There are, of course, all the standard reasons for a publisher to turn down a book. “But what, I wonder, are ‘all the standard arguments’? The notion that fortune – in the shape of a huge advance and a lot of hype for an unwritten first novel – favours the young? That the winner, so long as he or she has no literary record, takes all? That what sells a book is a pretty face on the jacket? No publisher would dare reject a book because the author was the wrong colour or the wrong gender, but to be the wrong age is unforgivable.” – The Observer (UK)