New sponsor sought for Whitbread book prize

British retail group Whitbread is looking for a new sponsor for the annual book awards that bear its name.

The Whitbread is one of the top literary awards for writers from the U.K. and Ireland, with a prize of 25,000 British pounds ($51,000).

Established in 1971, the annual prize recognizes books in five categories: novel, first novel, biography, poetry and children's book. Then an overall winner is chosen from among them.

The sponsor has sold its brewing business and no longer runs pubs with the Whitbread name, nor does it use the Whitbread brand name on its products. As a result it wants to pull out after the next winner is announced on Jan. 24, 2006.

"After long consideration, we decided our sponsorship was no longer commercially sensible, even under one of our other brand names," a spokesperson told the BBC.

The company plans to seek another sponsor for the awards and says it won't abandon the well-regarded prize.

There is precedent for handing over a book prize. In 2002, the Booker company handed over sponsorship of its book prize to the Man Group, an investment firm, and the award continued to have the same international clout when renamed the Man Booker Prize.

Contenders for this year's Whitbread award include Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down, Salman Rushdie's Shalimar The Clown, Ali Smith's The Accidental and Christopher Wilson's The Ballad of Lee Cotton.

In the past, winning the Whitbread has translated into international sales. The 2004 winner, Andrea Levy's Small Island, has sold more than 600,000 copies in paperback. The 2003 winner, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon, has sold more than a million copies.