In a little over one week’s time we will hand out more than 30 awards at The British Book Awards, at what promises to be the biggest instalment of the annual prize-giving rumpus in its 35-year history. Last week, we launched the New Adult Book Prize, following in the slightly junior footsteps of the Young Adult Book Prize that began a decade ago. At the end of the Nibbies, we may have something new to shout about, too.

Prizes are an increasingly important way of navigating this business. They can reward, they can amplify and they can guide. They can help generate sales but also, and perhaps more importantly, compensate for a lack of sales. They bolster the sector and encourage excellence. They can cajole – in what we choose to look at, what we champion and how we do it, an accolade can signal intent.

The Women’s Prize is one good example of the latter, of course, launched in the face of some considerable hostility. Kate Mosse, its founder, has called it a “real trial by fire”. It has been worth it since, alongside the Nibbieversary, the Women’s Prize is marking 30 years, while the Jhalak Prize – which has also received some pushback – turns 10 in 2026.

As I have written before, we are indebted to Publishing News for the founding of our event, which The Bookseller took over in its entirety in 2017. When I first attended back in the late 1990s, I was asked to supply a nib for our news coverage in the magazine. Perhaps this feels a bit solipsistic, but I see our growing interest in the business of awards as a reflection of how the awards business has grown in importance for authors, the trade and readers.

In recent years, the arrival of The Week Junior Book Awards and the Nero Book Awards –  adding to those already existing prizes such as the Booker, the Baillie Gifford, the Waterstones Debut and Children’s prizes, and, in the US, the National Book Awards and the Audies – indicate that I am not alone in understanding the impact of a good backslap.

Prizes are an increasingly important way of navigating this business. They can reward, they can amplify and they can guide

There are naysayers. The Booker was famously dismissed as “posh bingo”, a nod to the arbitrariness of any judging process; the Nibbies gets a downgrade (by some) for including the sales and the publishing in its criteria (a nuance Private Eye never seems able to comprehend). The Week Junior Book Awards (which I had a hand in founding) has suffered, like some others, from too little press attention. Sponsors have become tougher to find, and book buyers can be put off by the overload that follows from longlists, shortlists and the occasional joint-winner. Less really can be more.

Awards are expensive to run, and time-consuming; they demand attention to detail, a breadth of experience, and not a little chutzpah. In most cases, the administrator does not pick the winner(s), meaning that we organisers must all walk the high-wire hoping the judges do their job well, for it is the winners that set the tone of the prize. The staging is also crucial. The job is to platform, not distract from the victors, but to do this in ways that elevate the occasion and imbue it with importance. All in, this is, dare I say it, a creative act.

Winning is something else, of course. It can change careers, rewrite futures and affirm that yes, we are getting this stuff right. But the giving is also important. In a world that feels a little topsy-turvy, the choices we make and the moments we create can be the tilt in the other direction that we need to see.