LONDON May 3 2005: Amazon.co.uk today reveals the books that have previously stormed its bestseller lists as a result of winning the Royal Society's Aventis Prizes for Science Books General Prize. The prize celebrates the very best in popular science writing for adults and children and is the world's most prestigious scientific literary award.

According to Amazon.co.uk sales figures, the 2005 winner (announced on 12th May) will not only be walking away with £10,000 prize money but can also look forward to a massive sales increase which usually follows winning the award.

Amazon.co.uk sales show that last year's General Prize winner, Bill Bryson, has created one of the biggest selling science books ever with his 'Short History Of Nearly Everything'. This popular science title is the best selling of all the previous Aventis Prize winners and incredibly is still residing in the Amazon.co.uk Top 50 books chart, nearly a year after publication. In the book, Bryson travels through time and space to introduce us to the world, the universe and everything in his own incomparable style.

Meanwhile the 2001 winner 'Mapping The Deep' by Robert Kunzig experienced the biggest overall sales uplift ever, with a 700% increase in sales within 24 hours of being announced winner. The book went on to become one of Amazon.co.uk's bestselling Aventis winners. In the days before the BBC TV Blue Planet series, Kunzig's book opened the doors to the wonders of the oceans and, as with all Aventis winners, made complex science comprehensible without losing any of the meaning.

In 2002 Stephen Hawking's'The Universe in a Nutshell', enjoyed uplift figures of 580% after winning the Aventis Prize; while the 2003 winning entry from Chris McManus, 'Right Hand, Left Hand', saw sales leap by 400%.

Fiona Buckland Amazon.co.uk Senior Books Editor comments: "The Aventis effect is as strong as the Man Booker's: the morning after the announcement of the Aventis winner, we expect it to be one of our top sellers and see a large sales increase. There is a great deal of interest in popular science and the Aventis Prize has become one of the pre-eminent guides for those customers."

Director of Communications for the Royal Society, Dr. David Stewart Boak, said, "The Royal Society is proud of the work we do with the Aventis Prizes, to bring popular science to wider audiences of children and adults. Knowing this has a positive effect on authors' book sales is very gratifying. The Prizes aim to encourage not only the reading of popular science books but also the writing, and these statistics can be seen as another indication of the public's appetite for high-quality science books by established and debut authors alike."About the Aventis Prizes for Science Books

The Aventis Prizes for Science Books, managed by the Royal Society, were set up seventeen years ago to help get people reading more science books. The Prizes are the world's most prestigious awards for popular science writing.

There are two categories: a General Prize which is awarded to the author of the best science book for adults, and the Aventis Prizes for Science Books Junior Prize which is awarded to the author of the best book for children and young adults.

The Prizes are each worth £10,000 to the winning author and £1,000 to the author of each short-listed title, thanks to the generous support from the Aventis Foundation, a German charitable trust established by a predecessor of sanofi-aventis, a world leader in pharmaceuticals.

For further information, please contact Zoë Harris or Chris Owen at Trimedia on tel: 020 7471 6855 / 851 or email: aventisprizes@trimediauk.com

For further information please contact the Amazon.co.uk press office on 020 8636 9280.

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