Reading Partners

Hardeep Hardeep Singh Kohli and Ed Vaizey, the DCMS Minister with responsibility for libraries

Our Reading Partners scheme is revolutionising the way libraries and publishers work together to reach readers. We started it in 2004 because we wanted everyone in local communities to benefit from author events and exciting reading promotions. To achieve this, we needed to change publishers' mind sets. We've succeeded!

"We've made so much progress through Reading Partners that it's now hard to imagine a book campaign without some kind of library involvement. Five years on, we're working brilliantly well together." Joanna Prior, Managing Director, Penguin General Books

We held a big reception this month to celebrate five years of Reading Partners. The event was sponsored by Nielsen Book and attended by a rare mix of public and private sector supporters - from local government to the PA. Here are some of our guests

We announced our new three year strategy and the roll out of our children's pilot.

Nick Hornby spoke about the growing importance of libraries' work to spread reading:
"It is hard to convert new people at festivals and bookstore events. We are effectively preaching to the converted. But libraries create readers. It is becoming only libraries that are thinking imaginatively about how we create a nation of readers. A more literary nation is a healthier and wealthier nation. The whole country needs readers, and we need libraries to create them."

Who's involved?

When it started, five publishers were involved in a two year pilot - now there are now 34. These are the adult publishers involved (see the Children's Reading Partners page for those publishers involved in our new children's scheme)

Alma Books
Earthscan
Haus Publishing
Pan Macmillan
Picnic Publishing
Allison & Busby
Faber
Hodder /Headline
Penguin
Granta Books
Bloomsbury
Glasshouse Books
Icon Books
Random House
Canongate
HarperCollins
Little Brown
The Book Guild Ltd
Constable & Robinson
Harlequin Mills and Boon
Orion
Quaestor 2000 Ltd

We have built a whole new framework for national collaboration, helping publishers reach readers through libraries' 4,000 branches and 10,000 reading groups. This has led to exciting author events, on-line reading groups and big community reading promotions.

In the Resources column to the right, you can download case studies of events with authors including Kazuo Ishiguro and Hardeep Singh Kohli.

Download the 2010 report on five years of Reading Partners Reading Partners Five Year Report, which includes new information, statistics and other key achievements for libraries and the book trade.
The 2008 report is here Evaluation Report 2008
Go to this page for information on our children's scheme

New three year strategy

From now until 2013, Reading Partners will focus on:
• Community and diversity: making libraries the place to go find diverse, engaged audiences for events and promotions, break new authors and tap into market opportunities amongst BME communities.
• Digital marketing: exploiting the potential for shared digital marketing, including trialing online reading groups and author tours and using libraries' plasma screens.
• Partnerships: looking for new ways to collaborate with independent bookshops and the media, including Channel 4's TV BookClub. Other new partners include the Arts Council's Arts Nation campaign, Nielsen, Asia House and the Muslim Writers Awards.
• Workforce development: building skills to spread library author events through joint industry training and Roadshows to share skills and content

Digital innovation

"Reading Partners offers a co-ordinated solution to get digital marketing content to the UK library and reading groups network. Last year we worked together to promote our ReadersPlace online community site with innovative marketing and the use of widgets, as well as successfully hosting a series of online chats between authors and reading groups. This year, we're piloting a brand new online readers group network. The Reading Agency's access to readers groups has added a whole new dimension to our digital marketing and content strategy." Maureen Corish, Communications Director, Random House

For more information, download our activity profile on Vintage Online Reading Groups.

Here are some of the exciting things to look out for during 2010.

• Library author events with Lionel Shriver, Adele Parks, Maggie O'Farrell, Chris Cleave, Chris Ryan, Ellen MacArthur, Gillian McKeith, Jojo Moyes, Elizabeth Noble, John Connolly
• Themed author events from Girl's Night In to Crime Panels; Spies to Politics
• Major new Faber New Thinking non fiction promotion with reading groups
• Shutter Island film tie in - library promotion of the new Martin Scrosese film based on Dennis Lehane's novel
• Harvill Secker Centenary promotion co-inciding with publication of limited editions of ebst knowhn titles like Geore Orwell's Animal Farm

For more information, download Reading Partners Highlights 2010 and Joint Reading Promotions 2010

Reaching Readers

Reaching Readers was an exciting initiative for Black and Minority Ethnic readers.
Our Reading Partners publishers teamed up with public libraries on six projects in Birmingham, Leeds, Lewisham, Manchester, Newham and Norfolk. Together they worked on innovative projects to promote books and the joys of reading to a culturally diverse audience. Activities included work with reading groups, exciting book promotions to introduce more readers to books by British Black and Asian writers, and engaging author events. The projects helped publishers and libraries learn more about each other's work and to find out more about all aspects of BME reading and writing.
We conducted important research into the reading and library habits of ethnic minority communities. Go to the Shop

"The millions of people who walk into 4000 libraries every day offer publishers and writers a different route to readers. Through Reading Partners we've been able to work with libraries across the country to bring our writers and their work to the attention of this audience in exciting new ways. The relationship between activities in libraries and book purchasing is dynamic and something that publishers are now much more attentive to in their marketing." Stephen Page, CEO, Faber

Reading Partners has 'completely transformed' a once perceived 'commercial insignificance' of libraries, Stephen Page has commented in a recent Bookseller article: 'Five years on the results have been remarkable.'

To read the full article, click here