Jacinda Ardern, Schrödinger’s Books in Petone, Mike McRoberts’ honeyed voice, and Polkinghorne publisher Allen & Unwin were honoured at the annual NZ Booksellers awards held in Auckland on Saturday night. I was in attendance at the premiere book trade event of the year and was quick to grab a front-row seat. There was standing room only but that was due to the fact organisers made a hash of seating and there weren’t enough chairs to go around. It did not dim the celebrations and tears flowed throughout the evening in an often emotional ceremony.
Schrödinger’s Books was named best bookstore. Allen & Unwin was named best publisher. Mike McRoberts won best audiobook for Speaking My Language. A special achievement award was presented to Nigel Latta (he sold over 250,000 copies of his books), and accepted by his widow, Natalie.
Dame Jacinda Ardern’s memoir A Different Kind of Power was the runaway winner of the bestselling New Zealand book of the year. It’s sold over 50,000 copies and there was chat on Saturday night about one fan so besotted with the ex-PM’s book that she bought a hardback edition, a paperback edition, and an audiobook. I guess it’s like holding up a diamond and seeing the different ways it catches the light.
But the hot contender to win next year’s award is the anti-Ardern incarnate, Barry Soper, whose political memoir One Last Question, Prime Minister has held the number 1 spot for six weeks. I was told on Saturday night that the book is steadily selling about 300 copies a week and seems on track to be the biggest selling title of 2026. His low opinion of Ardern as Prime Minister (“I don’t think she had the intellectual capacity to understand exactly what she was doing”) has evidently won the hearts of a nation.
Becky Innes from Penguin accepted the award on Ardern’s behalf. She thanked those booksellers who went around their shops dealing with the turn-Ardern fanatics who turned the book around, and she also thanked those booksellers who made plain their low opinion of Ardern but saw the sense in stocking the book. Its immense success helped many stores survive the recession. I heard talk that the recession is far from over in bookshops. Even some international titles which are guaranteed to fly out the door are about 30% down on expected sales, and while the two best-selling New Zealand novels right now, Murder and Mojitos (The Bookshop Detectives 3) by Gareth and Louise Ward, and The Nowhere Boy by Anne Cleary, are both doing excellent business, there is a hell of a lot of daylight between those two titles and the rest of the books on the NielsenIQ fiction chart. As in the rest are selling approximately squat.
Those in attendance on Saturday were essentially either publishers or booksellers. They share the exact same goal—selling as many books as possible—but it was interesting to observe the sometimes tense dynamic between the two trading partners. One sells, one buys. They are and they aren’t on the same side. They are and they aren’t at each other’s throats. But they all have an absolute love of books, and it was nice to look around and realise that just about everyone there belonged to a specialised role: professional readers.
The event was held at Rydges. Rydges! No one ever goes to Rydges. It’s an obscure joint at the end of a one-way street tucked in behind the torture chambers of the Auckland District Court, and an apt venue for an awards night recognising a modest, not especially glamorous trade. It was MC’d by someone called Sam Smith, allegedly a stand-up comedian. Instead of a laborious sit-down dinner, guests mingled happily and drank deep from a free bar, and chowed down on an excellent range of appetisers. I filled my boots with pastrami, spiced peanuts, dumplings, sliders, falafels, blue cheese, crackers, watermelon, chocolate brownies, and cheesecake. Al Brown won an award for a children’s book on fishing, which prompted Smith the MC to remark that the best meal he ever ate in his life was a Brown recipe for whitebait salad served at the Waiheke Island home of All Black coach Graham Henry. It sounded like my idea of Hell.
Rydges talk was chatty, literate, bookish. Tom Rennie at Bridget Williams Books was there. Odessa Owens at Massey University Press was there. My new best friend in the New Zealand books trade, Louise Russell at Bateman Books, was there. I did not need to also chat with Sam Elworthy from Auckland University Books to know he was there because he was the loudest person in the room. A veteran of the trade, late-period Elworthy has embraced te reo—the last time I saw him in public, he was bellowing out a waiata—and he is now loud in two languages.
He’s also a damned good publisher. I named Auckland University Press as publisher of the year in the ReadingRoom literary awards in December. They had an oustanding catalogue in 2025 but I accept that bookstore sales were likely a lot less than Allen & Unwin, which NZ Booksellers named best publisher on Saturday night. They had a strong nonfiction list (A Dim Prognosis by Ivor Popovich, The Unlikely Doctor by Dr Timoti Te Moke, Mana by Tāme Iti; my book Polkinghorne was published in May last year) as well as fiction and children’s titles.
There were four lifetime achievement awards. All were 100 percent deserved. All of the recipients (Dave Cameron of Scorpio Books, Wendy Tighe-Umbers of Time Out, Carole Beu of The Women’s Bookshop, and Upstart Press publisher Kevin Chapman) were surprised, shocked, tearful. Huzzah to these four legends of the trade. Carole is 80, which seems bizarre; she is forever on the move, a dynamo. Wendy is the last person to see Jennifer Beard alive. Dave has the best beard in New Zealand letters. Kevin said, “My only regret is that this is an individual award, and I feel it should have a whole lot more names on it.”
It was a beautiful and generous remark. There is a real camaraderie in the book trade. It’s a team sport. Everyone is in it together. “Inclusion is uncomfortable, and strong,” Chapman also said in his award speech. “Exclusion is comfortable, and weak.” They were interesting epigrams and signalled that the New Zealand book industry gets by as a collective. It made for a happy and high-spirited mood at Rydges on Saturday night. There was excited talk about potential bestsellers due to appear in bookstores before Xmas, such as a political memoir by ex-Labour MP Kiri Allan, a political memoir by Ardern’s former comms strategist Andrew Campbell, an immersive book about Hawkes Bay racetracks by Marty Smith, and a new novel by Catherine Chidgey. Huzzah to New Zealand booksellers. They are the best kind of people in the world: eternal optimists.
The full list of winners are:
The full list of winners:
- NielsenIQ BookData Bookshop of the Year : Schrödinger’s Books in Petone
- Special Achievement Award : Nigel Latta
- Publisher of the Year : Allen & Unwin
- NielsenIQ BookData NZ Award for the bestselling NZ title : A Different Kind of Power by Jacinda Ardern (Penguin Random House)
- Marketing & Publicity Strategy of the Year : Penguin Random House for A Different Kind of Power ’s launch campaign
- Sales Professional of the Year Award : Hachette Aotearoa New Zealand’s sales team.
- Booksellers’ Choice Adult Award : The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
- Booksellers Choice Children’s Award : Hooked: Learning to Fish by Al Brown Illustrated by Hope McConnell (Allen & Unwin)
- Publishing Trailblazer of the Year Award : Alison Shucksmith, publisher at Little Moa (Hachette)
- Titlepage Bookselling Trailblazer : Anastasia George, The Grimoire bookstore
- Libro.fm Audiobook of the Year Award : Speaking My Language by Mike McRoberts (HarperCollins)
- Publishers Association of NZ Lifetime Achievement Award : Kevin Chapman
- Booksellers Association of Aotearoa New Zealand Lifetime Achievement Awards : Carole Beu, Wendy Tighe-Umbers and David Cameron
