The CWA Daggers are the premier literary crime-writing awards in the United Kingdom and on Thursday 1st July Head of Zeus was awarded 'Publisher of the Year' during the Daggers Live awards ceremony.

This prestigious Dagger was inaugurated in 2019, the first new Dagger for a decade.

Maxim Jakubowski, Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association, said 'The Best Crime and Mystery Publisher of the Year Dagger, which celebrates publishers and imprints demonstrating excellence and diversity in crime writing, goes to the independent publisher, Head of Zeus. Established in 2012, Head of Zeus went from start-up to a multi-million-pound business and positioned itself at the forefront of the eBook revolution. 

Maxim added that, “These awards testify to the wealth of great books and diversity within the crime genre. The Daggers are assuredly the best and most accurate reflection of what’s happening on the crime and mystery writing front, with all judges independent of the CWA and renewed on a regular basis.”  

On being awarded the prize, Head of Zeus' fiction publishing director Laura Palmer said ' Crime fiction has been at the heart of Head of Zeus ever since we launched the company back in 2012. Two of our earliest acquisitions were Lesley Thomson's The Detective's Daughter, and Graham Masterton's White Bones. Both rode the ebook wave, selling nearly a million copies between them and dominating the ebook charts for several months. Those two books launched two successful careers, and I'm proud to say that both authors, nine years later, are still published by Head of Zeus. Over the years, our crime publishing became less focused on quick digital wins, and more on building lasting success across as many formats as possible: our ethos was to invest in authors whose writing we love; publish in all formats; and keep the faith with our authors, even if they didn't take off right away. So I was thrilled that the CWA judges praised both our wide-ranging list, and our commitment to publishing "rising stars and midlist authors with excellence". Midlist can be a dirty word in the industry, but I think it speaks to a type of sustainable, slow-build publishing which is to be celebrated in our fast-paced, fickle world. So here's to HoZ, here's to the CWA, and here's to the midlist! I'll be celebrating this weekend, and I hope our authors will too.'