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The British Book Awards 2025 Book Trade shortlists revealed
The British Book Awards 2025 Book Trade shortlists have been unveiled, after a busy week for the UK book business as London Book Fair draws to a close.
Regional and country winners for Independent Bookshop, Small Press and Library of the Year were also revealed, in a flurry of accolades for the entire industry as the Awards celebrates its 35th year.
Penguin Random House and Hachette UK now lead the pack, with 14 nominations each across the trade shortlists, and HarperCollins just behind with 12. All three are represented on the coveted Publisher of the Year award, with three Penguin Random House divisions up for consideration along with two from Hachette. Bloomsbury Adult and Pan Macmillan also made the shortlist, as did indies Wonderbly and Canongate.
Past winners such as Kishani Widyaratna, Carolynn Bain, and Sanchita Basu De Sarkar return for another year, while independent publishers and booksellers are represented across the trade shortlists from Magic Cat Publishing and Titan Books to Nomad Books to Griffin Books. Book of the Year contenders were revealed last week, and titles such as You Are Here, Patriot, The Majorly Awkward BFF Dramas of Lottie Brooks, Want and Butter feature across the trade nominations too, with the latter two featured on both the Marketing and Publicity shortlists.
Philip Jones, editor of The Bookseller and chair of The British Book Awards, said: "Once again the grafters and the book pushers pulled it out of the bag with a massive year for the business with a huge number of the standout publications. The trade awards reflect the breadth of the book business with stars from sales, design, editing, rights, agenting, marketing, bookselling, librarianship and publicity all recognised across the shortlists: we are delighted to be able to celebrate and amplify their work."
Waterstones has three nominations, including Book Retailer and Children’s Bookseller, with Annie Martin, who began her career at the Islington branch and who is now visual merchandising manager, up for the Individual Bookseller honour.
In Book Retailer, Waterstones will compete against Leicester’s Books2Door, value chain The Works, sustainable bookseller World of Books and the independent-supporting web retailer Bookshop.org.
Also in the running for Children’s Bookseller is last year’s winner the Children’s Bookshop in Muswell Hill, The Edinburgh Bookshop, Kibworth Books, The National Trust, Nomad Books, Tales for Tadpoles, Wonderland Bookshop and Books2Door.
The shortlists for Independent Bookshop, Small Press and Library of the Year announced this week feature indie bookshops Queen’s Park Books, The Heath Bookshop and Simply Books; publishers Bedford Square Publishers, Sweet Cherry Publishing and Bluemoose Books; and libraries Mullingar Library and Lewisham Libraries, among others.
Individuals nominated for awards include agents Elise Dillsworth, Amanda Harris, Hellie Ogden and Harry Illingworth, who feature on a nine-strong line-up for Agent of the Year; rights professionals Isabella Depiazzi, Valentina Paulmichl and Tracy Phillips; editors James Roxburgh, Isabel Wall, Federico Andornino and last year’s winner Kishani Widyaratna; and designers Beci Kelly, Kishan Rajani and David Mann.
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Publishers are also represented on Imprint, Export, Children’s Publisher and the Academic, Educational and Professional Publisher category.
Sweet Cherry makes a third appearance on the latter, marking its push into the schools space, competing against Bloomsbury Academic, Boydell & Brewer, Class Professional Publishing, Emerald Publishing and Princeton University Press.
Among those up for Children’s Publisher are Scholastic, Usborne, Simon & Schuster and Bonnier Books UK; indies in contention include Atlantic Books, Boldwood Books, Titan Books, Swift Press; while a 12-strong Imprint shortlist includes four from HarperCollins – HarperVoyager, The Borough Press, One More Chapter and 4th Estate – alongside Orbit, Tor, Jonathan Cape, Orion Fiction, Embla Books, Head of Zeus, Bookouture and Mantle.
In the Marketing shortlist, campaigns for Butter, The List of Suspicious Things, The Ministry of Time, Intermezzo and Patriot are among those recognised, with marketeers such as Liv Marsden, Rachel Quin, Claire Bush, Rebecca Ikin, Vicky Palmer, Alice Morley, Melissa Grierson, Felice McKeown and Genista Tate-Alexander selected.
The Booker Library at Waterstones Piccadilly collaboration also features, with a team comprising Hannah Davies and Alice Ingall from Booker Prize Foundation, and Waterstones’ Bea Carvalho and Eva Von Reuss.
In Publicity, Butter features again, along with campaigns for Gillian Anderson’s Want, All That Matters by Sir Chris Hoy, and Skandar and the Skeleton Curse by AF Steadman.
Notably, Canongate’s communications director Anna Frame is nominated twice, for All Fours by Miranda July and poyums by Len Pennie.
Other publicists on the list include Vintage’s Mia Quibell-Smith; Scholastic’s Tina Mories, Orion’s Ellen Turner & Penguin Michael Joseph’s Ellie Hughes.
To book your table for The British Book Awards on 12th May, please contact paul.clifton@bookseller.com.
