Via Phys Org I'm pointed to Balázs Kovács and Amanda Sharkey's forthcoming paper in the March issue of Administrative Science Quarterly examining: The Paradox of Publicity: How Awards Can Negatively Affect the Evaluation of Quality (see the abstract, or the full text (warning ! dreaded pdf format !)).
As they summarize:
As they summarize:
Comparing thousands of reader reviews on Goodreads.com of 64 English language books that either won or were short-listed for prestigious book awards between 2007 and 2011, we find that prizewinning books tend to attract more readers following the announcement of an award and that readers' ratings of award-winning books tend to decline more precipitously following the announcement of an award relative to books that were named finalists but did not win.Yes, it relies on ... 'Goodreads' reviews ... still, an interesting phenomenon -- especially, as they note:
We found the contrast between the positive effect of status at the stage of adoption versus the negative effect at the stage of evaluation striking and think it would be beneficial for future work in other domains to parse out the distinct effects of status at different stages of evaluation.So maybe, longterm (and/or legacy-wise), being shortlisted is preferable to actually winning .....