Bonnier Books UK supports a number of charities both in the UK and internationally through book gifting, financial donations, and volunteering efforts. Our current partners include:
The Children’s Book Project
Our official charity partner is the Children’s Book Project.
The Children’s Book Project works across the UK to redistribute new and gently used books to children and their families. It has distributed books to over 250,000 children and young people across the country – recently celebrating the milestone gifting of its one millionth book. In addition to schools, the charity also works alongside early years settings, women’s groups, food banks, family-facing community groups, and prisons as it seeks to expand book ownership, empower children to select their own books, and promote reading for pleasure.
The Children’s Book Project’s core mission to tackle book poverty and give each child the opportunity to choose and own their own book chimes with our own ambitions to widen access, break down barriers to reading, and improve children’s literacy.
We’re the charity’s very first publishing partner, having directly donated 111,000 books to date, and offering our teams the opportunity to volunteer their time to support its hugely valuable work.
Women’s Prize Trust
In 2022, we became the first UK publisher to partner with the Women’s Prize Trust, becoming Royal Circle Patrons for the charity behind the Women’s Prize for Fiction.
The Women’s Prize Trust supports women writers at all stages of development, providing coaching, inspiration and networking, to unlock their potential, boost confidence and increase skills. The Trust seeks to diversify the talent pipeline through writing workshops and development programmes such as ‘Discoveries’. They also work with readers to prioritise access to and engagement with books by women in order to increase empathy, expand imagination and empower connection.
In 2022 research showed that only 19% of readers of the top ten bestselling female fiction authors were male, whereas readers of the top ten bestselling male fiction authors were 55% male, 45% female. In non-fiction, research demonstrates that only 30% of non-fiction titles reviewed in 2 months in 2022 were written or edited by women, compared to 70% written or edited by men. The gender pay gap for authors has increased from 33% to 36% over the past five years, and in the same period female authors median earnings have fallen by 17%, compared to a drop of 14% experienced by male authors.
Additional charity projects
In addition to the above charities, Bonnier Books UK has also recently supported the National Literacy Trust (read more on our work with the NLT’s flagship Words for Work programme here), Arts Emergency, Reforest’Action, and Empathy Labs; and continues to support a number of other charities on a project-by-project basis.
