Goody Business Book Awards names 218 winners and finalists for 2026

The 2026 Goody Business Book Awards announced 218 winners and finalists plus seven Top Impact Author Awards for social impact books published in the last five years. The program aims to boost author visibility, holiday book sales and thought leadership across business, leadership, health, marketing, money, self-help and technology.

Why it matters: - The Goody Business Book Awards are designed to help social impact authors stand out in a crowded market with more than 46 million books on Amazon. - The awards program aims to raise author visibility, strengthen thought leadership and support book sales during the holiday season. - The 2026 honorees span nonfiction books that are intended to improve leadership, business, health, wealth, marketing and technology outcomes.

What happened: - The 2026 Annual Goody Business Book Awards announced 126 winners, 92 finalists and seven Top Impact Author Awards. - The awards recognized books published from 2022 through 2026. - The program selected the honorees from thousands of global submissions. - Marketing and communications judges evaluated entries based on book quality, cover image and the ways the content improves lives. - Authors, publishers, publicists and fans submitted nominations from traditional, independent, hybrid and self-published books.

The details: - The awards covered 50 categories across eight subject areas: Business, Entrepreneur, Health, Leadership, Marketing, Money/Wealth, Self-Help and Technology. - The program said category pages include book descriptions and links to the author website or Amazon page to make titles easier to find. - Several categories had multiple winners and finalists because of the number of strong submissions. - The awards are not ranked, so multiple winners or finalists in a category are treated as ties. - The five most competitive 2026 categories were Leadership - Think Differently, Business - Thought Leader, Business - Transformation, Business - Management and Business - Big Ideas. - The 2026 honorees included books from publishers such as Wiley, HarperCollins Leadership, Penguin Random House SEA, Simon & Schuster, Doubleday, New Harbinger Publications, Kogan Page Inc., ForbesBooks, Page Two, Amplify and Hembury Books. - The seven Top Impact Author Awards went to Lisa Hurley, Sarah Martin, Jack Myers, Miki Feldman Simon, JW Radford, Steve Spangler and Dr. Paul Taylor. - The award-winning titles include Space to Exhale: A Handbook for Curating a Soft, Centered, Serene Life, Dear Carer, The Tao of Leadership: Harmonizing Technological Innovation with Human Creativity, CORE Leadership: A Four-Step Framework to Lead Yourself, Grow Your Influence, and Amplify Your Impact, Driven by Desire: The Path to Unstoppable Success, The Engagement Effect: Cultivating Experiences That Ignite Connection, Build Trust, and Inspire Action and The Hardiness Effect - Grow from Stress, Optimise Health, Live Longer. - The program said authors can promote awards through press releases, Amazon book pages, website seals, social posts, videos and book-cover badges. - The awards team plans a three-month digital marketing campaign for the winners and finalists and will share marketing tips on @GoodyBusinessBookAwards.

Between the lines: - The awards are built as a marketing platform as much as a recognition program, with category pages, seals and promotional assets meant to help authors convert recognition into discoverability. - The heavy focus on social impact suggests the program is positioning book awards as a way to reward practical usefulness, not just commercial performance. - Naming more than 200 honorees also broadens the program’s reach and gives the awards more content for promotion across categories and channels.

What's next: - The full list of 2026 winners and finalists is available here. - Nominations for the 2027 Goody Business Book Awards are open here. - The program will continue promoting winners and finalists through a digital campaign and social channels.