Entries are now being accepted for the Man Booker Prize 2015. The deadline for entries is Friday 6 March (for completed entry forms) and Friday 19 June (for finished novels).

The entry requirements are interesting, and worth a look.

Ebooks are acceptable, on condition that bound copies can be provided to the judges as needed.

Self-published novels, however … not so much.

The text relating to self-published novels reads as follows:

‘Self published novels are not eligible where the author is the publisher. If the publisher is a company which has been specifically set up to publish the novel in question, and/or the author is the person who owns the majority shareholding or otherwise controls the company, the novel is ineligible.’

There is a logistical aspect to the work of the judges, of course, which should be taken into consideration, given the increase in eligible publishers that opening the doors to all comers would represent. However, change is definitely coming. We have already seen a crowd-funded novel, The Wake, make it onto the longlist, a feat which even Donna Tart’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Goldfinch did not achieve.

If there is going to be one change in this competition in the near future, we suspect that this is what it will relate to.