In case you missed it: the Man Booker Prize 2014 opened for submissions last Monday, 18 November.
They have a fancy Rules & Entry Form booklet -- online only in the dreaded pdf format -- with all the information and forms.
As you'll recall, they've changed the eligibility requirements -- anything written in English and published in the UK goes ! -- as well as the number of books publishers can enter. Publishers are now limited to one entry each -- except that publishers get bonus submission slots (up to a total of four), depending on how many titles they had longlisted over the past five years. (Previously longlisted authors also get byes, and the judges must call in an additional eight to twelve titles (but can only choose titles suggested by publishers (each of whom can suggest up to five ...)).
I remind you again that this is an awful way to select a pool of books to judge (way too much decision-making power rests with the publishers) -- and that the Man Booker folk know that, which is why they keep secret the pool of titles that wind up in the running for the prize, an outrageous lack of transparency (which I can't believe more folk don't complain about ...).
What I'd like to point out, though, is that while they've instituted this new bonus-submission-possibility, for publishers who have had titles longlisted in the past five years, they were too damn lazy to draw up a list to let everyone know exactly what that translated into (although they do list all the longlisted titles, with their publishers). I did the math when they first announced it -- no guarantees that that's right, but it should be pretty close (though note that several articles published around that time came to very different results -- maths, even of the simple adding-up variety, is apparently not something many in the literary fields feel comfortable with ...).
I thinks it's the height of chutzpah for the Man Booker folk not to simply list, publisher by publisher, who gets how many bonus-submission-slots. Surely, that's the least they could do. (Of course, as noted, they won't reveal what titles are submitted either -- which I would have thought was also the least they could -- or should, if they wanted any credibility -- do, so .....)
They have a fancy Rules & Entry Form booklet -- online only in the dreaded pdf format -- with all the information and forms.
As you'll recall, they've changed the eligibility requirements -- anything written in English and published in the UK goes ! -- as well as the number of books publishers can enter. Publishers are now limited to one entry each -- except that publishers get bonus submission slots (up to a total of four), depending on how many titles they had longlisted over the past five years. (Previously longlisted authors also get byes, and the judges must call in an additional eight to twelve titles (but can only choose titles suggested by publishers (each of whom can suggest up to five ...)).
I remind you again that this is an awful way to select a pool of books to judge (way too much decision-making power rests with the publishers) -- and that the Man Booker folk know that, which is why they keep secret the pool of titles that wind up in the running for the prize, an outrageous lack of transparency (which I can't believe more folk don't complain about ...).
What I'd like to point out, though, is that while they've instituted this new bonus-submission-possibility, for publishers who have had titles longlisted in the past five years, they were too damn lazy to draw up a list to let everyone know exactly what that translated into (although they do list all the longlisted titles, with their publishers). I did the math when they first announced it -- no guarantees that that's right, but it should be pretty close (though note that several articles published around that time came to very different results -- maths, even of the simple adding-up variety, is apparently not something many in the literary fields feel comfortable with ...).
I thinks it's the height of chutzpah for the Man Booker folk not to simply list, publisher by publisher, who gets how many bonus-submission-slots. Surely, that's the least they could do. (Of course, as noted, they won't reveal what titles are submitted either -- which I would have thought was also the least they could -- or should, if they wanted any credibility -- do, so .....)