Caffè Nero to fund major new UK book awards

In the UK, coffee chain Caffè Nero has launched a new set of book awards, worth a total of £50,000 (A$94,500), a year after Costa Coffee announced the end of the Costa Book Awards, reports the Guardian.

The Nero awards will be open to books by writers based in the UK and Ireland, and will be administered by the Booksellers Association (BA). The winner of each category—children’s, debut fiction, fiction and nonfiction—will each receive £5000 (A$9450), with an overall winner of the Nero Gold prize to receive an additional £30,000 (A$56,700).

BA managing director Meryl Halls said the awards were ‘first and foremost for readers, but their impact will be felt widely—by authors, publishers, agents, book retailers, libraries and festivals—as they create discussion around nominated books and drive consumer engagement with bookshops and libraries’. The emphasis would be on ‘commercial books with wide appeal’, Halls added. The shortlists for the first year of the awards will be announced later this year, with category winners announced in January and the overall winner named in February 2024.

The Costa book awards, which were scrapped in 2022, began in 1971, and were known as the Whitbread book awards until 2005 when Costa took over the running and financing.

Category: International news