Author Declines Amazon-Sponsored U.K. Award

Shelf Awareness

Children's author Allan Ahlberg has declined the inaugural Booktrust Best Book Awards' Lifetime Achievement Award because it is sponsored by Amazon, the Bookseller reported.

Ahlberg cited Amazon's tax avoidance in the U.K., writing in a letter to the Bookseller, "Tax, fairly applied to us all, is a good thing. It pays for schools, hospitals--libraries! When companies like Amazon cheat--paying 0.1% on billions, pretending it is earning money not in the U.K., but in Luxembourg--that's a bad thing. We should surely, at the very least, say that it is bad and on no account give them any support or, by association, respectability."

As a result, "the idea that my 'lifetime achievement'... should have the Amazon tag attached to it is unacceptable."

Booktrust CEO Viv Bird said she was disappointed but that it was Ahlberg's "personal decision." She added that Booktrust "works with a wide range of partners in order to fulfill our charitable aim of bringing books to children and children to books. We are also grateful for the tremendous support we get from many eminent authors and illustrators. Amazon's sponsorship of the Best Book Awards, in its inaugural year, enabled us to celebrate some of the best of children's literature, create a buzz around books, and make a significant contribution to our mission of encouraging more children to read."

Amazon's European headquarters is in Luxembourg, which has a lower tax rate than most other E.U. countries, and Amazon funnels its U.K. business through it. As a result, the company had sales of £4.3 billion (about US$7.2 billion) in the U.K. in 2013 but paid U.K. taxes of just £3.15 million ($5.3 million) in 2012.

And report at The Bookseller