Feature FutureBook Awards


fortitude. The range and number of submissions this year made the task of shortlisting doubly difficult, but the high standard of the entries should provide inspiration for those looking into publishing’s future.


With eight categories contested in this year’s FutureBook Awards, competition was stronger than in any year to date. Lisa Campbell reports on a record year for the prizes


Publishing has shown once again how it rises to the challenges set by digitisation and progress, with ingenuity, dedication and


M ORE THAN 40 companies,


individuals and prod- ucts have been shortlisted


across eight different categories in this year’s FutureBook Awards. There are two categories for


individual publishing staffers: batling it out for the coveted Digi- tal Leader of the Year award are Sara Lloyd, digital and commu- nications director at Pan Macmil- lan; Oliver Rhodes, founder and managing director of Bookouture; Jacob Cockcroſt, co-founder of The Pigeonhole; Emmanuel Nataf, founder of Reedsy; and founder and c.e.o. of Bibliocloud Emma Barnes. Shortlisted in the Digital Achiever category, sponsored by the Frank- furt Book Fair, are Lorraine Dickey, c.e.o. at 451life.com; Jenny Ridout, publishing director at Bloomsbury; Lasse Nyrup, c.e.o. of BookBites; Rebecca Evans, head of innova- tion at Emerald Group Publish- ing; Xander Cansell, head of digital at Unbound; and digital product specialist Shane Rae. Orion website Julian Fellowes’


Belgravia is in contention for three awards: Platform of the Year: Consumer, Best Use of Digital in a Marketing/Publicity Campaign and Adult Digital Book of theYear, while five start-ups will contest the BookTech Company of the Year award, sponsored by London Book Fair: Novel Effect, Publishizer, Joosr, Kadaxis and StoryTourist will participate in a live pitch-off, which is anticipated on page 24. Meanwhile, Bloomsbury has two nods in the Children’s Digital Book of the Year category, with RSPB First Birds and its Andrew Brodie: Let’s Do Spelling apps, both of which were developed with Aimer Media.


Record numbers In total there were more than 100 submissions made to the awards this year, a record number. The awards will be presented during this year’s FutureBook Conference. Commenting on the shortlists at their unveil at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, Philip Jones, editor of The Bookseller and programme direc- tor for FutureBook 2016, said: “Publishing has


www.thebookseller.com


shown once again how it rises to the challenges set by digitisation and progress, with ingenuit, dedi- cation and fortitude. The range and number of submissions this year made the task of shortlisting doubly difficult, but the high stand- ard of the entries should provide inspiration for those looking into publishing’s future.


“In the Platform and Digital Book


sectors we had more qualit submis- sions than we had categories for, so we created new ones. The Digital Leader and Achiever categories are also particularly strong this year, with individuals from within tradi- tional book businesses as well as from those disrupting the sector, showing how both increasingly complement each other.”


Going global


FutureBook associate editor Molly Flat, who will host the BookTech pitch-off at the conference, reckons the shortlist for that award “reflects the breadth of innovation people are atempting to drive into the industry from across the world. In only our second year, I was delighted to see a huge number of entries come from countries as diverse as India, Brazil, Hungary, Russia, the US, Ireland and many more, ranging from interactive gamebook makers to big data analysts to collaborative editing platforms.”


The full shortlists for the eight prizes to be handed out at the FutureBook


Conference 2016 can be found overleaf


Flat also believes the marketing and publicit prize will be among the awards’ most hotly contested. “A smart, intuitive digital element is now an expected part of any market- ing strategy, so the bar was incred- ibly high for this year’s award. We were looking for campaigns that didn’t just tick all the usual boxes— influencer outreach, social media engagement, event streaming, Face- book ads, blog tours—but instead campaigns that demonstrated a deep understanding of the digital behaviours of their particular target audience and had at their core a fresh and compelling big idea. We got them, so much so that our not-very-short shortlist numbers a whopping eight. If this is the present state of digital book marketing, the future looks prety bright.” )


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