The Booker Prize Foundation partners with BookKind to ‘support readers and writers of the future’
The Booker Prize Foundation, the charity that awards the Booker Prize and International Booker Prize, announces a partnership with BookKind, the new online bookshop that donates 10% of every sale to charity
Through the partnership, customers shopping at BookKind can now choose to support the Booker Prize Foundation directly, helping fund its work to ensure that literature is a vital and inclusive part of the cultural landscape. Through the Booker Prize and International Booker Prize – two of the world’s most significant literary awards, which transform the careers of authors and translators – as well as through scholarships and outreach in prisons, the Foundation aims to foster a love of reading, and to support readers and writers worldwide.
In addition to the prizes themselves, the Booker Prize Foundation’s charitable initiatives include: the prison reading programme, Books Unlocked, delivered with the National Literacy Trust, which takes Booker-nominated titles, authors and resources into prisons; the UEA Booker Prize Foundation Scholarship, awarded annually to a candidate for the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia; PEN Presents x the International Booker Prize, which supports and funds translators from the Global Majority; the funding of Braille and audio editions of Booker Prize books through the RNIB; and a wealth of online editorial content to help people discover their next great read.
Together, the Foundation and BookKind will showcase Booker and International Booker Prize-nominated books past and present, while raising awareness of the Foundation’s charitable work. The partnership will also feature special collaborations, including exclusive Booker Prizes shortlist bundles, the first of which will go on sale from Wednesday, 24 September, following the announcement of the Booker Prize 2025 shortlist. The six books on the shortlist will be revealed by this year’s judging panel at a public event for the first time, taking place at the Southbank Centre in London from 7.30pm on Tuesday, 23 September. Information on the Booker Prize 2025 longlist, including extracts, author interviews, judge comments and a longlist quiz, can be found here. Readers can also explore and shop the Booker Prize longlist at BookKind here.
Gaby Wood, Chief Executive of the Booker Prize Foundation said:
‘The Booker Prize Foundation’s purpose is to inspire people to read the world’s best fiction, driven by a simple belief – that great fiction not only brings joy to millions, it has the power to change the way we think about the world. At a time when access to books is arguably more important than ever, we are thrilled to have been selected as a charity partner by BookKind, an invigorating new purpose-driven online bookshop, and we look forward to working together to support and nurture an expanded global community of readers, writers and translators of the future.’
Sara Montgomery, Founder of BookKind, said:
‘We founded BookKind with the belief that buying books can be more than just a transaction, but can be a powerful force for good. Partnering with the Booker Prize Foundation, whose contribution to and support of literary culture is unparalleled, is a natural extension of our mission. Together, we aim to create a meaningful sales platform for Booker-nominated authors and translators, while directly supporting the vital work of the Booker Prize Foundation itself with every sale.’
The Booker Prize Foundation’s impact
Since 1969, 23 countries have been represented by winners of the prizes, 74 by nominated authors; more than 82 Booker-nominated books have been adapted for film and television; 50% of 21st century Nobel Prize in Literature winners were rewarded by the Booker Prizes first; the prizes worked with over 900 UK libraries and over 380 UK and Irish bookshops in 2024; 16 UEA scholars have been supported by the Booker Prize Foundation since 2009; more than 24,000 Booker books have been donated to UK prisons; and more than 15,000 Booker books have been loaned from the RNIB library since 2016.
The International Booker Prize, the world’s most influential award for translated fiction, continues to build in global importance each year. In 2026, the Booker Prize Foundation will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the prize in its current form – the first winner in 2016 was The Vegetarian by Han Kang, translated from Korean by Deborah Smith. Han went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2024.
The winning author and translator can expect a significant increase in their global profile and sales, including in the author’s home country. The prize has helped to drive a boom in translated fiction in the UK, with print sales in 2023 reaching a record £26m, up by 12% on the previous year, according to Nielsen BookData. This is largely down to younger readers, with almost half of translated fiction in the UK bought by under-35s. According to the Bookseller, translated fiction sales have doubled since the International Booker Prize launched in its current form nine years ago, with ‘roughly £1 in every £8 spent through NielsenIQ BookScan’s Fiction category over the past year … on a translated title’.
