Actually, that background on Boy A makes me livid - though I should know better, the world of literary prizes being what it is. Though I think Rob's point about it being an 'issue' novel is probably more valid here. The Commonwealth prize is prestigious but rarely leads to fame and fortune. I think I'm pretty widely read, but I'd never heard of this.

goes to show the reading public are still losing sight of what fiction really is - that it can have a message if it likes but it does need to dress it up in a good story and persuade by entertaining rather than bludgeoning.

OK, rant over. Steve, you should have won - funny is so much harder to do than serious.

I tend to completely forget that my books are funny. Re the 'issue' novel thing, LINT did talk about state control, the horror of the postmodernist stance as used in real life, the impulse toward conformity, people's absolute (indeed comical) refusal to admit their own powerlessness, the decrease in reading, people's fear of (along with their fear of absolutely everything else) anything different, the default toward repetition, and how the greatest rewards in life go to the uncreative, unoriginal, mediocre and obvious. Hmmm ...
Not such popular issues, obviously, and not idiot-lined on the cover, but issues nonetheless.
Anyway, i'm inclined at this point to just give up. People really and honestly do want more of the same - or ideally nothing at all, perhaps?
Maybe books of blank pages are the way to go?

Steve, if you're giving up on popular culture learning to think, I'm with you, but I hope you're not considering giving up on your own stuff.

I can't even sell my pulp pop novel, so I have a growing suspicion that success is largely about who you went to university with, and that it doesn't really matter what the content is that you're producing.

Sadly I agree with much of the despondency above but would like to say something positive... You did get good publicity for Lint anyway and for me that was created by this website. I looked at this site, looked at your blog about Lint and then went to the book voting site. So now I know about Lint and am thinking of buying it for me and my boyfriend. So you have helped yourselves to make the most of the situation. Didn't know about Lint and now I do and part of the reason is the long and shortlisting giving you a reason to mention it. I couldn't tell you the name of another book on the shortlist.

Another thing to bear in mind, though, Anji, is that the whole competition has cost me more than £1000 because publishers are required to make a contribution to its overheads. So whilst I'm delighted to hear you're thinking about buying it, I hope that there are another 755 people planning on doing the same for me to break even.

Weirdly, I think I'm on the opposite side of the fence to Em on this one. How is a competition decided by popular vote ever going to 'discover' a book? You can only vote for it in large numbers if you've heard of it. So even if everyone votes for unknown books, the results will favour titles that really aren't unknown at all. To discover unknown gems, you'd accept nominations and then review them with a judging panel. Not to mention that the stated aims were 'books to talk about', so Boy A sounds like it qualifies. If 'unknown' was one of the criteria, they weren't making a big fuss about it. I think this was an old fashioned popularity contest that unsurprisingly favoured a polemic with its own movie. If we'd been sensible, we'd have bet that £1000 on a horse.

Update: Em has now explained to me that the competition a) had rules about no prior commercial success and b) put a lot of effort into getting people to read the long list, thus making it more likely that a previously unknown title could win. I knew disagreeing with Em couldn't be the right thing to do.

I bet £1000 on a horse. It didn't win. I don't have a book either... Don't be too upset, the battle may be lost etc etc

David