Online sales make John Boyne favourite to pick up book award

THE outcome of a public vote for the best Irish book of the last decade may not be revealed until next week, but sales through one website alone would make John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas a hands down winner.

The Dubliner’s 2006 novel has already been leading the betting ahead of the announcement on Monday after 5,000 votes are counted for the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards Book of the Decade.

A total of 50 Irish titles published in the last 10 years have been shortlisted, but Amazon.co.uk reports that The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas represents more than one-in-four of all sales for those books in the running.

“It has been a worldwide success, topping bestseller lists across the globe and boasting an award-winning film adaptation. It is one of the standout books of the past decade and would certainly be a worthy winner of such as prestigious accolade,” said Amazon.co.uk’s head of book buying Amy Worth.

Boyne’s novel is trailed in the bestseller stakes by Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scripture and This Charming Man by Sebastian Barry.

The only non-fiction title in the bookseller website’s Top 10 is Paul McGrath’s autobiography, Back from the Brink, one of only around a dozen shortlisted titles which are not novels. Others included in the 10 Amazon Irish bestsellers are award-winning titles by Colm Tóibín (Brooklyn), Joseph O’Neill (Netherland), John Banville (The Sea) and Anne Enright (The Gathering,) along with Cecilia Ahern’s PS I Love You and Maeve Binchy’s Heart and Soul.

Although online voting remained open until midnight last night at www.irishbookawards.ie, an update from organisers last week indicated that internet sales may only be a partial reflection of the public preference on initial voting.

The 10 most popular up to last week included just the Boyne and Barry books from the Amazon list, with two additional non-fiction titles in Diarmaid Ferriter’s Judging Dev and Bill Cullen’s autobiography, It’s A Long Way From Penny Apples.

The others are: Joseph O’Connor’s Star of the Sea; That They May Face the Rising Sun, by John McGahern; Should Have Got Off At Sydney Parade, by Ross O’Carroll Kelly; Yours Faithfully, by Sheila O’Flanagan; Skulduggery Pleasant, by Derek Landy; and Colum McCann’s Let The Great World Spin.

Cullen’s book was the centre of a minor controversy this month when student representatives at NUI Maynooth reacted angrily to an e-mail to all students from college president Professor John Hughes, encouraging them to vote for the autobiography of the businessman, who has supported the university and was awarded an honorary doctorate there in 2005.

* The Irish Book of the Decade will be announced on Monday and the winner will receive a trophy and a collector’s edition of the 1935 Ulysses by James Joyce at the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards in November.