Third place went to a book by Tom Hickman titled God's Doodle: The Life and Times of the Penis.

Also shortlisted for the award this year was a study of Adolf Hitler's health titled Was Hitler Ill?, Lofts of North America: Pigeon Lofts, and a guidebook titled How to Sharpen Pencils.

Philip Stone, coordinator of the prize run by industry publication the Bookseller, said the award might seem just fun but publishers and booksellers were well aware that a title can make all the difference to the sales of a book.

"It spotlights an undervalued art that can make or break a work of literature," Stone said in a statement.

He cited books such as A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time as owing part of their success to odd titles.

"The kind of niche, off-beat publications that often appear on the Diagram Prize shortlist might not make their writers or publishers rich beyond their wildest dreams, but the fact writers still passionately write such works and publishers are still willing to invest in them is a marvellous thing that deserves to be celebrated," Stone added.

The Diagram Prize was founded at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1978, and past winners include Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice and last year's Cooking with Poo, a Thai cookbook by Bangkok resident Saiyuud Diwong whose nickname is Poo.