Book of the Year - Fiction
Book of the Year - Fiction Shortlist
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This year’s Fiction shortlist is crowded with literary heavyweights, whose critically acclaimed books sold in serious numbers in 2025, aided by distinctive cover art and inventive, ambitious campaigns, which found them the widest possible readership.
The Shortlist
Boleyn Traitor
Philippa Gregory
HarperFiction
Not content with reaching Philippa Gregory’s significant existing historical fiction readership, HarperFiction pulled out all the stops to position Boleyn Traitor for fans of high-octane political thrillers, feminist retellings and epic dynastic fantasy. Reaching new readers involved high-spec special editions, sell-in to four supermarkets as well as the high street, plus a 10-date theatre tour. This paid off with over 10,000 pre-orders across all formats and a 50% increase in TCM sales from her previous hardback.
Dream Count
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
4th Estate
4th Estate set out to make the multi-award-winning author’s first novel in more than a decade a literary event. With limited author time, each piece of media needed to make maximum impact: a sold-out event at the Royal Festival Hall, a BBC interview that aired across three channels and three major cover interviews. POS including enamel badges and tote bags helped make the book unmissable in bookshops. Dream Count entered the charts at number one and in its first week outsold the lifetime hardback sales of her previous novel.
Heart the Lover
Lily King
Canongate
Determined to break out US author Lily King in the UK, Canongate began with a wave of proof mailings to generate huge word-of-mouth across the industry and beyond, and shared the wave of rave reviews across social media. When plans for a UK author visit were scuppered at the last minute, the publisher pivoted to move events online. Heart the Lover finished the year as one of the top 10 most reviewed books of 2025 and sales up 135% on the hardback of her previous novel.
My Friends
Fredrik Backman, translated by Neil Smith
Simon & Schuster
Four teenagers create a friendship so powerful it changes a complete stranger's life 25 years later in the 10th novel from Fredrik Backman. S&S planned a mini UK tour for the media-shy Swedish author, his first in 10 years, which was so popular with readers that one event venue in Bath had to be upgraded three times to fulfil demand. The marketing campaign reached 675,000 potential readers and sales of My Friends were up 287.97% on his previous hardback.
Strange Pictures
Uketsu, translated by Jim Rion
Pushkin Vertigo
Indie publisher Pushkin moved quickly to acquire World English rights to this one-of-a-kind “sketch mystery” from a cult Japanese author, later selling North American rights for six figures at auction. Making a virtue of the fact that the mysterious author would not be available for press, the guerrilla marketing campaign included leaving copies on trains with stickers saying “Read Me”. Strange Pictures has become the fastest title to reach sales of 100,000 copies in Pushkin Press history and carved out a whole new genre.
The Rose Field: The Book of Dust
Philip Pullman
Penguin & David Fickling Books
An unmissable 96-sheet billboard at London’s Broadway Market and the huge Transvision screen at Waterloo Station announced the long-awaited final volume in the Book of Dust trilogy. The publisher partnered with Waterstones for two flagship events: St James’s Church in London and the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford, which was livestreamed. A cloth collector’s edition slipcase was produced for Waterstones, and for indie bookshops, a bespoke edition with an exclusive piece of art from Chris Wormell.
