The winning authors received honours for significant lifetime sales, as measured by Nielsen BookScan and PubTrack Digital across both print and e-book formats.

The awards are based on UK sales volumes and were presented to those that passed sales thresholds during 2020. The thresholds were marked Silver (250,000 sales), Gold (500,000 sales), and Platinum (1,000,000 sales). Twenty-seven titles in all were awarded Silver, Gold or Platinum status. The sales have helped contribute to another robust year despite the challenges that lockdown brought to the retail sector of the UK book industry with Nielsen Book estimating the total year at 202 million print books sold to the value of £1.8bn.

Gold Awards were also presented to Eddo-Lodge for Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race (Bloomsbury), Beth O'Leary for The Flatshare (Quercus), Lisa Jewell for The Family Upstairs (Arrow), Harriet Tyce for Blood Orange (Wildfire), and Kathryn Hughes for The Letter (Headline Review)

Andre Breedt, MD of Nielsen Book said: “We are delighted to be celebrating the fifth Nielsen Bestseller Awards, albeit virtually on social media. It feels more important than ever to recognise and celebrate the incredible role books have played in our lives this last year. Whether it was reading for escapism or keeping us calm, helping to home-school our children or the source of the best binge-worthy TV series; books were and continue to be at the centre of our lives. Indeed, without books, knowledge would not have transferred across the ages from diaries of former pandemics to medical journals contributing to new vaccines. Never have books been more needed or appreciated.”