BOOK OF THE YEAR
FICTION: DÉBUT
HONEY & SPICE Honey & Spice is a fresh take on the traditional rom-com and Headline targeted a relatively young audience for Bolu Babalola’s début. The Honey & Spice Sessions, filmed at BookBar with Babalola and four guests—actor Charithra Chandran, author Caleb Azumah Nelson, podcaster Tolly T and British Vogue’s Annie Lord—provided enticing video content for social media.
THE SATSUMA COMPLEX Comedian Bob Mortimer was riding high on the success of memoir And Away… when he emailed S&S to say he was writing a novel. It was published nine months later as The Satsuma Complex, becom- ing the bestselling hardback début of 2022. The eye- catching publication takeover at Waterstones Piccadilly saw a three-metre satsuma suspended from the ceiling.
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LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY Doubleday won a 16-way auction to acquire Bonnie Garmus’ Lessons in Chemistry and set about ensuring this début from an unknown writer entered the charts at number two. More than 40 visuals were produced in the search for the perfect jacket, which was the basis for a campaign that encompassed all retailers and resulted in the book spending 35 weeks in the top 10.
THE WHALEBONE THEATRE Joanna Quinn’s début is both a country house novel and a war novel, and the striking cover design took inspiration from, among other sources, the set of Kate Bush’s “Before the Dawn”. The publicity campaign harnessed word-of-mouth passion, achieving 14 national print reviews on publication. It is Penguin General’s bestsell- ing hardback début of 2022.
THE RABBIT HUTCH Oneworld secured Tess Gunty’s The Rabbit Hutch with the highest advance the publisher has ever paid for a début. Set in America’s Midwest and described by Gunty as “a love song to the forgotten and the lonely”, Oneworld focused on getting the book into the hands of booksellers; a strat- egy that paid off when it won the inaugural Waterstones Début Fiction Prize.
TRESPASSES Bloomsbury’s campaign began with a passion to get Louise Kennedy’s 1970s Northern Ireland-set story of forbidden love into the hands of as many readers as possible. Trespasses was a BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime, shortlisted for the inaugural Waterstones Début Fiction Prize and finished 2022 as the critics’ most-picked book of the year, equally beloved by booksellers and readers.
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