07 July 2016
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Booker chart
All you need to do is be a white middle-aged man and write a novel just under 400 pages with a third-person male protagonist, suggests
Julian Barnes famously called it 'posh bingo', but now you really can play Booker bingo, with a new interactive tool highlighting trends in the winners of the Man Booker Prize.
The Narrow Road to the Deep North? Full house!
Analysing the statistics, interactive publisher FlipSnack has discovered that Booker winning authors:
• are 66% male
• have an average age of 49
• have published seven previous books
Of the books themselves:
• the average length is 370 pages
• 84% feature a male lead protagonist
• 66% are writen in third person
• historical fiction is the preferred genre (48%), ahead of contemporary fiction (38%)
• the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Score places them at a surprisingly easy-to-read level, not too challenging for early teen readers.
FlipSnack hope to apply their findings to predict this year's Booker winner, due to be announced in September.
Investigate the statistics for yourself with the interactive chart here