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INDEPENDENT PUBLISHER OF THE YEAR CANONGATE
THE SHORTLIST Atlantic Books Canelo David & Charles Faber & Faber Harriman House Joffe Books Sweet Cherry Unbound
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even years after its last Independent Publisher of the Year Award victory, Canongate returns to the top of the tree after another excellent year for
the UK’s indie sector. Despite bumping nearly a third of its 2020
titles into 2021, the Edinburgh and London- based indie achieved substantial growth through Nielsen BookScan’s TCM. Much of that was down to Matt Haig, whose The Midnight Library shifted more than 310,000 copies in all editions, and was sold into 37 countries. Haig’s total sales with Canongate are now around three million— just reward for a strategic publishing plan that has steered him to new genres and new audiences over more than a decade. Beyond Haig, Canongate’s authors of the
year included Lemn Sissay, Nick Cave, Claudia Hammond and Maaza Mengiste, whose The Shadow King was shortlisted for the Booker
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and sold 70,000 copies in all formats. Backlist sales rose in double digits too, and audio, rights and export sales all grew even faster. The marketing team adjusted well to digital events, social media campaigns and online browsing. Throughout the year, Canongate showed
the agility of independents, acting decisively at times of crisis and pivoting quickly to fresh ways of generating sales. As one of its authors put it: “It’s small enough to move nimbly, but big enough to be full of people with a huge amount of publishing experience… for everyone there, it’s more than a business.” Judges agreed: “Canongate is a charismatic
publisher… a fantastic story of growth and diver- sification.” They also admired the way it looked after its team during lockdowns and helped them cope with the challenges of working from home, such as introducing meeting-free periods of the day. “It’s a great company with a great culture.”
CANONGATE C.E.O.
JAMIE BYNG
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