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Winners of the 2024 Australian Business Book Awards Announced – Why that matters to the winners, and to YOU if you’re currently writing a book
The finalists and winners of the sixth Australian Business Book Awards have been announced and it’s great to see authors and publishers recognised publicly for their dedication, creativity, craft and unique IP.
As a reader, the list will give you plenty of food for thought as there are some great books to add to your collection.
And if you’re currently writing or thinking of writing a book, there are many lessons to be learned from the finalists and winners!
Founded by Andrew Griffiths and Michael Hanrahan, The Australian Business Book Awards are non-profit, with any extra funds donated to the Indigenous Literary Foundation. Traditionally published and self-published books are invited to enter, leading to an average of 120-130 books submitted annually, some of them entered in multiple categories.
That makes for a fun preliminary judging day where 9 judges from a variety of backgrounds (including myself –yay, surrounded by books and book nerds all day!), shortlist the books to go through to the next judging round. It’s a rigorous judging process and judges are unable to partake in judging books they have any involvement with/know the author or publisher personally etc.
Approximately 20% of books at this stage don’t make it through to the next round due to either very high competition in their chosen category or a distinct issue with the book e.g. production values or assessed writing sample.
The books that do make it through, and there are piles of them due to the ever-improving quality of Australian business books and authors, then go on to be assessed by another three individual judges who follow a strict criterion to award points.
Keep this in mind if you’re currently writing or publishing a business book as judges are looking at:
- Subject expertise and insight
- Suitability for target market
- Quality of writing
- Editing and proofreading
- Cover design (including the spine and back cover copy)
- Book structure
- Originality of thought
- Internal formatting
- Print quality
- Author bio
- Title and sub-title
Before you hit print, ask yourself (or get external advice as you’re probably way too close to it), does your book hit all these marks? What areas could be improved on?
As a judge, I don’t get to read every book, and I also never know how others are rating the books I am assessing, so it’s always a delight on the night to see which books were awarded finalist status, and which books go on to win.
The categories for 2024 were:
- Entrepreneurship and Small Business
- Social Responsibility
- Personal Development
- Communication and Sales
- Personal Finance and Investment
- Management and HR
- Leadership
- Technology
- Health and Wellbeing
- General Business
- Best Cover Design
- Book of the Year
So much goes into an award-winning book, but as standards increase across the publishing sphere, one thing that really stands out about the finalists and eventual category winners was their writing voice and particularly, the authors’ ‘originality of thought’.
Book of the Year 2024 finalists included:
- Live More with Less: Upgrade your life without costing the earth by Dr Kate Luckins
- Work Backwards: The revolutionary way to work smarter and live better by Tim Duggam
- And taking out the category was Fleur Heazlewood for her book Leading Wellbeing: A leader’s guide to mental health conversations at work.
2024 Book Cover of the Year finalists included:
- Lead Like You by Jo Wagstaff (the colour palette was a hit with the judges!)
- Self Promotion Without Social Media by Tess McCabe (Tess designed her own cover and also took out the Communications & Sales category – great book!)
- A Hell of a Lot of Glass: Achieving gender equality in the workplaces of Australia by Kate Ramsay (such a great cover and topic!)
- And the winning cover design (after MUCH debate and a very drawn out judging process) was Lizzie Willamson’s The Active Workday Advantage…also designed by Tess McCabe (Interestingly, I originally asked Tess to design the cover for Look-It’s Your Book! after seeing some of her designs at the awards in previous years!).
NB: This is a great category to check out to get an idea about book cover design standards and potential cover designers for your book. And while you’re at it – check out the names of the publishers and editors behind the books you most enjoying reading, as they may be available to work with you for your book!
A shout out also to ghostwriter Bernadette Schwerdt for doing an excellent job with Radek Sali on How to Build a Billion Dollar Business.
You can see the full list of Australian Business Book Awards 2024 entries here and the list of
finalists and award winners for 2024 here.
Entering and being a finalist in a legitimate award like this gives authors and books extra recognition, a load of social proof, and can further grow your confidence and spur sales. And for non-finalists, it’s important to understand that the competition is fierce – so don’t let not winning knock you off kilter, it’s amazing you envisioned and finished your book in the first place and it’s already out there helping readers! So yes, huge congrats to you!
If you’re thinking of entering the awards in 2025, there is a recording of the 2024 Australian Business Book Award ceremony available so you can learn a little more about the awards, the books and the judging process.
Happy writing!
Anna