006 included:

• Costa First Novel Award: Stef Penney - The Tenderness of Wolves
• Costa Novel Award: William Boyd – Restless
• Costa Children's Book Award: Linda Newbery - Set in Stone
• Costa Poetry Award: John Haynes - Letter to Patience
• Costa Biography Award: Brian Thompson - Keeping Mum

Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction The Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction is awarded to the woman who, in the opinion of the judges, has written the best, eligible full-length novel in English. The prize is open to any full length novel, written in English by a woman of any nationality, provided that the novel is published for the first time in the UK. The 2008 winner was Rose Tremain for The Road Home.

The Man Booker Prize promotes the finest in fiction by rewarding the very best book of the year. The prize is the world's most important literary award and has the power to transform the fortunes of authors and even publishers. Now in its 40th year, the prize aims to reward the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. The Man Booker judges are selected from the country's finest critics, writers and academics to maintain the consistent excellence of the prize. Anne Enright won the prize in 2007 for her novel The Gathering, and Salman Rushdie was named winner of the Best of the Booker award for Midnight's Children in 2008.

The Man Booker International Prize is unique in the world of literature in that it can be won by an author of any nationality, providing that his or her work is available in the English language. It is awarded every second year. Nigerian author Chinua Achebe won in 2007.

Edgar Awards Founded in 1945, the Mystery Writers of America is the preeminent American organization of mystery writers. Each year in April, the MWA bestows the coveted Edgar Allan Poe Awards for achievement in various categories. An Edgar Award is for the best work in various categories of the mystery field involving writing. Mystery Writers of America presented its first Edgar Allan Poe Awards in 1946. The best mystery novel of 2008 was awarded to Down River by John Hart

Crime Writers Association (CWA) Dagger Awards. There is a whole range of different dagger awards from CWA. The CWA Gold and Silver Daggers were initially titled the Crossed Red Herrings Award, and this was first presented in 1955 to Winston Graham for The Little Walls. The award was renamed the Gold Dagger in 1960. The Silver Dagger goes to the runner up and came into being in 1969. Between 1995 and 2002, the awards were sponsored by The Macallan Whisky Company and named The Macallan Gold and Silver Daggers. This award was replaced in 2006 by the Duncan Lawrie Dagger and the Duncan Lawrie International Dagger. Only British publishers can submit entries for the awards, and the submissions must have been published in the English language in the UK within a limited period of time. In 2007, The Duncan Lawrie Dagger went to The Broken Shore by Peter Temple, and Duncan Lawrie International Dagger went to Wash this Blood Clean from my Hand by Fred Vargas. 

The Hugo Awards are awards for excellence in the field of science fiction and fantasy. They were first awarded in 1953. The awards are run by and voted on by fans. The Hugo Awards are named after Hugo Gernsback who founded Amazing Stories Magazine, the first major American SF magazine, in 1926. Any work is eligible, regardless of its place or language of publication. The 2006 winners were:
·    Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge
·    Glasshouse by Charles Stross
·    His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik
·    Eifelheim by Michael Flynn
·    Blindsight by Peter Watts

The Nebula Award is an award given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), for the best science fiction/fantasy fiction published in the United States during the two previous years The first Nebulas were given for the year 1965. Frank Herbert's Dune won as Best Novel. The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon won in 2007

For a fairly comprehensive list of all the literary awards and bestseller lists, see http://falcon.jmu.edu/~ramseyil/awards.htm