The winners of the Quill Awards were announced this morning, and to my surprise, The No Asshole Rule won for best book of the year in the business book category. I was surprised because the other four books were so great, and because it still amazes me that respectable sponsors like Publisher’s Weekly, NBC, AARP, and Parade Magazine seem to be non-plussed by the rather dirty title. The other four nominees were:
Small Is the New Big: and 183 Other Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas
Seth Godin; Portfolio
Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny
Suze Orman; Random House/Spiegel & Grau
Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home
David Shipley and Will Schwalbe; Alfred A. Knopf
Chocolates on the Pillow Aren’t Enough: Reinventing the Customer Experience
Jonathan M. Tisch, Karl Weber; John Wiley & Co
Quite a group! I am honored. The winners were determined by "a Voting
Board consisting of more than 6,000 booksellers and librarians." Winners in other categories include Cormac McCarthy for The Road (a stunning book) and Al Gore for The Assault on Reason. Other winners include Amy
Sedaris, Nora Roberts, and Walter Isaacson.
The awards will be presented on October 22nd at a "gala
ceremony" in New York City. The hosts are NBC’s Ann Curry and Al Roker. The
list of presenters of includes Tiki Barber, Lorraine Bracco,
Stephen Colbert, Tom Brokaw, Tina Brown, Mary Higgins Clark, Jonathan Groff, Brooke
Shields. My 17 year old wants Colbert to present it to me, as he would do such an artful job of insulting me. Lorraine Bracco might be the best choice, because she did a lot of "asshole management" during all the years she played Tony Soprano’s therapist on HBO!
The Quills Award are meant to be the most populist of book awards, sort of like the People’s Choice awards for TV, movies, and music. As such, the biggest prize of the night, the Quills Book of the Year, is determined by popular vote. You can vote for your choice on the link. And some of my friends have been nice enough to vote for The No Asshole Rule. But it is hard for me to argue — for example — that it is a better book than wonderful works like The Road or Einstein. And as I said in my first post when I learned about the Quills nomination, in my biased opinion, the best business book published in the past year is Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick. For some reason, it wasn’t nominated. Lucky for me, as it would have been tough to beat.
My wife is excited about going to the ceremony, so it looks like we are going to New York in October. And my thanks to all those people in the book business who voted for The No Asshole Rule!
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