The Bookseller - Comment - Dyslexia on the shelves

The narrative has changed at last for adult dyslexia-friendly books, and we can't stop now! It is full steam ahead. In 2021, we at BOTH Press started publishing dyslexia-friendly books for adults, and now have more than 21 publications from authors such as Bernard Cornwell, Peter James and Garth Nix. I have been campaigning furiously all this time, to encourage the Big Five UK publishers to do more. I challenged the industry to publish dyslexia-friendly books with my comment pieces for The Bookseller in 2022 and 2023, with the latter asking publishers to produce 1% of their fiction in dyslexia-friendly formats.

At last, one of the Big Five UK has done so, and I am excited where we can go from this. Well done, Bloomsbury-you should be congratulated, and rightly so. This should be a starting gun for more of the leading publishers to follow suit. When 10% of the population has dyslexia, it not just a niche thing, nor a moral thing, but the right business thing to publish a wide range of dyslexia-friendly books for both children and adults.