Theakstons, Leeds Met, HarperCollins, Headline, Little Brown, Transworld, Pan MacMillan, Simon & Schuster,  Orion, Random House, Welcome To Yorkshire… the Crime Writing Festival at Harrogate attracts big brands. And there’s a good reason.

“The Hay-on-Wye of the crime world.” The Times

The crime genre’s 170 year history is an enduring one, from Edgar Allen Poe to Ian Rankin; it is reinvented time and time again. No wonder crime has been dubbed as ‘the genre that just won’t die.’

A survey into crime fiction by Nielsen BookScan for The Bookseller magazine revealed that in 2002, more than 450,000 hardback crimes and mystery titles were sold worth £5.3m. And the public bought more than three million crime and mystery paperbacks, costing more than £40m, placing the genre second only to general fiction. And the genre keeps growing to this day.

It’s nothing new. Agatha Christie’s 66 novels, 20 plays and 154 short stories have been outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare.
(source: BBC Online).

If you look at the top ten paperback or hardback charts in any week, you can guarantee crime authors will dominate. In 2007, half of the top ten titles were thrillers. Crime adapts, it never goes stale. Bookseller lists and library lending figures all reveal the same thing: crime dominates.

And crime books are part of an even bigger cultural phenomenon -adapted for radio, TV and film. If you are interested in becoming a sponsor, you’ll not only be supporting one of the leading arts festivals in the north, you’ll be exposing your brand to the widest of demographics: the young, hip, die-hard The Wire fans, the viewers of the popular ITV-hit Wire in the Blood and the Sunday evening audience of Daziel and Pascoe, to name a few.

Since the first Festival in 2003, it has grown, and grown. The Festival found its first major sponsor in 2004 with independent Yorkshire brewery: Theakstons. It has been an incredibly successful partnership. In December 2007, the Festival won the Arts & Business Sustainability Award, Yorkshire, for T&R Theakston’s sponsorship of the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival. Simon Theakston, Executive Director of T&R Theakston told the press he was delighted to have signed up for another five year sponsorship: “We are thrilled to receive this Award, as it recognises how successful a partnership can be when there is a clear synergy between the two brands.”

Thanks to the global names it attracts, the Festival generates huge media coverage. From the on-going support of the local Harrogate Advertiser and Yorkshire Post, to national features and online blogs in the Times, the Telegraph, the Independent and the Guardian.

The Festival frequently features broadcasts from Radio Four’s Front Row, with regular high profile journalists in attendance, such as Jenni Murray, Mark Lawson, Observer crime critic Peter Guttridge and Guardian commentator Marcel Berlins. The Festival has attracted the attention of TV producers too. The 2006 Festival provided rich pickings for the ITV series Super Sleuths. And when ITV3 launched a six-week Crime Thriller Season culminating in the televised ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards, they launched the series with an event at the 2008 Festival.

The Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, Harrogate is now the largest in Europe: it would be a crime to miss out on such an opportunity. If you are interested in becoming a sponsor, call us on: 01423 562303