Jellybooks to receive £38,880 from second round of the Government’s Culture Recovery Fund
- Jellybooks among more than 2,700 recipients to benefit from the latest round of awards from the £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund
- This award will help the technology specialist build on the work it has already started in the publishing sector and start on a number of new projects
(2nd April 2021) Brixton-based Jellybooks has received a grant of £38,880 from the Government’s £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund to help the organisation recover and reopen.
More than £300 million has been awarded to thousands of cultural organisations across the country including technology specialist Jellybooks in the latest round of support from the Culture Recovery Fund, the Culture Secretary announced today.
This new grant of £38,880 will not only help Jellybooks build on the work it has already started in the publishing sector but also start on a number of new projects.
Since receiving £90,000 in funding from the first round of the Culture Recovery Fund in autumn 2020, Jellybooks has used the funds to help British and Irish publishers and bookshops make free use of its unique cloud platform for book excerpts and audiobook snippets Jellybooks DISCOVERY, as well as its other services.
In March, Jellybooks partnered with Blackwell’s and leading publishers to launch DISCOVERY, a cross-industry platform for ebooks excerpts and audiobooks snippets. As part of the launch, Blackwell’s featured the work of six debut authors in a #BlackwellsSpringDebuts showcase. In partnership with Jellybooks, Blackwell’s created an interactive window display featuring the six titles at its flagship store on Oxford’s Broad Street, and also made the titles available to ‘peek inside’ from home.
Building on this partnership with Blackwell’s, Jellybooks is now working with an even wider range of publishers and high street bookshops as part of its Free Easter Reading campaign. Book-ish in Wales, Forum Books in Northumberland, Golden Hare Books in Scotland and Mr. B’s Emporium of Reading Delights in Bath are all taking part.
The campaign has made 40 full-length ebooks for children and adults available online to read free of charge over the Easter weekend. To find out more about the #FreeEasterReading event, visit www.jellybooks.com/easter-reading
With this second Culture Recovery Fund grant, Jellybooks will focus on four key areas:
- Partnering with publishers on Jellybooks ARTS, an interactive rights catalogue, sales catalogue, book samplers, literary magazines and a special showcase featuring ARTS and children’s books to coincide with the Bologna Children's Book Fair
- Making Jellybooks RADAR available free of charge to independent publishers for audience research with online focus groups for a further three months
- Helping publishers distribute review copies with ORCA
- Making online reading more accessible for readers with impairments
Over £800 million in grants and loans has already been awarded to support almost 3,800 cinemas, performance venues, museums, heritage sites and other cultural organisations dealing with the immediate challenges of the coronavirus pandemic.
The second round of awards made today will help organisations to look ahead to the spring and summer and plan for reopening and recovery. After months of closures and cancellations to contain the virus and save lives, this funding will be a much-needed helping hand for organisations transitioning back to normal in the months ahead.
Culture Secretary, Oliver Dowden, said:
“Our record breaking Culture Recovery Fund has already helped thousands of culture and heritage organisations across the country survive the biggest crisis they've ever faced.
Now we’re staying by their side as they prepare to welcome the public back through their doors - helping our cultural gems plan for reopening and thrive in the better times ahead."
Andrew Rhomberg, CEO of Jellybooks, said:
“We are delighted to have been awarded another round of funding by the Culture Recovery Fund. Their contribution ensures that we can continue to work with the publishing sector to create better ways of discovering books as well as improved means for developing audience insights.
We are excited about all the projects we have planned and the wonderful publishers, bookshops and organisations that we’ll be able to work with.”
Sir Nicholas Serota, Chair, Arts Council England, said:
“Investing in a thriving cultural sector at the heart of communities is a vital part of helping the whole country to recover from the pandemic. These grants will help to re-open theatres, concert halls, and museums and will give artists and companies the opportunity to begin making new work.
We are grateful to the Government for this support and for recognising the paramount importance of culture to our sense of belonging and identity as individuals and as a society.”
The funding awarded today is from a £400 million pot which was held back last year to ensure the Culture Recovery Fund could continue to help organisations in need as the public health picture changed. The funding has been awarded by Arts Council England, as well as Historic England and National Lottery Heritage Fund and the British Film Institute.
To find out more about Jellybooks, visit www.jellybooks.com
To find out more about the Free Easter Reading campaign, visit www.jellybooks.com/easter-reading or follow and engage with the campaign on social media via @Jellybooks using the hashtag #FreeEasterReading
For further information on Jellybooks, please contact Zoe Poulton or Truda Spruyt:
[email protected] | 07891 423 440
[email protected] | 07740 725 206
ENDS
Notes to Editors
About Jellybooks and its new DISCOVERY platform
Jellybooks was founded in January 2011 and has grown into the leading publishing technology specialist with a focus on reader analytics, audience insights and data-smart reading systems.
The Brixton, London-based company serves trade, academic and professional publishers in the UK, Germany, Europe, USA and elsewhere. Jellybooks has an active reading community that participates in test reading campaigns where publishers test books weeks or months prior to publication.
In 2018, Jellybooks launched the first browser-based ePub reading application based on the second generation Readium architecture. The Jellybooks Cloud Reader is available in ten languages including English, German, Dutch, French, Spanish, and Italian provides a one-click solution to access and read ebooks and audiobooks on almost any browser-enabled device from smartphone to tablet, laptop to Internet kiosk, smartwatch to PC.
Its new cross-industry cloud platform for book excerpts and audiobook snippets, Jellybooks DISCOVERY, gives retailers access to ‘peek inside’ functionality, supporting better book discovery and widening choice for consumers. DISCOVERY enable readers to access content from books, including illustrated books, with a call to action that takes them straight to the individual bookseller.
The Jellybooks DISCOVERY program is open to all UK and Irish retailers, as well as publishers, small and large.
To find out more about DISCOVERY for bookshops, visit www.jellybooks.com/about/bookshops/bookshops-peek-inside
To find out more about DISCOVERY for publishers, visit www.jellybooks.com/about/publishers/jellybooks-publishers-intro
About Arts Council England
Arts Council England is the national development agency for creativity and culture. We have set out our strategic vision in Let’s Create that by 2030 we want England to be a country in which the creativity of each of us is valued and given the chance to flourish and where everyone of us has access to a remarkable range of high quality cultural experiences. We invest public money from Government and The National Lottery to help support the sector and to deliver this vision. www.artscouncil.org.uk
Following the Covid-19 crisis, the Arts Council developed a £160 million Emergency Response Package, with nearly 90% coming from the National Lottery, for organisations and individuals needing support. We are also one of the bodies administering the Government’s Culture Recovery Fund. Find out more at www.artscouncil.org.uk/covid19.
At the Budget, the Chancellor announced the £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund would be boosted with a further £300 million investment. Details of this third round of funding will be announced soon.