The announcement of the 2025 winner, Heart Lamp, written by Banu Mushtaq and translated by Deepa Bhasthi – the first collection of short stories to win the prize and the first translated from Kannada – was reported in over 1,826 news stories across 60 countries around the world in the week after its win and the winners’ speech had over 30 million views online. The book rapidly sold out in the UK in the subsequent days, with the UK publisher And Other Stories immediately reprinting 40,000 copies.
The Booker Prize, first awarded in 1969, has rewarded and celebrated world-class talent for over 50 years, shaping the canon of 20th and 21st century literature. Authors shortlisted for the prize gain worldwide readerships and the winner can expect their career to be transformed.
The 2024 winner Orbital by Samantha Harvey sold over 20,000 print copies in the UK in the week following its win on 12 November 2024. It was the bestselling title in the UK that week, topping the Audible audio and Amazon physical and eBook charts. The UK publisher of Orbital, Vintage, reprinted 250,000 copies in response to the sales demand following its Booker Prize win and it remained top of the mass market fiction chart for eight consecutive weeks. Translation rights deals increased from eight before Orbital’s longlisting to a current total of 44 territories.
Ahead of the Booker Prize 2025 winner announcement, the Booker Prize Foundation will release a series of short films featuring high-profile actors performing extracts from the shortlisted books. The Booker Prize Foundation has created the series of six two-minute films for its two annual prizes since 2022. The films, released in spring and autumn, have become one of the highlights of the International Booker Prize and the Booker Prize seasons, with the 2024 films viewed online more than 83 million times. They can be viewed here.
This year’s Booker Prize campaign, ‘Fiction worth talking about’, is designed to encourage readers to explore the books on the 2025 lists, share their thoughts, and connect with others from around the world over their love of great fiction. Videos with the judges can be viewed on the Booker Prize Instagram channel here.
The Booker Prize 2025 ceremony will take place on Monday, 10 November 2025 at Old Billingsgate in London and will be broadcast in a special edition of BBC Radio 4 Front Row at 9.30pm. The winner announcement will be livestreamed on the Booker Prizes’ channels. The winner will receive £50,000 and a trophy named Iris (after 1978 winner Iris Murdoch).
The Booker Prize 2025 longlist
© Yuki Sugiura for Booker Prize FoundationBookKind’s impact
BookKind was launched in June 2025 by Monwell Limited, an established online book retailer. Founded with a mission to make reading a force for good, BookKind offers a wide range of titles for all readers, combining the joy of discovering great books with meaningful social impact: 10% of the value of each sale is donated to one of 10 charity partners.
Since 2016, Monwell has built and managed successful online bookshops for the Guardian, The Times, The Observer and the Mail, and has twice been shortlisted for Book Retailer of the Year at the British Book Awards.
Monwell has a strong track record of charitable giving, donating over £8,000 to a wide range of causes. These include annual staff-selected donations as well as contributions to the Guardian’s charity appeal, which has recently contributed to charities supporting those affected by war, those seeking asylum and those living in food poverty.
With BookKind, we aim to make charitable giving a regular and meaningful part of our business. We support charities tackling some of today’s most pressing challenges, including racial justice, dementia care, children’s literacy, international aid, ocean pollution, mental health, cancer care and children’s health. Charity partners include the Booker Prize Foundation, Dementia UK, Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity, LGBT Foundation, Maggie’s, Mental Health Foundation, Read for Good, Runnymede Trust, Surfers Against Sewage, and War Child UK.
Through our regular Acts of BookKindness, we also give back directly to communities. To date, we have donated £500 worth of books to Maggie’s Cancer Centre in London and pledged another £500 worth of books to help establish a new school library in a disadvantaged area of Sussex.
Read more, give more, and feel good about where your money goes. Visit www.bookkind.co.uk
Find out more
The Booker Prize: visit thebookerprizes.com for practical information on the prizes, as well as in-depth features on the hundreds of books and authors in the Booker Library.
Follow @thebookerprizes on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and Bluesky #BookerPrize2025
Join over 28,000 global readers in the Booker Prize Book Club on Facebook and sign up to the Booker Prizes Substack
BookKind: visit www.bookkind.co.uk and follow @bookkindshop
For media enquiries, please contact:
Alice Ingall, Communications Manager at the Booker Prize Foundation at [email protected] /+44 (0) 7899096299