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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