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Stephen Page, Faber c.e.o., has been named as the most inspiring digital publishing person at this year's FutureBook Innovation Awards, which also saw recognition for Bardowl and author Naomi Alderman.
Page accepted the prize this afternoon (3rd December) at the awards, held as part of the FutureBook Conference in central London and now in their third year.
Judge Rebecca Smart said: "Under Stephen’s leadership Faber has allowed many small independent publishers to participate in digital quickly and easily, not to mention developing seminal digital reference works which have set the standard for tablet apps for years to come."
Audiobook streaming company Bardowl was awarded the Best Start-Up prize, while HarperCollins' Collins Dictionary www.collinsdictionary.com won best website. Awards judge Sam Missingham, head of events and marketing at The Bookseller Group, said the site was "extremely well-executed and had incorporated a few very simple and clever techniques for engaging their audience". Bloomsbury's Churchill Archive and Constable & Robinson's Honest John were both highly commended in the category.
Zombies, Run! won the Adult App prize, co-created by novelist and online games-writer Naomi Alderman and "next-generation storytellers" Six to Start.
Judge and Pan Macmillan digital and communications director Sara Lloyd said: "Naomi Alderman, in her inimitable fashion, has delivered story direct into the heart of a utility app, with sparkling wittiness.
"This is the furthest thing from an ebook-thinly-disguised-as-app that you can imagine and demonstrates a clear perception of the app marketplace as well as delivering audio in a truly compelling manner."
The Best Children's Apps category saw Barefoot Books/TouchPress highly commended for their Barefoot World Atlas, while interactive fantasy adventure Khoya by Shilo Shiv Suleman took the prize.
London: A City Through Time by Heuristic Media took the top spot in the Reference Book Apps category; Profile Books' Michael Bhaskar described it as "an extraordinary app by any measure. Like the great city of its subject the app is vast, complex and endlessly fascinating, matching the old with the new to create an absorbing labour of love, an epic in the grandest traditions of reference publishing".
The History Press' Titanic: Her Journey was highly commended.
The best technology innovation award went to IDPF: EPub3. Mark Marjurey, commercial director, digital at Taylor & Francis said: “Over the last ten years publishers have been beset by the challenges of developing e-book content fragmented across various proprietary formats and devices.
"Epub3 finally delivers us an open standard with which we can foster interactivity, enhanced content, full accessibility for the visually impaired, and begin to tackle the vagaries of device incompatibility. From authors to publishers to readers, this is something we can all get behind."
And the best integrated digital marketing campaign was won by OUP for its The Everybody Up Digital Sing-along, described by Smart as "a simple idea executed very well, using digital platforms to unite readers around the world". Highly commended were the Macmillan Children’s team for "all three incredibly strong entries".
Philip Jones, editor of The Bookseller and FutureBook, said: "For a second consecutive year, we've seen the standard and diversity of the award entries grow. Much has been written about how publishers are only slowly adjusting to this new world, and how they might express their content on the new platforms, but these entries show that innovation is alive and kicking."