Funding increase confirmed for Wales’ publishing sector
Wales’ publishing sector will see a significant increase in Welsh Government funding compared to last year, bringing the sector’s overall funding for 2025 – 2026 back in line to 2023 – 2024 levels.
The government has revealed an additional £272,000 is being made available to the publishing sector via the Books Council for Wales in its Final Budget.
The Final Budget, published last week, included an additional uplift for the wider arts and culture sectors.
The new funding allocation for publishing is in addition to the uplift already announced in the recent draft budget for 2025 – 2026, bringing the total increase for next year to £392,000.
Books Council of Wales
The funding will be channelled through the Books Council of Wales (BCW) as an arms-length body who will distribute it to the publishing sector.
The Welsh Government also regularly provides the Books Council with additional funding to ensure Wales presence for publishers at major international events such as Frankfurt, where 18 Welsh publishers attended last year to promote their work to a global audience, and also at the London Books Fair.
The Books Council has also received Welsh Government money for its New Audiences Fund, via Creative Wales.
In the last 3 years £1.5m has supported over 100 projects, created 117 new jobs and commissioned over 540 pieces of work with the aim of increasing diversity across the sector.
Nurture talent
This support has been directed to an array of publishing outlets, including: Broken Sleep Books for a literary festival; ‘Writing Back Home’, an anthology of letters addressed to the writers’ homeland of Syria; news website Nation Cymru to nurture creative talent; and history magazine Hanes Byw to develop authors in their research fields.
Minister for Culture, Jack Sargeant, said: “This significant funding confirmation shows how serious we are about supporting Welsh publishing as a priority creative sector.
“Despite the creative sector’s continued brilliance, I am all too aware of the challenges also being faced, and I welcome the strong and constructive relationship the Welsh Government has with the Books Council as we look to write a positive next chapter for publishing in Wales.
“Our Final Budget will no doubt bring good news for the wider sector too and is a positive step forwards from which we can build together.”
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Hoooray !
Bloody silly idea to try and reduce funding in the first place.
With increasing international interest in all things Welsh we must support all our creatives and artists.
Also – little point having 1,000,000 Welsh speakers with nothing to read except imports in English.
Let’s hope this international interest and the rising number of Welsh speakers means that the area will soon be able to stand on its own feet without taxpayers money.
Recent reports (me asking only days ago) from Porthmadog Oxfam and The Hospice Shop suggests that sales of books in Welsh are brisk and are almost equally represented in both shops…
The place is a very busy tourist hub, I will keep an eye on this small sample…