Man Booker Prize Alters Longlist Availability Rules

Shelf Awareness

Organizers of the Man Booker Prize have made "significant tweaks" to this year's contest rules, relaxing the previous requirement for longlisted titles to be in stock within 10 days of the announcement (though they must be available for sale as an e-book), "placing time limits on the eligibility of titles published outside the U.K., and defining the term 'publisher' more closely," the Bookseller reported.

Some booksellers criticized the new rules for print availability, an issue that "sparked controversy last year when several longlisted titles were not available to sell in the stipulated time frame, leading some booksellers to accuse the prize organizers of failing to enforce their own rules," the Bookseller wrote.

"It's disappointing that the new rules have missed the opportunity to ensure that fans of the physical book can read the longlisted titles during the peak of media coverage," said Kate Skipper, buying director at Waterstones. "At a time when sales of physical books are proving more than resilient, this seems at odds with the way the market is moving.... However we trust that publishers will do the right thing for their books and their readers and ensure that any longlisted title is simultaneously available in physical and electronic form immediately after the announcement."

Simon Key, co-owner of the Big Green Bookshop in Wood Green, London, called the new rule "just pathetic. It is supposed to be the biggest book prize of the Commonwealth but actually the publishers are completely dictating the rules.... We can sell e-books through Hive but we can't display them or say to customers 'come and see them.' The digital availability is of very little use to us."

Also in force this year is a new rule stating that books originally published outside the U.K. must have been released no more than two years before the U.K. pub date in order to be eligible. There are also eligibility rule clarifications regarding "who counts as a publisher and who as a self-publisher; with self-publishers not eligible to enter for the prize," the Bookseller noted.