Hamnet

Published almost 20 years to the day after her début After You’d Gone, Maggie O’Farrell’s first historical novel Hamnet blew away the judges; “nothing short of phenomenal”, they agreed.

When lockdown hit, the Tinder Press team remained steadfast with its schedule and moved the campaign online at the eleventh hour, cancelling a 37-event tour and pivoting to secure more print and broadcast media. The team moved quickly to position the novel as the perfect escape from the realities of lockdown, and used a significant word-of-mouth campaign to gain traction. The team’s efforts saw them receive a nod for Publicity Campaign of the Year too.

O’Farrell’s imagining of the lives of Shakespeare’s wife and child won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, received an impressive 12 picks in newspapers’ books of the year round-ups, and was named Waterstones Book of the Year. Among the slew of wins, our judges praised the publisher’s ability to remain focused on booksellers and readers.

The novel has sold more than 124,000 copies through Nielsen’s TCM, with lockdown-era sales excluded. “To get those sales figures for an historical, literary novel about Shakespeare’s son is incredible,” reckoned one judge.