Towards strengthening the resilience of the book world after Covid-19

Goal In collaboration with representatives of Dutch authors, publishers, booksellers, libraries, reading promoters, knowledge institutes and government, this research maps the impact of the corona crisis. Central questions in the research are: which support measures and citizen initiatives have had what effect? What forms of cooperation could strengthen the sector? Results The Dutch book sector has proven to be vulnerable in the corona crisis: bookstores and authors in particular are having a hard time. Physical bookstores face a lot of competition from online bookstores, authors earn less from the sale of books and miss out on income from performances. That vulnerability will probably not decrease in 2021. However, there are opportunities for recovery: the sector is well organized and the sector players agree on core values. Making literature accessible - for example through reading promotion projects for children and young people - is generally seen as the most important value; Collaboration within the sector is also considered crucial. Based on these core values, the sector can make itself more resilient: this requires further protection of vulnerable players and the implementation of strict policies on reading promotion and inequality of opportunity in reading education and to work more closely together, for example in the online sale of books.