From Publishing Perspectives:
In its third year, the awards program in the UK called Republic of Consciousness—which awards the work of small publishers—has produced a 13-title longlist for 2019. It also says that it’s “wrong” to be held to that number.
. . . .
As the program’s messaging notes, there are several distinguishing features about this unusual award, which splits its prize money between author and publisher.
- The long list includes short story collections and novels
- There are longlisted novels in English, Portuguese, Croatian, French, and Latvian
- Publishers are included, not just from the major hubs of London and Dublin but from eight towns and cities in the UK and Ireland, including Manchester, London, Edinburgh, Oxford, Norwich, Dublin, Leeds, Birmingham
- Two relatively well-known names are on the list, Gabriel Josipovici and the late Daša Drndić
- Four debuts are on the longlist from Sophie van Llewyn, Sue Rainsford, Nicholas John Turner, and Wendy Erskine
- Two small presses longlisted are very new, having entered the market just last year
. . . .
The program is newly sponsored this year by the University of East Anglia and The Times Literary Supplement, with support from Arts Council England.
The effort was created by author Neil Griffiths in 2016 to honor “brave and bold literary fiction” produced by independent houses from the UK and Ireland, and in addition to splitting prize money between writers and their publishers, it also works to be publisher-friendly by “charging no entry fees, paying for travel to prize events and splitting our prize money (currently unspecified but likely to be slightly more than last year’s £12,500) between author and publisher.”
. . . .
The first line of what might have been a joyous longlist announcement criticizes the British Book Awards program, for example, for adding a small press category to its program and defining “small press” as one doing less than £1 million in annual revenue.
“By contrast,” write the Conscious ones, “we at the Republic of Consciousness go for fewer than five full-time employees, and aim for the less number-based criteria of ‘hard-core literary fiction and gorgeous prose.’”
And as goes this tradition of sharp elbows among the prize givers, the announcement also takes on the mighty Man Booker Prize for Fiction, which has a very different mandate, of course, from that of the Republic: “This year’s Man Booker Prize for Fiction didn’t longlist a single small press. Can it be that no small press published a novel good enough to make their top 13?”
With fists thus duly shaken at the mountain, the program goes on to explain that it doesn’t even like itself very much, at least in terms of having 13 titles on its longlist.
“Below you will find our top 13. I wish it were 15, even 18, because then we would have included all the outstanding entries. And yet there is a cut-off point. It’s wrong. It doesn’t make sense. But then neither does a shortlist of six, or an overall winner. In the past two years, the overall winner has been decided unanimously, which makes it easier. That won’t be the case this year.”
We’re not told who is this Republican writing in such first-person pique. The announcement article is credited only to the Republic of Consciousness. Nor are we given to understand how the 13-title cap has been imposed on the situation, but it seems likely that the arrival of the University of East Anglia as a sponsor announced in the late summer may have come with some modest restraints that the program now pronounces “wrong.”
Link to the rest at Publishing Perspectives
The Republic of PG says this sounds like a literary prize organization for people who object to literary prizes.