Grant hails ‘bigger and better’ World Book Day as outreach work pays dividends

This year's World Book Day (WBD) campaign was "bigger and better" than ever, according to Kirsten Grant, who has directed the event since 2011.

Sales of the £1 books totalled 1.15 million units in the seven-week period around World Book Day, which took place on 7th March, and token redemptions reached 1.19 million, up 3% from 2018. During the week of WBD, nine of the top 10 children’s titles were £1 books, led by Jeff Kinney’s Diary of Greg Heffley’s Best Friend (Puffin). The overall children’s market for the week ending 9th March grew by a massive 38% in value and 43.4% in volume from the corresponding week in 2018, when World Book Day was hampered by the "Beast in the East".

"I’m hugely excited about what happened this year," said Grant. "I’m really proud of it and happy that we delivered a campaign that was better than ever before. We are genuinely making an impact."

This year was the second year of its Share a Story campaign, which has "really bedded" in, said Grant, who pointed out that #ShareaStory trended on Twitter along with #WorldBookDay, and that 63% of pre-schools and nurseries, and 61% of primary schools, used the Share a Story theme as part of their celebrations.

Share a Story was originally the brainchild of National Book Tokens, which wanted the message of WBD to extend beyond the school gate and to parents, who have an important role in helping children learn to love reading for pleasure, said Grant. The message paid off too, she said, because according to data gathered by the National Literacy Trust, children who took part were more likely to enjoy reading than those who didn’t (78.7% versus 56.1%). Children who participated were also more likely to read daily outside class (47.7% versus 24.1%).

World Book Day sends out packs to nurseries, primary schools and secondary schools every year, as well as sharing activities and resources online. WorldBookDay.com received more than 700,000 visits from 535,000 unique visitors in March, and there was a 40% increase in traffic to the World of Stories webpage, which featured free audiobooks.

Grant said she was also proud of the outreach WBD did with the Booksellers Association and the Publishers Association, to get the entire book industry involved.

"We wanted all publishers to do something to celebrate World Book Day and everyone did something different. Penguin Random House, for example, gave staff the morning off to go into schools to share stories with children."

More than 90% of libraires registered to take part—the highest percentage to date—and all major supermarkets and book retailers were on board (Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, M&S, Morrisons, W H Smith, Waterstones), as were 1,400 indie and high-street bookshops.

Grant also worked with family brands to share a message with consumers and their internal workforces, a highlight of which was a deal with the Premier League. The league hosted 50 pop-up bookshops around the country with W H Smith, and gave away 10,000 books to fans.

In recent years, World Book Day has made a strategic move to try and reach people who don’t have access to books and this year the tour visited National Literacy Trust "hubs" (areas of low literacy) in Bradford, Swindon, Dundee and Manchester. For the third year running, the organisation distributed books in prisons and the feedback was "phenomenal", according to Grant, who said: "We gave out 20,000 books to prisons in England and Wales, for prisoners to read with their children. The children don’t feel like this is something for them; they can’t believe it when they are allowed to take a free book."

Another highlight was the "Reading Champions" campaign, where influential figures such as Paul McCartney, Tim Peake and Gary Barlow shared the message of World Book Day on social media, and getting support from government and 107 MPs.

Grant praised the World Book Day illustrator Rob Biddulph and PR company FMCM—Biddulph and FMCM will both return for the 2020 campaign—and said: "At 23 [years old], we are in the strongest position yet to continue to help in the fight to reverse declining literacy levels. We are hugely grateful to publishers, booksellers, National Book Tokens, authors and illustrators for their wealth of support."