Photo credit: Isobel Dixon
Already a Nielsen Bestseller Platinum Winner, this year Peter James took home four Silvers from the Nielsen BookData Bestseller Awards – the highest number of awards awarded to a single author this year.
Based on UK sales volumes, the awards honour authors whose books have surpassed sales thresholds – Silver (250,000 sales), Gold (500,000 sales), and Platinum (1,000,000 sales).
This year’s prize-giving ceremony was held in Ham Yard Hotel with awards presented by comedian Shaparak Khorsandi. Nielsen said 199 million print books were bought in the UK in 2023, with a value of £1.83bn, with around seven in every 10 books purchased in print formats.
Peter’s silver winning titles were DEAD AT FIRST SIGHT, DEAD IF YOU DON’T, FIND THEM DEAD, and LEFT YOU DEAD, all published in the UK by Pan Macmillan. As reported in Bookbrunch, Peter joked ‘I'm glad I've been doing some strength work in the gym’ as he accepted the framed certifications.
Other authors to have their work celebrated by the awards include Elif Shafak, Sally Rooney and Richard Osman. You can view the full list of winners and prizes here.
Andre Breedt, managing director of Nielsen BookData, said: ‘We are thrilled to be able to host these awards once again in person and celebrate the success of authors and the teams that support them… The Bestseller Awards are unique, recognising the achievement of any author across all genres by the ultimate measurement, book sales.’
Peter received an Honorary Platinum Award in 2018, for selling over five million copies of his Roy Grace series in the UK over ten years.
The latest instalment of the Roy Grace series, STOP THEM DEAD, was published in September 2023 and went straight to Number 5 in the Sunday Times Bestseller chart after just three days on sale.It will be out in paperback on 25 April 2024. Peter’s next novel, THEY THOUGHT I WAS DEAD, will be published as a lead hardback in May 2024 by Pan Macmillan and reveals the astonishing reasons behind Sandy Grace’s sudden disappearance.
About Peter James
Photo credit: Mark Dixon
Peter James is the international bestselling author of many award-winning novels, repeatedly occupying the Number One slot on the Sunday Times bestseller charts in both hardback and paperback. Peter writes both thriller standalones and the hugely popular Brighton-set GRACE series, now adapted for ITV. Peter was featured in the launch podcast of the Queen’s Reading Room in January 2024, having had the Grace series featured on the Royal Reading Room previously.
Peter’s books have been translated into thirty-eight languages, with worldwide sales of over twenty-one million copies and his Detective Superintendent Roy Grace series, set in Brighton, has given him nineteen Sunday Times Number Ones. In 2015 WH Smith customers voted him the Greatest Crime Author of All Time and in 2016 he was awarded the coveted CWA Diamond Dagger, a lifetime achievement award for sustained excellence. Peter James has also written two books based on true crime stories, with former senior detective Graham Bartlett, with a newly expanded edition of BABES IN THE WOOD re-issued in January 2024.
Successful nationwide tours of the stage plays of THE PERFECT MURDER (2014), DEAD SIMPLE (2015), NOT DEAD ENOUGH (2017), THE HOUSE ON COLD HILL (2019), LOOKING GOOD DEAD (2022), and WISH YOU WERE DEAD (2023) have packed theatres in dozens of British cities, and garnered magnificent reviews. Several other Peter James novels are optioned for film and in further development.
Praise for Peter James
‘Peter James is one of the best crime writers in the business’ – Karin Slaughter
‘Probably the closest we’ll get to a British Stephen King’ – The Financial Times
‘Meticulous research gives his prose great authenticity’ – Sunday Express
‘Peter James has penetrated the inner workings of police procedures, and the inner thoughts and attitudes of real detectives, as no English crime writer before him.’ – The Times
‘Peter James is one of the most fiendishly clever crime fiction plotters’ – Daily Mail
‘In my thirty-four years of policing, never have I come across a writer who so accurately depicts “The Job’’ – Detective Investigator Pat Lanigan, Office of the District Attorney, NYPD
‘One of the most consistently readable crime writers.’ – Daily Mail
‘A master plotter’ – The Bookseller
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