The lottery has begun. Thirteen out of 110 entries have got through to the next round, the shortlist of six to be announced on September 6. Picador has one title on the list, Self Help by the youngest writer on the list, Edward Docx. Fingers crossed.

Of course the list can be interpreted any which way. The Bookseller's headline 'Indies shine on Booker's dozen' isn't really borne out by the facts. I'm not sure that two out of thirteen is a particularly high strike rate. And where are the darling 'indies' such as Faber, Canongate etc? A more appropriate headline might be 'Triumph for conglomerates as Random House bags four'. The Guardian went for the shock giant-killing story but I'm not sure that Ian McEwan and A.N.Wilson count as complete outsiders. The Chairman of the Judges, Sir Howard Davies, goes for the quick win approach by describing the list as 'diverse', which means absolutely nothing but wins political correctness brownie points for implying racial diversity.

The one thing I'm pretty sure about is that the dreadful shock as described in the Guardian article will soon pass and editors and literary agents wil be assuring each other that the literary manuscript in hand will definitely win next year's prize.

'The news will produce as much shock among literary agents as authors - and the editors who entered them with some confidence for yesterday's long list.'

You may have noticed the Google-supplied ads to the right of this column, although very few of you click on them to judge by my earnings from this source. I occasionally click if one catches my eye and I clicked on Manuscript Editor Online yesterday. It's a service offering scientists help with preparing their manuscripts for publication but it's a shame they can't spell 'ophthalmology' in their main catalogue. It makes you wonder. Grumpy old ex-copyeditor speaking - and I know this column is anything but literal-free, but still...