FT launches its annual book prize

The hunt for the best business book of 2022 starts today with the launch of the 18th edition of the Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award.

Inaugurated in 2005, the contest carries a top prize of £30,000 for the author or authors of the title that provides the “most compelling and enjoyable” insight into business issues. Each of the five other shortlisted titles will receive £10,000. Roula Khalaf, the FT’s editor, again chairs the judging panel.

Last year, from a record entry of more than 600 books, Nicole Perlroth carried off the award for This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends, her sobering and timely look at the cyber arms race.

Other recent winners include Sarah Frier for No Filter, about the rise of Instagram, in 2020, Caroline Criado Perez in 2019, for her exposé of gender bias, Invisible Women, and John Carreyrou in 2018 for Bad Blood, about the Theranos scandal.

The prize is open to all books published for the first time in English in the 12 months to November 15. Once again, publishers are invited to submit titles in digital form, but the schedule for submissions has changed. Books published between November 16 2021 and May 31 this year must be entered before May 31. Books published from May 31 to November 15 2022 must be entered by the final deadline of June 30.

A longlist of about 15 books will be agreed in August and judges will select up to six finalists for a shortlist, to be announced in September. The winner will be named in December at a ceremony in London, where the Bracken Bower Prize for young business authors will also be presented. Until 2021, the book award was supported by McKinsey, which continues to sponsor this year’s Bracken Bower Prize.