Costa Book Awards

The Costa Book Awards

The Costa Book Awards are given away once a year and form an important event for British literature. The prize has a history of 36 years, it was formerly known as the Whitbread Literary Awards (since it's founding 1971) and was renamed into Whitbread Book Awards in 1985. The name Costa Book Awards was chosen in 2006, when Costa Coffee took over the ownership, as a subsidiary of Whitbread.
Since only Costa Coffee holds the rights to this price, they are the only sponsor of these awards. By sponsoring the awards and supporting other literary initiatives Costa Coffee tries to motivate, both
existing and new readers to take some time for themselves with a good book and a cup of [Costa's]coffee.
In order to be eligible a publisher must submit a book, authors can't. Another important requirement is that the author of the submitted book must have been resident in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland for six months a year. The submitted books had to be published within the previous year (between 1 November and 31. October) in the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland. A publisher can submit as many books as he (or she) wants, as long as it is conform with the other rules stated above.
The Costa Book Awards consist of five categories, namely: First Novel, Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children's Book. By putting the category children's books alongside the other four categories, which are clearly addressed towards an adult audience, the awards category structure clearly differs from that of other prizes.
Each category's winner receives £5,000, from which one is to become the winner of the year and receives another £25,000. So the total prize founding of this award amount to £50,000 a year. The winner of the overall award is elected by a committee of five judges from the previous category round, which is completed by four new judges.
For this year's Costa Book Award entries were closed on Friday 29th of June, and the shortlists in all categories were announced on the 21st of November. Somewhere around Mid-December a final judging committee will be announced that will chose the award winners. Their verdict will be unveiled on the 3rd of January, and finally on January 22nd 2008 the 2007 Costa Book of the Year Award' will be acquainted as a part of a glamorous ceremony in central London.

Sources used compiling this article

Website of the Costa Book Awards: http://www.costabookawards.com
Website of Costa Coffee (the award's sponsor): http://www.costa.co.uk
Wikipedia entry on the Costa Book Awards: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costa_Book_Award
This year's shortlist: http://www.costabookawards.com/awards/shortlist.aspx
Short information on the jury: http://www.costabookawards.com/awards/about_the_judges.aspx
Previous winners of the Costa Book Awards: http://www.costabookawards.com/awards/previous_winners.aspx

--Frank Pepplinkhuizen 19:24, 5 December 2007 (CET)