Yesterday, the 2011 Pulitzer Prizes winners were announced. For those who don’t know, the Pulitzers recognize excellence in various categories of American writing and journalism, extending as far as Music, Drama, Photography, Cartooning and Public Service. There’s also an occasional Special Citation for Lifetime Achievement. I usually look up the winners out of curiosity, especially Music and Fiction.

This year there was no winner for Fiction.

I didn’t know they could do that. I thought it was like the Oscars. The one with the most votes wins, right? Apparently not. I was a little disappointed, but no big deal.

But I was wrong about that, too. It was a big deal, and to a lot of people. Not just the nominees, either: the most incensed of anyone were the publishers and the booksellers, who seemed to take the omission extremely personally. I heard about the snub on the radio this morning, and have been tripping over angry articles, blogs and tweets all day. Apparently, the bookselling market hasn’t been doing too well lately, especially brick-and-mortar stores that don’t have a stake in the growing e-book industry. The Pulitzers tend to get people talking about books, and sales get a modest boost as a result. In contrast, the Pulitzer Board’s snub of the 2011 crop of American fiction could have an apathetic effect on consumers.

I definitely sympathize with that argument. Amazon’s easy, but I dearly love a good bookstore, and look for any excuse to spend a few bucks in one. Anything that jeopardizes them is a bad thing, I say. But people are all over the internet offering up their picks for the 2011 Pulitzer for Fiction, raving about the work of some new hotshot author, or a posthumously-nominated lost talent. For the first time ever, I know the names of half a dozen Pulitzer nominees, and will probably buy at least a couple. Don’t worry about me, Barnes & Noble. I’m not going anywhere.