A Festival Experience That Transforms Reading Culture

How big do you want it to be? There are 4 key areas that you will need to fund:

Your Venue – speak to local council and/or college and universities about using their spaces for a free/low cost solution;
Author Fees  – authors and illustrators should be paid a minimum fee of £300, in line with the Society of Authors guidelines. If you are running a week of events with 5 authors, your fees should be a minimum of £1,500;
Book Orders – again, this depends on the number of children you want to involve. On average the cost of a book is £8.99 – multiply that by the number of children, but don’t forget that on average we can negotiate a 50% discount with our suppliers. We also find that this is an ideal way to engage local businesses in sponsorship – free books for children is an easy win!
Transport – again, this is dependent on your local area, numbers of schools, children, etc. Working with your local education transport provider is a great option here, and can create a low cost solution
BookTastic Support – as a not-for-profit we are able to supplement our costs through central grant funding. To ensure we are able to provide support when you need it, we charge 5% of your operating budget each year – we find this is a realistic way of identifying how much help you will need from us.

Here is a sample budget:

Venue – £5,000
Author Fees – £3,500
Book Orders for 1,250 children – £11,238
Transport – LEA buses £4,000
Subtotal – £23,738
BookTastic Fee @ 5% – £1,187*
Total – £24,925

*Fee dependent upon festival budget. A fully costed delivery plan must be submitted at the start of the programme to be agreed with BookTastic CIC, to ensure it is realistically costed.

12 months before your desired festival dates. This ensures author availability and adequate preparation time. To ensure you can meet the project delivery deadlines involved, we suggest starting the conversation with us 18 months in advance of your preferred festival date.

Sample Timeline:
January 2026 – Expression of Interest
February to May 2026 – Drawing up agreements and planning documentation
June 2026 – Signed booking for festival June 2027
September/October 2026 – Pupil Programme Voting
December 2026 – Programme Announcement
January to May 2027 – Schools deliver classroom programme; MAT team delivers event management plan
June 2027 – Festival Week
July 2027 – Post-programme evaluation

BookTastic works best with 8+ schools (typically a MAT or partnership), but we can discuss options for smaller groups or individual schools joining regional festivals.

We primarily work with MATs/trusts, but individual schools can join existing regional festivals as satellite participants. Contact us to explore options.

We can deliver festivals for all school ages; we find the optimum year group is Year 3, as this is the point at which a natural inclination towards reading can begin to decline, and allows for longitudinal evaluation throughout their remaining primary years.

We curate authors based on your pupils’ ages, reading levels, and interests, prioritising quality, diversity, and educational value. You can request specific authors or themes (these cannot be guaranteed).

As a not-for-profit our aim is to find a way to inspire all children to discover the joy of reading, regardless of background. If you want to start small with a pilot event, we can work with you to establish data that will attract larger funding further down the line.