ShelfEvidentNero Book Awards
About the Nero Book Awards
The Nero Book Awards are the United Kingdom and Ireland's reader-facing successor to the Costa Book Awards, launched in 2023 to celebrate the books people most want to press into a friend's hands. Administered with the Booksellers Association, the prizes honour work first published in English in the UK or Ireland across four categories — Fiction, Debut Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Children's Fiction. Each category winner receives £5,000; one of those four titles is then named the Nero Gold Prize, Book of the Year, with a £30,000 award announced at a London ceremony in early March. Shortlists (four titles per category) are typically revealed in early December, category winners in January, and the Gold Prize in March. Past Gold Prize winners include Paul Murray's The Bee Sting and Sophie Elmhirst's Maurice and Maralyn. Eligibility requires authors to have been alive and resident in the UK or Ireland for the three years before entry.
Frequently Asked Questions
- They are annual UK and Ireland book prizes launched in 2023 after the Costa Book Awards ended. Four category winners are chosen from Fiction, Debut Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Children's Fiction, and one of those four becomes the Nero Gold Prize, Book of the Year.
- A 16-book shortlist (four titles in each category) is announced in early December. Category winners follow in January. The Nero Gold Prize is announced at a live ceremony in London in early March.
- Each category winner receives £5,000. The Nero Gold Prize winner receives £30,000. The other three category winners keep their category prizes.
- Books first published in English in the UK or Ireland during the eligibility window. At entry, authors must have been alive and resident in the UK or Ireland for the previous three years.
- Costa was discontinued in 2022. Nero took on a similar popular, bookseller-facing role in the British calendar — category prizes in winter and an overall Book of the Year in early spring — without being a legal continuation of Costa.