Great to have seen the readings from the Booker shortlist hopefuls tonight up at the Royal Festival Hall. Six engaging and very different books. Will Self, with some support from Hilary Mantel voiced the view that as writers ( well them at least) don't have an audience or market in mind when they are creating their work.
While this is maybe why they are able to produce the work they do, I would suggest that there are plenty of people in publishing thinking exactly 'who is the market of this, who will buy.' It also struck me as really odd that these 6 books are in a fight to the death for what is a fantastic prize. They are so different how can one say X is better than Y without introducing some fairly random criteria. If writing is not a competitive sport what place can this kind of competition have? However Bookers power and interest levels suggest we want to see books ranked and we can agrue over the bodies.
It will be interesting to see who gets the nod tomorrow night.
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