Latest News

Best Marketing Campaign winner!

The Book Marketing Society are pleased to announce that the winner of the Best Marketing Campaign Awards for the 1st period of 2009 is The Very Hungry Caterpillar's 40th Anniversary Campaign. The campaign (marketed by Kirsten Grant, Puffin Books) was praised for:

• Managing to think of new ways to invigorate an old (40!) brand
• Instituting VHC day with multi-platform campaign and wide variety of partners
• Using real innovation with Google Doodle and Berger & Wyse cartoon in the Guardian
• Its fantastic sales increase and 3 formats in charts

For the highly commended winners click here.

BBIA 2009 shortlists announced!

The shortlist for the British Book Industry Awards - the Nibbies have been announced. These fantastic awards showcase the very best of British publishing and bookselling; with the shortlist based on voting by the Academy of the British Book Awards. Categories include Independent Bookshop of the Year, Publisher of the Year and the Diversity Award in Literature. Click here for more details.

2009 Books & the Consumer Annual Conference

BML's 2009 Books & the Consumer Conference took place on the morning of Tuesday 31st March 2009, at the Central London location, One Birdcage Walk.

The Conference was packed full of consumer insights, including:

• All the latest trends from the Books & the Consumer survey: how the market performed in 2008; genre winners and losers; source of purchase; pricing; consumer demographics
• Key findings from BML's latest BookZone surveys, revealing the habits and attitudes of core book buyers as the recession begins to bite
• External speakers from within the industry commenting on e.g. the impact of the latest trends, and the role of research in growing book sales.

ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards

The ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards took place on Friday 3rd October 2008. The glittering, star-studded bash was held at London's Grosvenor House Hotel, with a host of guests including Robson Green, Ricky Gervais, Helen Mirren and Emilia Fox. The ceremony was presented by Alan Davies (star of QI and Jonathan Creek), and winners that evening included The Bourne Ultimatum for Film of the Year, Criminal Justice for TV crime drama of the Year, Ian Rankin for his book Exit Music and Breakthrough Author of the Year was awarded to Stuart MacBride for Broken Skin. That evening also saw 88-year-old P D James get inducted into the International Crime Writing Hall of Fame.

2008 Bookseller Retail Awards

The annual Bookseller Retail Awards took place on the 18th September at the National History Museum, and was presented by comedian Alexander Armstrong. More than 500 industry figures and authors attended the ceremony which saw Waterstone's scoop triple honours - winning the High Street Retailer of the Year, beating Foyles, Blackwell and Borders, The Nielsen Book Marketing Campaign of the Year for their year-long campaign, The Writer's Year. It also received the top award for the evening - The Headline Bookselling Company of the Year, beating WH Smith and Play.com. See the full list of other winners here.

The 40 Best Audiobooks

The UK has voted for its favourite audiobook - the classic science fiction tale The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Primary Phase. The winner came from a selection of forty audiobooks which appeared in a special supplement in The Guardian on 28th June. Members of the public were then invited to vote for their favourite selected title on a dedicated website, www.40bestaudiobooks.co.uk. Click into the site to view the top 5 audiobooks.

The 2008 British Book Industry Awards

The British Book Industry Awards, organised by Publishing News in association with the Booksellers Association, took place at the Hilton Metropole Brighton on Tuesday 13th May 2008. Foyles was among the winners at the glittering ceremony, scooping two awards on the night - UK Bookseller of the Year 2008 and Chain Bookselling Company of the Year.
For the full list of winners, click here.

2008 London Book Fair - Digital Marketing Seminar

Publishing News hosted a series of seminars focussing on development of the digital age in the book world at this year's London Book Fair in April. One of those seminars was entitled Harnessing the Power of Digital Marketing, and included presentations from David Kohn, Commercial Director, Borders, Ros Lawler, Digital Marketing and Publicity Manager, Random House Digital, and David Swarbrick, Group Sales & Marketing Director, HarperCollins Publishers. If you were unable to attend the seminar you can listen to the audio podcast by clicking here.

2008 Galaxy British Book Awards

Ian McEwan, JK Rowling and Khaled Hosseini have won the top prizes at the Galaxy British Book awards. Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach won the Readers Digest Author of the Year award - beating The Cleft by Doris Lessing, who won the Nobel prize for literature earlier this year. JK Rowling took this year's Outstanding Achievement honour, and The Richard & Judy Best Read of the Year, was won by Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns.

2007 Bookseller Retail Awards

The 2007 Bookseller Retail Awards ceremony took place at the Natural History Museum on Thursday 20th September, and was hosted by comedian Dara O'Briain. Blackwell took the top prize of the evening - Retail Chain of the Year, as well as Bookselling Company of the Year. Other winners included Asda as General Retailer of the Year, Borders as Children's Retailer of the Year, and Jaffé and Neale as Independent Bookseller of the Year. Richard & Judy's Summer Reads campaign beat The Book Marketing Society's 50 Best Reads promotion for the Expanding the Retail Market award. See here for details on the rest of the winners.

50 Best Film Books

The 50 Best Film Books promotion has won the Hollis Sponsorship Special Award for Best Low Budget Sponsorship. The awards reward and recognise the very best work in the UK sponsorship industry - the most creative and the most effective, those campaigns which managed to ensure the best outcomes for both sponsor and partner.

The 50 Best Film Books promotion was commended for the way in which The Guardian created an editorial event from a marketing promotion, with sales of the featured titles up by around 20%.