Perry’s narration creates an intimate experience which, combined with a marketing campaign that utilised 30-second snippets of the audio for radio adverts, made Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing a success. The marketing campaign, which reached a non-traditional readership via TikTok and other social channels, “left no stone unturned” according to the judges who singled it out as “the most impressive campaign” on the shortlist. All the shortlisted books have cut through in a competitive market, delivering everything from a comforting read to pacy thrillers and a love story through the ages, with impressive sales and retail engagement. Our judges fell in love with the “beautiful” and “joyous” message of Harry Woodgate’s picture book, Grandad’s Camper. The illustrated form broke new ground in the YA fiction market, and ever since this LGBTQ+ love story has been at the cutting edge of the UK’s mass-market success in graphic novels.

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The eight superb campaigns on this shortlist are already winners at the Publishers’ Publicity Circle’s annual awards, and now compete for the flagship title. Joanna Quinn’s début is both a country house novel and a war novel, and the striking cover design took inspiration from, among other sources, the set of Kate Bush’s “Before the Dawn”. The audiobook of Young Mungo, the second novel from Booker Prize winner Douglas Stuart, celebrated the novel’s Glasgow setting.Bella Pagan, publisher at Pan Macmillan’s Tor UK, has been at the heart of speculative fiction for 20 years. Moving to London in 2017 and feeling lonely in a new city, Garmus signed up to a creative writing course, which is how she met her agent, Felicity Blunt at Curtis Brown.

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A Better Day was the bestselling début children’s non-fiction book in 2022, according to figures from Nielsen BookScan.

The second Julia Donaldson title on this shortlist, What the Ladybird Heard at Christmas is the author’s 12th picture book collaboration with Lydia Monks. Her work got booksellers onside early, made excellent use of the author in dozens of events, and generated another wave of publicity after the title was named Waterstones Book of the Year at the end of 2022. Several people associated with translating or publishing the book were attacked, seriously injured and even killed. Tinder Press needed to keep The Marriage Portrait’s surprise ending under wraps but the sumptuous jacket was central to the online campaign, with the cover reveal animation viewed over 16,000 times. This book was everywhere”, agreed our judges, resulting in sales of more than 430,000 copies according to BookScan, making it is the third-bestselling paperback of 2022.