SALES
719,337 items were sold through the Welsh Books Council's Distribution Centre in 2009/10, amounting to £5.0 million (gross).
Titles were distributed to over 800 outlets on behalf of 350 publishers.
EDITORIAL SERVICES
The Editorial Department dealt with 179 manuscripts during the year on behalf of 17 publishers.
DESIGN SERVICES
The Department provided design services for 100 titles from 11 publishers.
SERVICES TO SCHOOLS
Book Clubs (Y Clwb Llyfrau)
17,700 books, worth a total of £69,182, were sold to 12,159 buyers through Y Clwb Llyfrau (Book clubs) for primary and secondary school children.
Schools Project
The Council's four Schools Officers visited a total of 557+ schools and collected orders amounting to £816,530. (This total includes funding allocated by the Welsh Assembly Government to be spent on educational resources in every primary school in Wales.)
OUTREACH SCHEME
Booksellers arranged 470 sales opportunities under the Outreach Scheme and books worth £165,846 were sold.
DISTRIBUTION OF PUBLISHING GRANTS
The Council distributed a total of £751,250 towards the publishing of English-language books and magazines; 77 books were supported together with three magazines and one literary supplement from the Literature Grant. In addition, 10 books which had received author advance grants were published, and 8 marketing grants were distributed.
A total of £1,553,551 was distributed towards the publishing of Welsh-language books and magazines and other material, such as games, CD-ROMs and other material such as the online news serivce (referred to below). 229 books were supported, and 17 magazines. Payments to authors and illustrators amounted to £245,170, and a sum of £48,254 was distributed to booksellers.
Golwg Newydd continued to be supported with £200,000 of additional funding from the Welsh Assembly Government that was set up to establish an online news service, and to strengthen the monthly magazine, Golwg. The new service, Golwg 360, was launched in May 2009.