FutureBook Awards winners announced as Samar Habib triumphs in new Freelancer of the Year category

Multimedia designer Samar Habib has won the inaugural Freelancer of the Year award at the FutureBook Awards.

The winner of the award, sponsored by Whitefox Publishing, was announced at County Hall, Waterloo, on 25th November.

Habib has worked on books by authors including Martina Cole, David Attenborough and R F Kuang, and was praised for creating impactful work and "agenda-setting effects on campaign output and the bottom line".

The Start-up of the Year award, sponsored by Beat Technology, went to Spiracle Audiobooks, which has "dared to do things differently" in a section of the market dominated by big players. The audiobook company works with independent bookshops to bring physical audiobook cards to customers, as well as co-publishing audiobooks with independent publishers. 

Meanwhile, CPI Sustainability was highly commended in the Excellence Award category, sponsored by World of Books, for "going above and beyond to tackle one of the trickiest links in the supply chain". The winner of the award was Book Squad, a collaboration between children’s and education imprints at HarperCollins UK, working to address the drop in reading for pleasure among children. The team at Book Squad was praised for "their practical, tangible approach to one of the industry—and society’s—primary challenges".

Cheyney Smith of Macmillan Children’s Books was crowned the winner of the Future Leader of the Year award, sponsored by Shimmr AI. Smith was praised for having "a keen attention to audience, a penchant for partnerships and extending the reach of books, and a progress-oriented mindset that extends to fellow and future colleagues".

Moreover, author, marketing consultant and event producer Selina Brown was named Leader of the Year—an award sponsored by Redwood Publishing Recruitment. The founder of the Black British Book Festival was praised for "widening access to and enthusiasm for literature".