Although the award was created by
The Bookseller, the idea of an award celebrating books with odd titles was proposed by Bruce Robertson and Trevor Bounford of the Diagram Group in order to provide entertainment during the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1978. Originally known as the Diagram Group Prize for the Oddest Title at the Frankfurt Book Fair, any book that was at the fair could be nominated, but other books outside of the fair were also included. In 1982, Horace Bent, diarist for
The Bookseller, took over administrative duties. The 2014 prize allowed nominations from
self-published works, the first book being
Strangers Have the Best Candy by Margaret Meps Schulte, which won the prize. The Diagram Prize receives considerable press coverage every year. In 2008, more people voted for the Diagram Prize (8,500 votes) than
The Best of Booker Prize (7,800). The prize is either a magnum of champagne or a bottle of
claret for the person who nominates the winning title, In 2014, the nominator was Brian Payne, who works as the deputy chief sub-editor of
The Bookseller. Due to his position he decided to reject the bottle of claret that he won, saying it "would remain in the cellar." In 2018, all the nominations came from staff at
The Bookseller, so the claret was awarded to a random voter who voted for the eventual winner. Also, nominators, judges and voters are actively discouraged from reading any of the nominations, "for fear that becoming too close to the work may cloud their judgement in declaring the text's title 'odd', especially considering the prize champions 'odd
titles' and
not 'odd
books' (see the Man Booker for the latter)". A follow-up book was released in October 2009, entitled
Baboon Metaphysics And More Implausibly Titled Books, including an introduction by Bent.
Controversy So far, there have been two occasions in which no award has been presented. Bent did not offer a prize in 1987 and 1991, as he felt there was no title that was odd enough to deserve the prize. In 2018, one of the nominations,
Joy of Waterboiling, was controversial because the book was written mostly in German, but the rules of the prize state that only the title needs to be in English in order to qualify for nomination. The second "Diagram of Diagrams", announced on 5 September 2008, was
Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers, the 1996 winner. ==Winners==