Promotions for adults
Throughout the year we promote a range of reading initiatives that our partners, such as broadcasters and publishers, offer to help more people read more.
The materials that support these promotions are available through our shop. Some of them will be free and some will be available for sale.
Here are the promotions to support adult reading that are available from The Reading Agency. For more information about the promotions available during the year see our promotions calendar.
Mood-boosting Books
Please click here for more information.
The Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards
We are pleased to announce a promotion to coincide with the Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards.
The ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards have once again merged with the Crime Writers' Association Daggers to create the Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards 2010. The Awards feature three CWA-judged book categories (Best Crime Novel, Best Thriller and Best New Author of the Year). Please click here to see a full list of the shortlists and the finalists.
The awards ceremony will take place on the evening of Friday, 8 October 2010, and from 29 August crime documentaries and dramas will be aired on ITV3.
The deadline for ordering material from The Reading Agency shop has now passed.
The promotion will run in libraries from 23 August until mid October.
The Best Audiobooks of the Year 2010
We are delighted to be running the Best Audiobooks of the Year promotion again in 2010.
A panel of audio experts has selected their 20 Best Audiobooks of the Year, based on all-round quality. There are representatives of many genres and a mixture of abridged and unabridged titles.
The full list of featured titles can be viewed here.
Promotional packs were available for libraries interested in running this promotion from The Reading Agency shop but the deadline has now passed.
The overall 'Audiobook of the Year' will be announced in mid-September. Check back then to see who the winner is then!
The TV Book Club Summer Read
Following the success of the first series at the beginning of the year, the TV Book Club returned this summer for a new series in which the team reviewed Summer Reads. The series was broadcast from 27 June to 15 August, and ran for 8 weeks. Each episode was 30-minutes long.
The 8 featured titles (in order of transmission) were:
The Help by Kathryn Stockett (Penguin)
The Man Who Disappeared by Clare Morrall (Hodder)
The Legacy by Katherine Webb (Orion)
The Bed I Made by Lucie Whitehouse (Bloomsbury)
Stone's Fall by Iain Pears (Random House)
Ellis Island by Kate Kerrigan (Macmillan)
The Devil's Acre by Matthew Plamplin (HarperCollins)
The Weight of Silence by Heather Gudenkauf (Mira)
The deadline for ordering promotional material from The Reading Agency shop has now passed.
Writers in Translation promotion
This year English PEN are celebrating five years of their Writers in Translation programme. Since its inception, the programme has supported 36 exceptional books (fiction, non-fiction and poetry) that have been translated into English from a wide variety of foreign languages. The programme aims to celebrate books of outstanding literary value, dedication to free speech and intercultural understanding.
To mark the fifth anniversary of the programme, English PEN have produced an A5 sampler (approx. 200 pages) featuring extracts from all 36 works.
We have teamed up with English PEN to offer libraries a fantastic opportunity to run a Writers in Translation promotion. For only £10 (which covers P&P), libraries could purchase a pack of 100 samplers. For every pack of 100 that was ordered, libraries received a free reading group set (10-12 books) of one of the 36 titles.
The deadline for ordering material has now passed, but you can download the booklist here. If you are a library participating in the Writers in Translation promotion, please click here to download the poster.
Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2010
The winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2010, in association with Champagne Taittinger, is Brodeck's Report by Philippe Claudel, translated by John Cullen, and published by MacLehose Press.
The following titles were shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize:
- Brodeck's Report by Philippe Claudel, translated by John Cullen from the French, published by MacLehose Press
- The Blind Side of the Heart by Julia Franck translated by Anthea Bell from the German, published by Harvill Secker
- Fists by Pietro Grossi, translated by Howard Curtis from the Italian, published by Pushkin Press
- Broken Glass by Alain Manbanckou, translated by Helen Stevenson from the French, published by Serpent's Tail
- The Dark Side of Love by Rafik Schami, translated by Anthea Bell from the German, published by Arabia Books
- Chowringhee by Sankar, translated by Arunava Sinha from the Bengali, published by Atlantic Books
Uniquely, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize acknowledges both the novelist and the translator equally, recognising the importance of the translator in their ability to bridge the gap between languages and cultures. The winning author and translator are awarded £5,000 each and a limited edition magnum of Champagne Taittinger.
