Well, some excellent feedback about the process of judging book awards in response to the Bigger than Ben Hur Book Awards which are on next Wednesday in Auckland.

Our information came from a ‘now-cynical ex-judge who is also a writer’. (Sorry, can’t say who: security reasons.) We all accept that judging anything is going to be subjective. But as our source says, it’s the logistics of agreement which can tend to make a bit of joke of an award.

Depending on who’s on a judging committee, the opinions can differ widely. Publishers or academics, for example, tend to have rather different agendas from the writers. And apparently, after endless to-ing and fro-ing, deals inevitably eventuate, just to get to a shortlist: 'I'll support the book you like if you vote for the one I like'.

In one of the judging efforts our correspondent was mired in, the two judges (one writer, one academic) could not agree - and ended up having each others’ third choices as first-equal! Our contact continues:

Because this country is small; because the pool of people willing to judge is tiny (so you get the same names coming up again and again), and because of the committee form of judging, some wildly skewed decisions are made. Which doesn’t help the writers. We all know literary prize-winning is a strange lottery but it is way more so here than with some other overseas awards I can think of (in Australia in particular).

If you’re a solo judge, at the very least you tend to be aware (because the literary community here is so tiny) of how any entry you have may fare since the name is generally made quite public. Also, when it's just one mind/opinion, you know as a writer or entrant that that judge has the courage of her/his convictions – there isn’t going to be any trading going on.

Hmm. Bit of a shocker really. How can the cream of our best writers be recognised, without being diluted into the watery UHT of committee compromise? Our contact thought solo judges for each category could be the answer, and we tend to agree … perhaps in the not-too-distant future that great democratic leveller, the internet review, will take over the judging process. Or maybe TV Book Clubs! Anyway, all food for thought for next Wednesday, what?