"Self-fed" is a good word for it, Stephanie. Another might be "incestuous."

The absence of small (and university) presses struck me because I used to be the awards vp of NBCC. And every year you'd have good candidates from excellent small presses like Graywolf or university presses like Harvard or Oxford. It looks as though the NYT either wasn't looking hard enough for them or wanted to reward big books from big firms.