How the Index Works
Every ranking on this site is built from one underlying number: a book's (or author's) score. The score adds up every tracked award appearance, but not all appearances count equally - a win at a major, cross-genre prize outweighs a longlisting for a small fan-voted award. This page explains how that weighting works.
Award tiers
Every tracked award is classified into one of three tiers, reflecting how broad and prestigious it is:
- Major Awards
- General, cross-genre literary prizes not restricted to a specific genre, such as the Booker Prize or the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. These represent the broadest and most prestigious recognition a book can receive.
- Notable Awards
- The single leading award within a specific genre, such as the Hugo Award or the Edgar Award for Best Novel. The top honor genre insiders would recognize, but scoped to one genre rather than fiction as a whole.
- Niche Awards
- Smaller-circulation, fan-voted, or sub-category awards. Real recognitions, but easier for a single book to accumulate several of via overlapping fan communities honoring the same underlying achievement.
Points by tier and status
Within each tier, a win counts for more than a shortlisting, which counts for more than a longlisting. These are the points a single award appearance contributes to a book's score:
| Tier | Won | Shortlisted | Longlisted |
|---|---|---|---|
| Major Awards | 12 | 4 | 2 |
| Notable Awards | 8 | 3 | 1 |
| Niche Awards | 5 | 2 | 1 |
A book's score is simply the sum of these points across every award it has appeared in. A book with one major win (12 points) ranks above a book with two niche longlistings (2 points).
Wins, shortlists, and longlists
Alongside the weighted score, list pages also show plain, unweighted counts of a book's (or author's) wins and shortlists. Those counts treat every award the same regardless of tier - they're there to show raw track record, while the score and the resulting rank always reflect the tier weighting above.
Genre pages
A book's genre page ranking uses the same overall score as the main list - built from every tracked award it has appeared in, not just genre-specific ones. Genre pages simply filter down to books classified under that genre; they don't recompute a genre-only score.