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The rule of tome? Longer novels are more likely to win literary awards

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  • Féidhlim P. McGowan

    (University of Galway)

Abstract

Longer novels on shortlists are significantly more likely to win literary awards. This relationship is shown using all shortlisted novels for three prestigious prizes—the Booker Prize, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and the National Book Award for Fiction, over the time period 1963–2021. The result is robust to controlling for author gender and Goodreads rating, and to whether one uses absolute length (in pages) or relative length on the shortlist. The size of the effect suggests other valid cues are underweighted in the process of selecting a winner. Judgment and decision-making research suggests several causes of the apparent bias. One is the representativeness heuristic: longer novels resemble the tomes that constitute the foundations of the Western canon, and this similarity may subconsciously sway judges. Other explanations include an effort heuristic and the effects of accountability on decisions. These results may explain previous findings that Booker Prize winners are not higher quality than shortlisted novels. The findings cast doubt on the validity of awards as signals of literary merit and have broader implications for the inferred quality of expert judgment.

Suggested Citation

  • Féidhlim P. McGowan, 2024. "The rule of tome? Longer novels are more likely to win literary awards," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 48(2), pages 311-329, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jculte:v:48:y:2024:i:2:d:10.1007_s10824-023-09488-5
    DOI: 10.1007/s10824-023-09488-5
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