The Booksellers’ Choice – Industry awards

There is an annual event pinned to the South African publishing and bookselling industry’s calendar. It is the kind of evening where colleagues that have worked, sometimes a lifetime together, gather and reminisce, and discuss current affairs. Discuss business and the business is books.

South African publishing and bookselling industry’s calendar. It is the kind of evening where colleagues that have worked, sometimes a lifetime together, gather and reminisce, and discuss current affairs. Discuss business and the business is books.

The celebrations are of course about books and the main winner of the evening is, a book. It is the book that all the gathered booksellers and all their compatriots countrywide have most enjoyed selling so far that year. Of course behind the book are all the people that created it. The author / authors that wrote it, the publisher that decided to take it on, the editor that worked on the copy, the designer that painstakingly laid out the copy, the illustrator that designed the jacket, the printer that turned it into a physical, tangible product, the marketing team that promoted it, and then there are the booksellers that placed the book in the hands of those that are looking for something diverting, enlightening, engaging to read.

The Booksellers’ Choice Award is organized by the South African Booksellers Association to honour the art of bookselling and thank the authors and publishers for producing such beautiful books for our country.

The nominees for this award come from a short list of 100 locally written and published titles. Currently the titles represent only two official languages, although with the increase in the production and sales of other language titles in South Africa, it is hoped that this will become more representative in the future.

The 2016 Booksellers Choice award was bestowed upon a new author on the South African book landscape: Sally Andrews for her book Recipes for Love and Murder: A Tannie Maria Mystery, published by Penguin Random House South Africa.

“I am so honoured to win the Nielson Booksellers’ Choice Award. Booksellers are heroes – up there with librarians in my estimation. Without booksellers, humans might do nothing more than work, eat, fight, mate and play rugby.

But because of you, the booksellers (and librarians and publishers and writers) people get to read. Reading can entertain, challenge and educate. It takes us to places and ideas we don’t normally visit. It can even open our hearts and uplift our souls,” said Sally Andrew of her win.

Sally has a Master’s in Adult Education from the University of Cape Town. She lives in a mud-brick house on a nature reserve in the Klein Karoo, which is where she drew her inspiration for the book from.

The lead protagonist in her book, Tannie Maria, is a fifty-something, short and soft (perhaps a bit too soft in the wrong places) with brown curls and untidy Afrikaans. She is also the agony aunt for the local paper, the Klein Karoo Gazette. One day, her life takes a sinister turn when a woman in the area is murdered and she becomes entangled in the investigation. This is a warm, poignant and entertaining read. Sally Andrew’s delightful heroine, blends together intrigue, romance and cooking in this irresistible new mystery, complete with a few mouth-watering recipes.

“Tannie Maria is a wonderful book to sell. It is very South African, and being South African it is quirky. It is a delightful read and it is fun to sell a book that you know will bring smiles to all who buy it,” said a few booksellers from Exclusive Books about the winning title.

“It is great to have another South African author that you buy in 50 of their books at a time and they just fly off the shelves. At first we really had to sell the book, but now everyone knows about it. The word has spread, as it does with some books, and all we need to do is make sure we have enough stock.”

The most wonderful thing about this prize is that it profiles South African authors, and South African published books. It highlights the wonderful stories that South African authors are writing and sharing the wonder of our country with the rest of the world.

The evening gala event, sponsored by Nielsen, Novus Holdings, Imperial Sasfin Logistics, Geodis Wilson and SAPnet is arranged to thank and celebrate both booksellers and publishers for the roles they play in promoting literacy and a culture of reading by producing and selling quality books in South Africa.

Best Bookseller Awards

• Academic: Van Schaik Bookstore
• Education: Boeke 24/7
• Trade (Chain Store): Exclusive Books
• Trade (Independent): The Book Lounge
• Library Supplier: Caxton Books

Best Publisher Awards

• Trade: Penguin Random House
• Academic: Juta & Company
• Education (Large): Pearson Education SA
• Education (Small): Berlut Books

Legends Awards
A new category, sponsored by Exclusive Books was profiled on this evening and this was presented to four legends in the bookselling trade, people who have dedicated their lives to selling books and to supporting everyone in the trade to do so successfully. Benjamin Trisk, the erudite MD of Exclusive Books regaled the audience with tales of yore before calling up Maureen Hargraves of Hargraves Library Suppliers, Henrietta Dax of Clarkes Bookshop, Fleur Mcfarlane of Exclusive Books and Peter Adams of Adams Booksellers.