AustLit

James Boyce's Van Diemen's Land (2008) won the Tasmania Book Prize in 2009 and was co-winner of the 2008 Colin Roderick Award. Van Diemen's Land was shortlisted for the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction and the Gleebooks Prize in the 2009 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, the Non-Fiction Prize in the 2009 Prime Minister's Literary Awards and in 2010 was shortlisted for the Festival Awards for Literature (SA) Award for Non-Fiction. It was re-released in a new edition in 2018 with a foreword by Richard Flanagan.

Boyce's 1835: The Founding of Melbourne and the Conquest of Australia (2011) was the winner of the 2012 Age Book of the Year Award in both the Nonfiction and overall Book of the Year categories. 1835 was also shortlisted in 2012 for the Festival Awards for Literature (South Australia), Nonfiction; the Western Australian Premier's Book Awards, Nonfiction; the Prime Minister's Literary Awards, History Award; the Victorian Premier's Award, Nettie Palmer Prize for Nonfiction; and the Queensland Literary Awards, History Book Award.

Boyce's Born Bad: Original Sin and the Making of the Western World was longlisted for the Margaret Scott Prize (Tasmanian Book Prizes) in 2015.

Boyce's Losing Streak: How Tasmania was Gamed by the Gambling Industry was longlisted for the Walkley Book Award and shortlisted for the Tasmania Book Prize in 2017 and the Ashurst Business Literature Prize in 2018 (for 2017). Losing Streak was the People's Choice Winner in the Tasmania Book Prize (which was won overall by Into the Heart of Tasmania).