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.

World Book Day event

In partnership with HarperCollins and Free Word, we hosted an author event at Free Word on 4 March 2010 to celebrate World Book Day.

Telling his extraordinary story, William Kamkwamba spoke about how as a teenager, he transformed his village by building electric windmills out of junk. His book The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind was published on World Book Day.

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 TV Book Club is currently being broadcast on Sunday evenings on More4 and repeated on Mondays during the day on Channel 4. Each episode is 30-minutes long and the series will run until Monday 22 March 2010.

There are 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 are joined by celebrity guests who discuss one of the 10 selected paperback titles. The programme also features 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 are as follows (in the order that they will appear 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)

Libraries can place orders with Askews, Bertrams or Holt Jackson.

The deadline for ordering POS material (posters, magazines and sticker sheets) has now passed.

The promotion will run in libraries from January to April 2010.

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

ALIBi.JPGLast 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).

ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards

The Specsavers Crime Thriller Daggers on ITV3 celebrated all crime and thriller fiction from film, TV and books. Following the success of 2008's inaugural event on ITV3, the 2009 awards merged with the Crime Writers' Association Daggers.

The new combined Specsavers Crime Thriller Daggers Awards celebrated the crème de la crème of crime and thriller fiction with a focus on the best of British and international crime thriller novels.

The winners were:

  • The CWA Gold Dagger for the Best Crime Novel of the year: A Whispered Name by William Brodrick (Little, Brown)
  • The CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger (for the year's best thriller): The Last Child (TPB) by John Hart (John Murray)
  • The CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger (for a first book by a previously unpublished writer): Echoes from The Dead by Johan Theorin (Doubleday)
  • The ITV3/Specsavers Bestsellers Dagger (voted for by ITV3 viewers): Long Lost by Harlan Coben (Orion)
  • The Hall of Fame Dagger (honouring the achievements of the genre's greatest exponents, past and present):
  • Colin Dexter (latest title: The Remorseful Day (1999) Macmillan)
  • Lynda La Plante (latest title: Deadly Intent (PB Jun 09) Simon & Schuster)
  • Val McDermid (latest title: The Fever of the Bone (HB Sep 09) Little, Brown)
  • Ruth Rendell (latest title: The Monster in the Box (HB 0ct 09) Hutchinson)
  • Ian Rankin (latest title: The Complaints (HB Sep 09) Orion)

For more information about the awards, visit the ITV Crime Thriller Awards Season website.

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)

World Book Day 2009

World Book Day took place in the UK and Ireland on
5 March 2009 and we offered promotional materials to support all three World Book Day campaigns:

  • Spread the Word
  • Quick Reads
  • Children's campaign

Spread the Word and Quick Reads are aimed at adult readers.

The next World Book Day will take place on Thursday 4 March 2010.

Spread the Word

The Spread the Word campaign returned in 2009 with Books to Talk About. These are publishers' 'hidden gems' that haven't been bestsellers but that deserve to be talked about - and are good to be talked about.

See this year's longlist of 50 titles, which included non-fiction, at Spread the Word.

WINNER ANNOUNCED
The winning title announced on World Book Day, 5 March 2009, was Natasha Mostert for The Season of the Witch