Remember the Green Carnation Prize? Well over at The Bookseller Simon Savidge reveals that he’s having difficulty getting submissions from several publishers because of the need for the author to identify as LGBT.

Clearly this is a complex issue. Some authors may not wish to publicly out themselves, in some cases for very good reasons. But equally it appears that there are publishers who do not want their authors winning prizes for being queer, because that would be bad for business, so they think.

The Lammys have problems like this too, and one of the ways around it is to widen eligibility to accept books that contain LGBT content, because then the jury can call really good books in without having to get publisher permission. You can also talk to the writers to see if they will publicly ask their publishers to submit them. But somehow I’m not at all surprised that UK publishers are being coy in this respect. What one does in private is one’s own affair, old chap, but one doesn’t talk about it in public, don’t you know?