James Daunt's response to my open letter on gender balancing the Waterstones Children's Book Prize

Here is James Daunt's response to the open letter I sent earlier this week regarding gender balancing the Waterstones Children's Book Prize.

I think the first paragraph may have been a result of a misunderstanding. I was not suggesting that there should be an equal number of male and female authors and illustrators on future shortlists. I was suggesting that future shortlisting/judging should be done by a reasonably gender-balanced group of booksellers. I clarified this to Mr Daunt in a subsequent email.

Dear Mr Emmett 

I agree with the general argument you make but not with the conclusion. The prize should go to the best books irrespective of the gender of the author: in short, I do not believe there should be gender-balanced shortlisting. The prize is aimed at celebrating new and relatively unknown authors which reinforces a central commitment to intrinsic quality. 

The question for us then is whether the judging is fair or is, as you intimate, skewed in favour of female authors. Certainly I have believed it to be fair. We have a longlist from which the shortlist is decided and, having been personally involved in the reading and discussion of these, detected no bias in the judging. 

You are right to suspect that there is a strong female bias to the Waterstones children’s bookselling cohort, as there is also in senior and editorial positions within children’s publishing. At the most senior level within Waterstones we are alive to the importance of encouraging boys to read and generally I think this is appreciated at the shop level. The Book Prize is an important promotion but sits within a schedule of equally visible promotions within our shops. Many are within the control of the individual shops, but there are also centrally dictated offers such as a Book of the Month. Overall, we try to promote a fair proportion of books at boys 

Your letter is interesting and provoking, and I will bear it strongly in mind not only when we come to the prize again next year, but also in how we run promotions in the meantime. It is, as you argue, important. 

With kind regards 

James

I am grateful to Mr Daunt for taking the time to address my argument. However, he has since made it clear that he is currently not willing to commit to any change in how the prize is run.

I still maintain that gender-balanced judgement is every bit as appropriate to children's literature as it is to adult literature, regardless of which sex is predominant, and will continue to campaign for it.