Kitschies 2014 Datavore Infoflavour

Some data for the spreadsheet-and-538-loving people amongst you.

We had a massive 198 submissions, made bearable only by the extreme reading speed of the judges. Seriously, big hats off to all five: Frances Hardinge, Adam Roberts, Cat Webb (AKA Claire North), Kim Curran, and Glen Mehn, all of whom read an astonishing number of books in a very short time.

Some interesting thoughts and pieces of insight, presented as facts and to fuel what speculation it may fuel for the world at large.

152 books were submitted to the Red Tentacle, while 46 were submitted for Gold – almost exactly 3:1. This was across 54 publishing imprints (counting “Self” as 1 imprint. Sue us.)

While we had a 35%/65% split (F/M) split overall, that worked out just about even (51% F/49% M, or one book) over the Gold (Debut) tentacle(s) and 30% F/70% M for Red.

Self-published books were 25% F (representing all of 2 books) and 75% M (representing 6 of the 8 books). Yes, we had eight self-published books submitted.

(Anecdotally, several of the judges commented that the emerging talent was good – i.e. established writers, you’ve got to watch out)

Finally, we’re one of the only awards that accepts pure ebook submissions. Despite this, we only had 37 ebooks submitted – just under 19% of the total (and 7 of those were ebooks). This is down from previous years –No idea why, but maybe someone can talk about it?

We were going to stack the books up and measure them but couldn’t. Suffice it to say that it filled up an entire wall of one of our judge’s living room and caused their partner health and safety concerns.

Anyone got a van we can borrow to take somebooks to the charity shop?