This year we offered 10 reading groups the chance to shadow the prize and review the shortlisted titles. The Allington group from Kent won our competition for the best book review, and the prize was coming to the awards ceremony. We also supplied all library authorities with an A4 downloadable poster featuring the shortlisted titles so they could promote them in their libraries.
The TV Book Club
The TV Book Club is a new book show from the team behind the hugely successful 'Richard & Judy Book Club'.
The first series of the TV Book Club was broadcast on More4, and repeated on Channel 4, from January until March 2010.
There were five celebrity presenters: comedians Jo Brand and Dave Spikey, stylist Gok Wan, Inspector Lynley actor Nathaniel Parke and actress Laila Rouass. In each show the presenters were joined by celebrity guests who discussed one of the 10 selected paperback titles. The programme also featured a look back at some of the most successful titles and authors from previous Richard and Judy/Channel 4 book clubs, as well as celebrity interviews.
The 10 selected titles were as follows (in the order that they appeared in the series):
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (Little, Brown)
Blacklands by Belinda Bauer (Transworld)
Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant (Little, Brown)
Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby (Penguin)
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese (Random House)
The Rapture by Liz Jensen (Bloomsbury)
Brixton Beach by Roma Tearne (Harper Collins)
The Way Home by George Pelecanos (Orion)
Wedlock by Wendy Moore (Orion)
The Silver Linings Play Book by Matthew Quick (Macmillan)
The deadline for ordering POS material (posters, magazines and sticker sheets) has passed.
The promotion is running in libraries from January to April 2010.
Please check back soon for more details about the Summer Reads series of The TV Book Club!
Quick Reads
Quick Reads is the initiative for adults who have never got the reading bug or who have lost the habit, or indeed avid readers wanting a quick read.
Please click here for more information.
Alibi TV Ladythrillers Season
Last November we ran a crime promotion with Alibi TV, the only channel dedicated to crime drama. Every weekend in October, Alibi TV's 'Ladythrillers' season showcased the investigations of the greatest amateur female sleuths, from Murder, She Wrote's Jessica Fletcher to the inimitable Miss Marple.
Research shows that there is a high correlation between people who watch crime dramas and people who read crime fiction, so this was the perfect opportunity to promote the very best crime novels by female authors alongside an exciting season of classic crime drama.
We offered free point of sale material (posters, leaflets, headers and bookmarks).
Best Audio Books of the Year
The 20 Best Audio Books of the Year promotion ran from 25 June to September 2009. A panel of audio experts made this fantastic selection, based on the criteria of all-round quality. There are representatives from every genre and almost every publisher. Some unabridged titles are included, but the majority are abridged.
A booklist of the 20 Best Audio Books of the Year can viewed here.
Richard and Judy Summer Reads 2009
The Richard and Judy Summer Read 2008 booklist was:
13th May Past Imperfect - Julian Fellowes ORION
20th May Guernica - Dave Boling PICADOR
27th May Palace Council - Stephen L. Carter VINTAGE
3rd June Mr. Toppit - Charles Elton PENGUIN
10th June The Great Lover - Jilll Dawson SCEPTRE
17th June Mystery Man - Bateman HEADLINE
24th June The Senator's Wife - Sue Miller BLOOMSBURY
1st July The Piano Teacher - Janice Y.K. Lee HARPER PERENNIAL
Galaxy British Book Awards 2009
In 2009, the Galaxy British Book Awards were promoted through extensive TV advertising as well as dedicated TV programming on Watch.
The Galaxy British Book Awards 2009 categories and their winners were:
- Galaxy Book of the Year
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale (Bloomsbury) - Richard and Judy Best Read Award
When Will There Be Good News by Kate Atkinson (Black Swan) - Borders' Author of the Year Award
Aravind Adiga for The White Tiger
(Atlantic Books) - Tesco Biography of the Year
Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama (Canongate) - Books Direct Crime Thriller of the Year
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (Quercus) - Sainsbury's Popular Fiction Award
Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks (Penguin) - Play.com Popular Non-Fiction Award
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale (Bloomsbury) - Waterstone's New Writer of the Year
Tom Rob Smith for Child 44 (Simon & Schuster) - WHSmith Children's Book of the Year
Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer (Atom)