Omit digital books and publishers from the prize lists at your peril

In today’s cut-throat publishing world, getting nominated for a prize is one of the only failsafe ways to ensure a book sells more than a few hundred copies. Barely a day goes by without some book prize announcement on Twitter: a shortlist here, a longlist there, judges unveiled, the latest brand new and extremely necessary award.

The biennial Warwick prize is not new, although you would be forgiven for not having heard of it, since 2015 will be the first year the £25,000 interdisciplinary award is opened up beyond university nominations to publisher submissions (making it more of a big deal). It’s notable for being one of the most digitally inclusive prizes around, with “substantial” online essays and fiction eligible alongside full-length novels and nonfiction. In theory, the judges, who include AL Kennedy and Robert Macfarlane, could pick an alt-lit writer’s Tumblr blog, or an article from the White Review or the Junket.

Generally speaking, book prizes lag behind the times. While all the big awards now accept electronic entries, most stipulate that the book must be available in hard copy at the longlist stage. The world’s most valuable short story prize, the Sunday Times EFG award, insists authors must be previously published. Fair enough, but its rule that only print publication counts unfairly denigrates established online literary journals.

If you’ve published a book under your own steam, you’re barred from most prizes anyone’s heard of, although Scottish writers can enter the Saltire Society literary awards, which deserves plaudits for shortlisting a self-published collection of stories and poems, The Last Pair of Ears by Mary McDonough, in its first book category.

The more open book prizes are – to writers using digital to experiment with form, and to conventional forms of writing published unconventionally – the better chance we have of sustaining a thriving literary culture.