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The British Book Awards 2025 opens for entries marking 35th year
The British Book Awards 2025 is now open for entries, with next year’s celebration of books and the people who make them the 35th anniversary of the spectacular event.
New for 2025 is The Library of the Year Award, run in partnership with The Reading Agency and sponsored by DK. For the first time too, shortlists for Author of the Year and Illustrator of the Year will be announced, meaning that even more creative talent will be recognised up to and at the event.
The team behind The British Book Awards will also be leaning into its 35th birthday with a range of initiatives built around a core list of past Nibbies winners. The activities kick off today (11th December) with a special Got It Covered quiz featuring classic covers from some those past hits.
The awards, known affectionately across the trade as the Nibbies, is a showcase of the ingenuity, creativity and skill on display within the book trade and a focal point in the literary calendar for readers whose love of books extends to a fascination with how those books are made and sold. This year’s ceremony will be held on 12th May 2025. The deadline for entries is 5pm on 30th January 2025, with more details available on The British Book Awards website.
Book of the Year awards to be presented at the 2025 ceremony include Fiction, Debut Fiction, Non-fiction: Lifestyle, Non-fiction: Narrative, Crime & Thriller, Children’s Non-Fiction, Fiction and Illustrated, and an overall Book of the Year. There will also be awards for Author of the Year and Illustrator of the Year, won last year by Katherine Rundell and Jamie Smart respectively. The ceremony also includes a Discover award, for underrepresented writers, and Pageturner, for popular fiction published in any format with a particular emphasis on titles from romance, horror and science fiction and fantasy writers.
Book Trade awards include the highly coveted Publisher of the Year, won in 2024 for the first time by Ebury; Book Retailer, won last year by The Children’s Bookshop, Muswell Hill; Children’s Publisher of the Year, last won by Bloomsbury; and Independent Publisher, won by Profile in 2024. There are also awards for agents, rights professionals, editors, designers, imprints, marketing professionals and publicists. The Individual Bookseller of the Year award, recognising the vital role booksellers continue to play in the sector, is back again, too, for 2025.
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Independent Bookshop and Small Press awards are also open for entries, with the regional and country finalists to be announced in February, ahead of the winners for these areas, which comprise the shortlists for the overall awards, in March. The Library of the Year award now joins this schedule with public libraries across the UK invited to submit.
On the library award, arts minister Sir Chris Bryant MP said: "Public libraries are our cultural diamonds. They enable readers’ imaginations to sparkle, they support thousands of local groups, they provide advice to businesses and charities, enabling them to flourish, they give individuals who might otherwise be lonely or cold a space to open up. We lose them at our peril. So it is beyond brilliant that The Bookseller is creating a new Library of the Year Award, which will help give recognition to vital projects striving to put libraries back at the heart of the communities they serve."
Chair of the judges will once again be Philip Jones, editor of The Bookseller, with books editor Alice O’Keeffe to preside over the book awards judging. The book shortlists will be announced on Friday 7th March, with the trade awards line-ups to be unveiled after the closing of the London Book Fair on 14th March.
Jones said: "For 35 years The British Book Awards has celebrated the creative powerhouse that is our industry, with Nibbies teams working to spotlight the intricate ecosystem which crafts, produces and shares the world’s best-loved books. But in reality the Nibbies is built by you: the writers, illustrators, publishers, booksellers, agents and all, who reach readers, move hearts and brighten minds every day. In 2025 we’ll honour all that you do, by both leaning into our history and looking to the future. The return of the award for Library of the Year is a part of this, reminding us of the power of reach and recommendation at a moment when telling stories, and finding homes for them, has never felt more important."
The British Book Awards were first launched by Publishing News in 1990. Now run by The Bookseller, previous winners have included Michelle Obama, Salman Rushdie, Davina McCall, Marcus Rashford, Marian Keyes, GT Karber and Sally Rooney.
Dates for your diary
Nibbies entries open: 11th December
Nibbies entries deadline: 30th January
Awards Ceremony: 12th May
