After 1998, they were presented as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival.
Initially, two awards were given, one for fiction (or imaginative writing), the other for non-fiction work, but in 1993, a poetry award in honour of Dinny O'Hearn was added.
[1] The criteria were that the works be "of outstanding literary merit and express Australian identity or character,"[1] and be published in the year before the award was made.
One of the award-winners was chosen as The Age Book of the Year.
In 2021 The Age Book of the Year was revived as a fiction prize, with the winner announced at the Melbourne Writers Festival.