Big Book Bank launched

The Book 2 Book site reports the launch of this new initiative – based on the Sainsbury’s Active Kids programme developed by the same agency – to encourage children to read, review and share books in return for a voucher to redeem at Waterstones. The article links to a more detailed piece in Creative Match explaining more about the scheme.

Having been a closet book lover from an early age, I’m all for any promotion that gets kids trading and engaging with books as entertainment and playground currency. Aside from the fact that it will help improve reading levels and literacy (an area of concern raised in our research into publishing skills needs) the scheme also shows a critical aspect of the book publishing industry – reader engagement and recommendation – that is essential for a healthy market.

The knack will be to ensure that this translates into better informed interest in book publishing as a career, in the hope that this will contribute to a future generation of inspired and engaged new entrants coming into the industry.