Nearly two weeks ago, the longlist was announced for the Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award. This is a significant award that has been going since 2002, and I have written about it before. But, I have never focused on one of its aspects, the People’s Choice Award, so this is where we are going today. Not specifically this one, but the idea in general.

So let’s look at the idea? Broadly, these are popular book prizes where the general public votes for the winners rather than a small group of critics or expert judges. They are often seen as showing what everyday readers love to read. I admit to not taking these awards as seriously as “judged” awards. Is this snooty of me? I can see some of the benefits. Depending on what they are and how they are run, they can engage more readers, can give prize opportunities to books that may not otherwise be in the running, and help different books, perhaps those by new or indie authors, reach bigger audiences. A prize sticker on a book is worth a bit I believe.

Indeed, several of the big Australian literary awards feature a public “People’s Choice” category or the like, usually allowing readers to select their favourite from a given list. These Awards include:

• NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, The University of Sydney People’s Choice Award: Established in 2009 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the awards, and sponsored by the University of Sydney since 2023, it is based on votes by New South Wales residents from the works shortlisted for the Christina Stead Prize for fiction. The first winner was Steve Toltz for A fraction of the whole (my review), and the 2026 winner was Emily Maguire’s Rapture.
• Queensland Literary Awards, The Courier-Mail People’s Choice Queensland Book of the Year: First offered in 2103, a year after this “new” literary awards were created in 2012, this award is voted from from a shortlist, comprising fiction and nonfiction. The inaugural winner was Kate Morton’s The secret keeper, and the latest, 2025 winner was Laura Elvery’s Nightingale. It looks like this year, 2026, the award has a new sponsor, and is called The Lord Mayor’s People’s Choice Queensland Book of the Year Award. People will vote from 10 books, comprising two judges’ picks each from the Fiction and Non-Fiction award categories, plus six more eligible titles based on Queensland sales and Brisbane City Council library borrows.
• Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, People’s Choice Award: Seems to have been first offered in 2011, as part of a major restructuring of the awards that year, which included The Wheeler Centre taking over the administration of the prize suite. People vote from all the shortlisted and highly commended books. That’s a large list! The first winner was Anna Krien’s Into the woods: The battle for Tasmania’s forest (my review), with Abdel-Fattah’s novel Discipline being the 2026 winner.
• Mark & Evette Moran Nib People’s Choice Prize: Presented via Waverley Council, this award is voted by readers from around Australia for their favourite from the Nib Literary Award shortlist.

But, not everyone likes them. The popularity aspect can mean that famous – already well-selling – authors win because they have more fans. Those who see awards as being about the “best” argue that books that win these awards are of lesser literary quality. Then there’s the issue of fairness and integrity. The voting system needs to be able to prevent vote-stacking, but even with that assured, there’s the unavoidable fact that there is no requirement for those voting to have read – or even have seriously considered – every book.

In 2016, literary critic Susan Lever, who has judged several literary awards, wrote an article on literary awards for Inside Story. In it, she briefly discussed People’s Choice awards. She said:

Some award managers seem to want books, like paintings or singing recitals, to be a communal public experience subject to a voicing of popular opinion. I recently took the opportunity to vote in the People’s Choice category of the NSW Premier’s prize for a novel; I had read only three of the six shortlisted novels, but that’s probably two more than many other voters. Promoting readers’ participation in this way seems harmless but it shouldn’t be mistaken for promoting the interests of writers. It would be fairer to them to release a long and inclusive list of all the good books that have a chance of the award, then simply announce the lucky winner.

New Zealand author and literary academic, Paula Morris, also wrote about awards, “Book Awards: a brief and personal history“, for the Academy of New Zealand Literature, and like Lever she briefly includes mention of People’s Choice awards, which were offered as part of New Zealand’s Ockham New Zealand Book Awards from 1996 to 2014 (first called Readers’ Choice). Talking about the issue of funding awards, touching on the problem of inequitable prize money for different prizes, she comments:

When some people complain now – wanting larger amounts of prize money to match the endowed fiction prize, wanting more nonfiction categories to reflect current publishing trends, wanting to bring back some version of the Peoples’ Choice award to (in theory) recognise more ‘commercial’ titles – they rarely suggest ways of coming up with the cash.

Another, but non-Australian, example is the 2025 New Hampshire Writers’ Project People’s Choice Award. I’m mentioning it because it explains what it is – and why. It “gives readers, fans, and community members the opportunity to support the writers who inspire them most”. I like that clarity about what you are voting for. And then they say that “every vote helps lift up our state’s vibrant literary community”. Again, lovely clarity about what it means. They are also clear about voting, and how they will ensure integrity of the process (except for that unavoidable issue of course!)

Have you ever voted for a People’s Choice Award? Whether or not you have, I’d love to hear your thoughts.