Judging: 

The longlist is reviewed by an independent judging panel and selected by the results of an online poll of customers who nominated their favourite bookshop.

The shortlist and winner are decided by a judging panel.

The judges for 2025 are:

Judging Chair – Maria Dickenson – current chair of the Irish Booksellers’ Association

Tony Purdue – Irish Sales Director – HarperCollins Publishers

Sheila O’Reilly – Project Manager – Booksellers’ Association

Jenni Doherty – Little Acorns bookshop – Last year’s winning Bookseller

Ronan Richmond – Sales Director – Argosy Wholesale

Angus Laverty – Public Affairs Manager – An Post

Bert Wright – IBA Administrator & Ex-Bookseller

The awards are open to all booksellers on the island of Ireland.

The public voting list is initially based on a list of members of the Booksellers Association, although membership is not a requirement for entry. There is also an option in the voting page to vote for a bookshop not on the list. These votes will be counted and the bookshops in question added to the list for following years.

Online booksellers can be nominated as part of the public vote.

Previous winners are not eligible for the competition for 3 years after winning.

The top 12 of the public vote then proceed to longlist stage unless the judges identify exceptional circumstances for a change.

The longlistees are then asked to fill in a form to showcase their bookshop based on the following criteria. These are circulated to the judges who mark each category out of ten. A weighting is applied to these categories as follows:
Community engagement 20
Range and curation 20
Customer service 20
Driving growth 10
Visual merchandising 10
Online presence 10
Sustainability 5
Trade engagement 5

These votes are collated and circulated to the judges with the weighting applied. At the next judging meeting the votes are reviewed and hopefully a clear shortlist and winner will emerge after discussion. In the event of voting being too close, two tie break questions can be reviewed in relation to what the owner/manager of the shop is most proud of, and what their ambitions are for its future.