 Originally organised to provide entertainment during the 1978 Frankfurt Book Fair, the prize has since been awarded every year by "The Bookseller" and is now organised by the magazine's diarist Horace Bent.The winner was initially decided by a panel of judges, but since 2000 the winner has been decided by a public vote on "The Bookseller'"s website.Controversy has arisen since the creation of the awards; there have been two occasions when no award was given because no titles were judged to be odd enough, Bent has complained about some of the winners chosen by the public, and the 2008 winner, "The 2009–2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais", proved controversial because rather than being written by its listed author, Philip M. Parker, it was instead written by a machine of Parker's invention.The most recent winner, in November 2019, was "The Dirt Hole and its Variations" by Charles L Dobbins.