The Editorial Committee
- Mariella Frostrup (Chair)
- Julia Kingsford (CEO, WBN)
- Jamie Byng (Publisher, Canongate; WBN founder)
- Chris White (Waterstones fiction buyer)
- Patrick Neale (Owner, Jaffe & Neale Books)
- Sion Hamilton (Foyles Charing Cross Road Manager)
- Seni Glaister (CEO The Book People)
- Sandy Mahal (The Reading Agency)
- Angela Hicken (Literature Development Officer)
- Gaby Wood (Telegraph Head of Books)
- Natasha Harding (Sun Books Editor)
- Amanda Ross (MD Cactus TV)
- Andrea Levy (Author)
- Polly Samson (Author)
- Cathy Rentzenbrink (Quick Reads)
- Phoebe Ravenhall (2012 Giver)
- Jen Nicholas (2012 Giver).
The Process
The public voted via our website for their Top 10 Favourite books and the top 100 from this list informs the committee's book choices. The editorial committee met for the first time in early September to choose the books and subsequently 3 weeks later to finalise the list.
We consider the balance of the list to ensure that lots of different genres or types of books are included as well as the accessibility of the individual books. We focus on the best possible books in each area and many authors will be prize winners, bestsellers or most borrowed. We have to believe that enough people around the country will feel passionately enough about a book to volunteer to give it away and that it’s a book people can really enthuse about. Each year we try to include some very popular books as well as a few which are a little less well known.
We don’t expect everyone to love or want to read every book we feature, but we do expect there to be at least one book there that will appeal to everyone.
Once the books are chosen we seek the permission of the publishers and authors (or their estates) who have to agree to waive their royalties on the tens of thousands of books which will be given away. The publishers also agree to pay for the production of the books – in total the publishing industry are gifting millions of pounds of books through World Book Night to share the love of reading.
It takes about 6 weeks from choosing the books to announcing them to give us the time we need to fully prepare.
