Because there was a bit of an interruption to normal service (temperamental wifi) here at the Independent Publishers Guild conference venue in Oxfordshire, we weren’t able to keep you updated with the Independent Publishers Guild Awards last night.
But we are very proud and pleased to say that Nosy Crow won an award – the Digital Marketing Award (sponsored by Nielsen, to whom many thanks, which, in my surprise, I forgot to give on the night).
And Tom Bonnick, Nosy Crow’s Business Development Manager, won an award too: he is the Young Independent Publisher of the Year.
So if you were feeling generous, you could say that we’ve won two awards.
We were shortlisted for two further awards. We were shortlisted for Children’s Publisher of the Year (won by Walker, a publisher for which, as this blog post suggests, I have huge admiration and with whose American sister company Nosy Crow has a special relationship in that they publish many of our illustrated books under a Nosy Crow imprint in the US and Canada). And we were shortlisted for the Digital Publishing Award, won by legal publisher Edward Elgar, which gives a sense of how diverse the shortlisted companies and the membership of the Independent Publishers Guild is.
I said in my short and unprepared acceptance speech two things: that winning the digital publishing award was down to great staff and great stuff. Staff, because this was really Tom’s award. As those of you who know Nosy Crow’s blog will know, he is the tireless force behind so much of our digital communication. And stuff because this was also really an award for our authors and illustrators, because it’s only fun and worthwhile to market – digitally or otherwise, but particularly digitally – stuff that is worth talking about, and we are really proud to say that we have books, ebooks and apps (and, increasingly other stuff, too, like conferences and master classes) that are worth talking about. Digital marketing entirely depends on people feeling strongly enough about your stuff to tell other people about it, and they only feel strongly about your stuff if it’s good.
The judges gave a special mention to our innovative, content-as-marketing, free-to-download (what are you waiting for, Apple device owners?) Nosy Crow Jigsaws app, made by Will, Ed and AJ, so it is their award too.
For Tom to win the award is, of course, great for Tom, but it is very good for Nosy Crow too. It shows, I think, that Nosy Crow, though it’s only been publishing for four years, is already a business that isn’t all about the founders: we are developing a team of people who are bringing skills and experience that we didn’t start out with to build and strengthen the publishing company.
The awards were well spread: this year only Search Press, the craft publisher, and Nosy Crow won more than one award each. Listening to other acceptance speeches from so many other companies reminded me, if I needed reminding, of how extraordinarily well Nosy Crow has done – against stiff and varied competition – in the IPG awards over the four years in which we’ve been eligible: we’ve won an astonishing eight (or nine if you count Tom’s) awards (and near my elbow in the picture above, you can, if you look carefully, see a photo of me getting one of those awards a year or so ago and wearing exactly the same dress). It’s not easy to get an IPG award, and we work really hard for them!
In 2012, the first year in which we were eligible, we won the Newcomer of the Year, Innovation of the Year and Children’s Publisher of the Year awards.
In 2013, we won Children’s Publisher of the Year and the International Achievement awards.
In 2014, we won the International Achievement and Digital Marketing awards.
I am very proud that Nosy Crow has been recognised within the 560-strong community of talented, determined and savvy publishers that make up the Independent Publishers Guild, and I am quite ridiculously proud of Tom, who has been with Nosy Crow for nearly four years, having joined us before he’d taken his final exams at Glasgow University.
Congratulations to our fellow winners and shortlistees.
You can read about the awards in The Bookseller here
With our book, The Spy Who Loved School Dinners, winning the Blue Peter Best Story award and ten new books published yesterday too, we had a very happy World Book Day, and hope you did too.
