The United Nations’ Sherri Addis and Elsevier’s Rachel Martin in the Main Stage seminar series at the 2024 London Book Fair. Image: Publishing Perspectives, Porter Anderson
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
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The Reading Agency is Charity of the Year
Some of the planned Main Stage and other programming are being announced this morning (January 15) by organizers of the 2025 London Book Fair (March 11 to 13), as is another of the trade show’s annual brandings, the Charity of the Year.
That charity, The Reading Agency this year, was formalized by the coming together of three charities in 2002, and its focus—as is frequently the case in the highlighted nonprofit at the fair—remains literacy. Figures on the Reading Agency’s site indicate that one in six adults in the United Kingdom s “struggle to read,” and one in four children in England “cannot read well by age 11.”
The company reports that its services reached as many as 2.4 million people in the UK in 2023 and 2024, when 607,021 books, ebooks, audiobooks “and resources” were distributed as gifts by the program. Some 8 million people engaging in reading and writing through a Reading Agency partnership with the BBC. The company also is behind the UK’s World Book Night event—which is held on a different date from that of the rest of the World Book Night programs—and a “Summer Reading Challenge.”
Karen Napier
In a comment on the designation, the Reading Agency’s CEO, Karen Napier, is quoted, saying, “At a challenging time when only half of UK adults are reading regularly and children’s reading engagement is declining nationally, our work has never been more vital. Programmes like Quick Reads and the national Summer Reading Challenge are bucking the trend.
“This recognition helps us to expand our crucial work supporting people of all ages to discover the life-changing power of reading.”
Keynotes at the 2025 London Book Fair
A mix of familiar faces and relative newcomers are set for the keynote events on the show’s Main Stage.
The UK’s two transatlantic CEOs in publishing are featured in conversation together on the first day, March 11.
David Shelley
David Shelley, CEO of both Hachette UK and the United States’ Hachette Book Group, is one of this duo, having opened the Publishing Perspectives Forum at Frankfurter Buchmesse in October as our lead Executive Talk CEO.
He’ll be joined onstage by James Daunt, managing director of the UK’s Waterstones, CEO of the States’ Barnes & Noble, and the founder of Daunt books, an independent house that lately has figured in long- and shortlistings in a number of awards programs.
In his personable and candid conversation with Publishing Perspectives at Frankfurt, Shelley characterized one of the advantages of his dual-CEO role and the US company as his work as “a fresh pair of eyes,” able to look at the company’s long-term success with the background of his experience at the British company. “There’s value for everyone in having a fresh pair of eyes.”
He also referenced his well-known accessibility as a CEO, something frequently praised by Hachette staffers, saying, “Someone once said to me that I should be more presidential, or something like that. And I just don’t know how to be that like I can only be myself. Being myself is, I suppose, leaning in or being accessible, or whatever. I find it very hard to sort of lean out in a kind of regal way and stride around.”
James Daunt
And late this month, Daunt will again be part of the invitational Scuola per Librai Umberto e Elisabetta Mauri (UEM), the “school of booksellers” in Venice, speaking his colleagues and Publishing Perspectives, in part, about the strong position in many world markets today of the bookstore chain. Barnes & Noble, for example, he tells us, opened 1 million square feet of new bookstore space in 2024 and is expected to do so again this year.
“In my conversation with David Shelley,” Daunt says, “I look forward to discussing how the industry operates across both sides of the Atlantic, and how it adapts to ever-changing reader tastes.
“Over the years, London Book Fair has hosted a number of engaging panel discussions on its Main Stage, and I look forward to joining a line-up of very distinguished speakers on the stage this year.”
Taylor-Dior Rumble and William Rayfet Hunter
While the fair’s second-day keynote event announcement is pending, the third day is to feature William Rayfet Hunter, author and winner of the #Merky Books New Writers’ Prize 2022; and novelist and journalist Taylor-Dior Rumble, author of The Situationship.
More speakers are planned for London Book Fair, of course, including representatives of Disney Streaming; the United Kingdom’s Publishers Association and the States’ Association of American Publishers; the United Nations; Chalkboard Productions; Nielsen BookData; Penguin Random House; HarperCollins; Bloomsbury; Taylor & Francis; DK; and many more.
We’ll have some of the seminar programming highlights on tap shortly in a separate article.
Information on registration and further segments of the programming for this year can be found here.
More from Publishing Perspectives on London Book Fair is here, more on book fairs and trade shows in the world publishing industry is here, and more on the United Kingdom’s publishing market is here.
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