"You wait 20 years for a Booker," said Hilary Mantel, "and then two come along at once." The first woman and first British author to win the Man Booker prize twice (2009 and 2012), Mantel is undoubtedly a deserving winner, a writer at the top of her game. Sir Peter Stothard, chair of this year's panel, even called her "the greatest modern English prose writer". Even if you agree with this, which I most certainly don't, does that justify giving her this year's prize – for a historical fiction, a sequel, a book that was healthily plodding along on the bestseller charts pre-longlisting?



Emphatically: no. This year's Booker panel prided itself on the variety of the books and authors that made the shortlist. Stothard, in the announcement speech at the Guildhall on Tuesday night, praised the rise of small, independent publishers. "The new has come powering through,' he mused, patronisingly referencing Newcastle-upon-Tyne (Myrmidon Books), north Norfolk (Salt Publishing) and High Wycombe (And Other Stories).

Mantel does not need a second Booker. Publishers that cannot even, as Stothard reminded us, afford an office in London should they want one, could really have done with just one prize. Mantel's books, aided in part by her previous Booker win, sell in droves. The Booker judges had a chance to make a statement, to refresh a staid publishing industry by showing it that taking risks is worthwhile. Had Deborah Levy won with Swimming Home, a cohort of innovative, genre-bending writers might have won deals with larger publishing houses able to push their books out to wider audiences.

After the Stella Rimington debacle last year and the lifetime achievement award given to Julian Barnes, there was genuine hope that this year's winner might reward something unusual, fresh, exciting. Even Will Self, the other big name on this year's shortlist, would have been a satisfying winner, if not a game-changer. Here is a writer who has been taking risks for many years, writing complex books and not getting the recognition he deserves on the grounds that his vocabulary is intimidatingly diverse. Dear Booker judges: novels are experiments in language!

Stothard's speech droned on and on about the dire situation of publishing today. He had a chance to change things, ever so slightly, but shirked it, instead rewarding the biggest-selling author on the shortlist, from the biggest publishing conglomerate. Someone pointed out at the Hilary Mantel Booker party in Soho afterwards that Fourth Estate is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who hardly needs, or deserves, more honours. (Yes, I am a hypocrite, I was there. If you can't beat 'em, drink their free champagne.)

This is the kind of conversation that could have been avoided if someone other than Mantel had won this year's Booker. Everyone involved in publishing – writers, agents, publishers, small presses, readers – would have been better for it. Instead, Stothard and co reminded us that literary prizes are just as staid as the industry that produces them. Instead of hope, a bitter aftertaste lingers.