1999 Commercial partnerships

The National Year of Reading had a budget of £4million of which £800,000 was made available as grant aid to projects.  To achieve the desired impact across the UK partners in all areas were needed.  Substantial partnerships were clearly with libraries, schools and other public and voluntary organisations but this was an opportunity to raise commercial sponsorship as well. 

Walker Snack Foods were one of the first to initiate a Free Books for Schools offer in partnership with News International.  Sainsbury's sponsored the Bookstart scheme to get books to babies, with £6million over two years.  Orange facilitated reading groups in workplaces (Orange Talks Books at Work) and British Telecom set up a grant-aid budget for community-based projects called BT Reading Challenge. The Asda Big Read saw library staff promoting reading for one week in 224 Asda stores.

By this stage reader development was beginning to influence the wider book industry.  Publishers and booksellers were interested in reading groups, not just for direct sales, but as powerful tools for building a book's reputation.  Although the book industry was ever more commercialised, with marketing spend and hype driving publishing programmes, the independence and quirkiness of readers was recognised as a force to be reckoned with.  The elusive goal was what Waterstone's called a 'whisper' book, a book whose reputation (and sales) were made by readers' word-of-mouth recommendation, Captain Corelli's Mandolin being the most famous example.

This recognition of readers as a powerful audience gave a new opportunity to 'sell' libraries to commercial partners as a means of reaching and communicating with readers.  Some schemes involved libraries in large-scale promotion of the same titles as bookshops in much the same way  - The Orange Prize,  WH Smith book awards or the BBC Big Read, for example.  Some modelled new kinds of relationship such as HarperCollins Book of the Month,1999.  Some involved non-book partners such as factories and football clubs.