Survey finds awards influence readers' choices when it comes to picking books

A recent survey shows that the Mao Dun Literature Prize, the Lu Xun Literature Prize and the Nobel Prize in Literature are among the book awards most easily recognized by Chinese netizens.

The survey, conducted by Beijing Normal University during the last two months of 2017, covered 5,262 Chinese netizens' knowledge about 35 domestic and foreign book awards including the National Book Award of the United States, France's Prix Goncourt Prize and the British Man Booker Prize.

It also covered attitudes toward the book awards and their voting procedures.

"The recognition of the book awards will, to some extent, influence reading preferences," says Qin Yanhua, the project leader and a professor at the School of Journalism and Communication of BNU.

According to the survey's results, the respondents were more familiar with domestic book awards than foreign ones, with the Mao Dun Literature Prize and the Lu Xun Literature Prize having the highest profile.

Meanwhile, the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Hans Christian Andersen Award and the American Pulitzer Prize are the three foreign book awards that respondents were most familiar with.

The survey results also showed that respondents aged between 46 to 55 had more knowledge about the book awards, as they had grown up when the national college entrance examinations started to bring China's higher education to a larger group of people.

The results matched statistics that showed a higher educational background contributed to a higher recognition of book awards.

Separately, the survey showed that respondents were also more willing to purchase prize-winning books, whether the prizes were foreign awards or market-oriented domestic awards like the ones organized by internet platforms JD and Sina.

Official awards from the government did not arouse the same kind of interest from survey respondents. And some of them said this was due to insufficient promotion.

Zhang Su, the deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, said at the release of the survey report on Tuesday that it could lead to a rethink about the voting systems for official book awards.

Gender differences were also reflected in the survey.

Female respondents said domestic awards focused mainly on the quality of the books, while male ones said political value was the main consideration.

Also, women preferred literature titles while men were more willing to read books related to science and technology.

The survey found that how much respondents read also mattered. And the more a person read, the more positive he or she tended to be about book awards.

Those respondents who had not read much over the past year had the lowest scores when it came to their attitudes toward book awards.

One other finding was that a quarter of those surveyed took readers' recommendations and votes as their preferred way of choosing books.

However, the Mao Dun Literature Prize, the Lu Xun Literature Prize and those awards with the highest overall recognition were mainly used by professionals to recommend books.

Commenting on this finding, Wan Anlun, the assistant director of the School of Journalism and Communication of BNU, said involving the public more in the voting process could be one way to address this issue.