On April 16, the Pulitzer Prize board announced its annual writing prizes, with two notable omissions: the board chose not to award Pulitzers in the categories of fiction and editorial writing. The reaction from the publishing industry to the Pulitzer’s fiction snub, in particular, was swift and hostile. “If I feel disappointment as a writer and indignation as a reader, I manage to get all the way to rage as a bookseller,” writes Ann Patchett, a fiction writer and bookstore owner, in a New York Times editorial.

The Pulitzer Board’s decision comes at a difficult time for the publishing industry, which has faced steadily declining book sales in recent years. And just five days before the Pulitzer announcement, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against five of the biggest U.S. publishers for colluding to set e-book prices. Now the industry must do without the annual boost the Pulitzer gives to the winning author and publisher – and cope with the implication that it was a miserable year for literary fiction.