My new novel, Death Flies, Missing Girls and Brigitte Bardot, has been "rejected from consideration" by the Booker Prize people because it's not with a major publisher.

Have they never heard of iTunes and Amazon? I'm surprised Coldplay and Radiohead are eligible for the Grammys and Brits - they are not on wax cylinders.

www.kingofhits.co.uk/index.php/Attitudes-Opinions/Censored.html

and 2 people I know :
Aussie writer Matthew Reilly self published 1000 of his first book in 1996 after it was rejected by every publisher.
Matt Has now sold just under 10 million copies around the world.

Music figure Simon Napier Bell has had 3 best selling books published by Penguin and is now self publishing his next book in May as he reckons he can do abetter job.

That really is shocking censorship if they only accept major publishers.
What other gems are we missing out on ?

Exactly Hedda. I suspect (as I'm sure you do too) that this is simply an excuse to avoid a Vile Pervert winning the Booker Prize. I do hope they have checked that Hilary Mantel doesn't own any shares in the company that publishes her wonderful books, or she'll be ineligible for a third Booker!

It's like DVD's they are edited in the UK, USA go over to France completely uncut.