Floris wins Scottish publisher of the year award

Edinburgh-based Floris Books was last night (24th November) announced as the winner of the Saltire Society Scottish Publisher of the Year Award.

The award, administered by the Saltire Society, which supports the arts and cultural heritage of Scotland, was launched in 2013 to recognise innovation within Scottish publishing.

Floris beat off competition from other shortlisted companies Birlinn, Black and White Publishing, National Gallories of Scotland and Saraband to win the prize, which includes a place on the Yale University Publishing course.

Katy Lockwood-Holmes, publisher at Floris Books, said: “Floris has had a sparkling year, but the honour of being named Scottish Publisher of the Year is undoubtedly the crowning achievement. We’re so proud that children’s books, in particular, are being recognised at the highest level.”

Other prizes announced yesterday included a new ‘Saltire Emerging Publisher of the Year’ £500 award, which was given to Floris’ design and production manager Leah McDowell, and a £2,000 ‘Inspiring Scotland’ award for a BAME writer, which went to playwright Annie George.

Saltire also announced the winners of its Literary Awards 2016. The book of the year prize was awarded to the poetry collection The Bonniest Comparie by Kathleen Jamie (Picador), which won the poetry book of the year award earlier in the evening.

John Kay won non-fiction book of the year for Other People’s Money (Profile Books), Graeme Macrae Burnet’s His Bloody Project (Contrabland) was fiction book of the year and Set Adrift upon the World was history book of the year.

The other winners were Isabel Buchanan and Chitra Ramaswamy, who shared the first book of the year award for their respective titles Trials: Death Row in Pakistan (Jonathan Cape) and Expecting (Saraband).  Sebastiaan Verweij was awarded research book of the year for The Literary Culture of Early Modern Scotland: Manuscript Production and Transmission, 1560-1625 (Oxford University Press).