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Member Highlights

Winter 2022/ Spring 23

PUBLISHERS AND NETWORK MEMBERS

New Fund

Witherby Publishing Group has established a new fund to help rural students. Through its Witherby Publishing Group Charitable Trust, it has donated £105,000 to provide scholarships and bursaries to talented individuals across the Highlands and Islands over the next three years.

Anniversary

Canongate Books celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2023. Since 1973 Canongate Books have worked to unearth and amplify the most vital, exciting voices they can find, wherever they come from, and they’ve published all kinds of books – thoughtful, upsetting, gripping, beatific, vulgar, chaste, unrepentant, life-changing…  Fifty years on they remain fiercely independent, and as committed to unorthodox and innovative publishing as ever.

Appointments

Jenny Fry of Canongate Books is being promoted to the expanded role of publisher and commercial director. CEO Jamie Byng will now dedicate his time to commissioning and rights. Canongate Books has also appointed two new non-executive board directors: business leader Anna Rafferty and historian David Olusoga.

Independent Publishing Awards

The IPG Independent Publishing Awards 2023 have announced their shortlists, which include four Publishing Scotland members and Publishing Scotland’s distribution service, BookSource:

  • Canongate Books is shortlisted in three categories: PBShop Trade Publisher of the Year, Deanta International Award, and The Bookseller Marketing Award.
  • Edinburgh University Press is on the ProQuest Academic and Professional Publisher of the Year shortlist.
  • Belle Media and Saraband are both shortlisted for the Zebralution Audio Award.
  • BookSource is on the shortlist for the Services to Independent Publishers Award.

The winners will be announced on 22 March 2023.

British Book Awards

Canongate Books is shortlisted in both the BBA Independent Publisher of the Year and the Export categories. Edinburgh University Press is shortlisted for the Academic, Educational and Professional Publisher of the Year Award. See the BBA shortlists.

Scottish Mountaineering Press is the winner of the BBA Small Press of the Year Scotland 2023.

The winners will be announced on 15 May 2023.

Book Marketing Society Awards

Caitriona Horne (Canongate Books) won the Q4 Spotlight Award for Creativity for her campaign for Madly, Deeply: The Alan Rickman Diaries. That award was announced in January 2023. Last year Caitriona won the Q3 Book Marketing Society Guerilla Campaign Award for the marketing campaign she led on More Fiya: A New Collection of Black British Poetry edited by Kayo Chingonyi.

Scotland’s Spring Trade Fair 2023

The Wee Book Company won Gold in the Best Product Awards (Cards and Stationery) at this trade fair in January 2023.

BOOKS

Winners

Awards by English PEN’s flagship grant programme PEN Translates in January include two titles that will be published in English by publishers in Scotland:

  • Of Cattle and Men by Ana Paula Maia, translated from the Portuguese by Zoe Perry (Charco Press). The country of origin is Brazil.
  • The Zekameron by Maxim Znak, translated from the Russian/Belarusian by Jim Dingley (Scotland Street Press). The country of origin is Belarus.

Shortlisted

404 Ink and Canongate Books have books shortlisted for the 2023 British Book Awards (Nibbies):

The winners will be announced on 15 May 2023.

Luna Press Publishing has four books shortlisted in five categories in three awards. They are:

British Science Fiction Association Awards

Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards

Aurealis Awards

  • Best Fantasy Novella: Hovering by Dorothy-Jane Daniels (the winner will be announced on 3 June)

Three books published by Sandstone Press have been shortlisted for the Scottish Nature Photography Awards:

  • Chasing the Deer: The Red Deer through the Seasons by Neil McIntyre (Sandstone Press)
  • Puffins: Life on the Atlantic Edge by Kevin Morgans (Sandstone Press) 
  • The Secret Life of the Otter by Andy Howard (Sandstone Press)

The winner will be decided by a public vote, with voting closing at 12pm on Wednesday 1 March.

Longlisted

Two members have books longlisted for the Jhalak Prize 2023

Needle by Patrice Lawrence (Barrington Stoke) is longlisted for the Jhalak Children’s & YA Prize 2023. Both the Jhalak Prize and Jhalak Children’s & YA Prize shortlists will be announced on 18 April and the winners on 25 May 2023.

Homesick by Jennifer Croft (Charco Press) is longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2023. The shortlist will be announced on 26 April 2023.

Wrath by Marcus Sedgwick and Needle by Patrice Lawrence (Barrington Stoke) are longlisted for the Yoto Carnegie Medal for Writing. The shortlist will be announced on 17 March 2023.

The longlist for the 2023 Dublin Literary Award was announced on 30 January 2023. It included Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet (Saraband) and The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki (Canongate). The shortlist will be announced on Tuesday 28 March 2023.

Losing the Plot by Derek Owusu (Canongate Books), has been longlisted for the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize. The shortlist will be announced on Thursday 23 March 2023.

Five Publishing Scotland members – Acair, Canongate, Sandstone Press, Saraband, and Vagabond Voices – have books longlisted for the 2022 Highland Book Prize announced on 14 December 2022. They are as follows:

The shortlist will be announced in April 2023.