The six-title shortlist for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year competition is drawn from a 16-book longlist. Image: Financial Times and Schroders
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
More Book and Publishing Contest News This Month:
The £50,000 Booker Prize for Fiction’s 2025 Shortlist
The British Audio Awards Release a First Shortlist: Winners in November
The €25,000 German Book Prize Releases Its 2025 Shortlist
US National Book Awards: The Young People’s Literature Longlist
US National Book Awards: The 2025 Nonfiction Longlist
US National Book Awards: The 2025 Translated Literature Longlist
The £25,000 British Academy Book Prize: A 2025 Shortlist
Translation: First Winners of a New PEN-and-Booker Program
Longlist: The £50,000 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction
The $75,000 Cundill History Prize Names a 2025 Shortlist
An FT/Schroders Winner Is To Be Named December 3
Among the many book and publishing programs announcing one stage or another of their process this week, the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award competition has today (September 24) joined the fray to name its 2025 shortlist.
This awards regime pays £30,000 to its winner (US$40,344). The author of each of the remaining shortlisted books is awarded £10,000 (US$13,448).
In the world of nonfiction award purses, this places the FT/Schroders in an upper-middle range of nonfiction prize money, on par with the United Kingdom’s relatively young Women’s Prize for Nonfiction. Some of The FT/Schroders program’s nonfiction contest cousins are:
- The £55,770 (US$75,000) Cundill History Prize (Canada)
- The £50,000 (US$67,240) Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction (United Kingdom)
- The £50,000 (US$67,240) Wolfson History Prize (United Kingdom)
- The £30,000 (US$40,344) Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year
- The £30,000 (US$40,344) Women’s Prize for Nonfiction (opened in 2024, United Kingdom)
- The £25,000 (US$33,620) British Academy Book Prize (United Kingdom)
- The £25,000 (US$33,620) Royal Society (Trevedi) Science Book Prize (United Kingdom)
- The €25,000 (US$33,620) German Nonfiction Prize (Germany)
- The €25,000 (US$33,620) Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (Germany)
The announcement of the winner this time is set for December 3 in London.
Chaired again this year of course by FT editor Roula Kahlaf, the jury panel this year has included:
- Mimi Alemayehou, Semai Ventures
- Daisuke Arakawa, Nikkei
- Mitchell Baker, Mozilla
- Sherry Coutu, Angel Investor
- Mohamed El-Erian, Queens’ College, Cambridge, Allianz, Gramercy
- Peter Harrison, Schroders
- James Kondo, International House of Japan
- Randall Kroszner, University of Chicago, Booth School of Business
- Shriti Vadera, Prudential and Royal Shakespeare Company
Roula Kahlaf
Kahlaf is quoted on today’s release of the FT shortlist, saying, “This was one of the best longlists I’ve judged and it was hard to pick out six finalists from such a strong field.
“It will be even tougher selecting a winner from among these great books, which address some of the main issues facing business today including US-China competition, the impact of sanctions, the foundations of artificial intelligence, and the keys to prosperity.”
Thomas Darnowski
And Thomas Darnowski, the Schroders Americas CEO, asserts, “We have selected a shortlist of outstanding books, each defined by exceptional research, writing, and the ability to provide deep insights into the key geopolitical trends and dynamics shaping not only the world we live in today, but also the world we will encounter in the future.
“This year’s selection provides valuable insights into how countries, businesses, and cutting-edge technology are interacting, and what this means for us all as we navigate a period of rapid change and complexity.”
The FT Schroders Business Book 2025 Shortlist
| Title | Author(s) | Publisher (UK and USA) |
| House of Huawei: Inside the Secret World of China’s Most Powerful Company | Eva Dou | Hachette UK / Abacus (UK) and Penguin Random House / Portfolio (USA) |
| Chokepoints: How the Global Economy Became a Weapon of War | Edward Fishman | Elliott & Thompson (UK) and Penguin Random House / Portfolio (USA) |
| How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations | Carl Benedikt | Princeton University Press (UK and USA) |
| Abundance: How We Build a Better Future | Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein | Profile (UK) and Simon & Schuster (USA) |
| Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future | Dan Wang | Penguin Random House / Allen Lane (UK) and / WW Norton (USA) |
| The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World’s Most Coveted Microchip | Stephen Witt | Penguin Random House / The Bodley Head (UK) and Penguin Random House / Viking (USA) |
Previous Winners of the Business Book of the Year
Parmy Olson for Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race That Will Change the World (2024)- Amy Edmondson for Right Kind of Wrong: Why Learning to Fail Can Teach Us To Thrive (2023)
- Chris Miller for Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology (2022)
- Nicole Perlroth for This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race (2021)
- Sarah Frier for No Filter: The Inside Story of How Instagram Transformed Business, Celebrity and Our Culture (2020)
- Caroline Criado Perez for Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men (2019)
- John Carreyrou for Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (2018)
- Amy Goldstein for Janesville: An American Story (2017)
- Sebastian Mallaby for The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan (2016)
- Martin Ford for Rise of the Robots (2015)
- Thomas Piketty for Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014)
- Brad Stone for The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon (2013)
- Steve Coll for Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power (2012)
- Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo for Poor Economics (2011)
- Raghuram Rajan for Fault Lines (2010)
- Liaquat Ahamed for The Lords of Finance (2009)
- Mohamed El-Erian for When Markets Collide (2008)
- William D. Cohan for The Last Tycoons (2007)
- James Kynge for China Shakes the World (2006)
- Thomas Friedman for The World is Flat (2005)
Parmy Olson for Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race That Will Change the World (2024)As we have pointed out in the past, it would be great to see the Business Book of the Year join the Booker prizes in fiction, the Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction, the British Academy Book Prize, and ALTA’s National Translation Awards in the States in nonfiction in following up on the winner’s announcement with some data as to what impact the program’s top honor has on sales.
Particularly because the FT/Schroders program has its presence in both the United Kingdom and the United States, it could be very helpful to both markets’ industries to understand how the key competitions that crowd the book and publishing industry can benefit sales and visibility. Here is more about the decision by the organizers of the Baillie Gifford Prize to begin offering data on its sales impact.
You can view the shortlist announcement from today in this video.
More from Publishing Perspectives on awards programs in books and the publishing industry is here. More on the FT Business Book of the Year award is here, more on business books in general is here, more on the United Kingdom’s market is here, and more on the United States’ market is here.
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