I remember my eighth birthday perfectly. I’d been given the German version of St Clare’s and Pinocchio. Until then, reading had been something I was good at, a skill that earned me stars but hadn’t quite entered my inner world. That night, everything changed. I read Pinocchio from cover to cover; my first all-nighter and the first time a story became part of me.

More nights like that followed, especially when I discovered Enid Blyton. Reading her in translation as a bilingual German child was odd; the rhythms of English childhood feeling somewhat alien. Nonetheless, stories were already doing what they do best: revealing places I didn’t yet know how to enter and helping me imagine the person I might become.

This came in to its own a couple of years later when my parents separated and we moved to England. Though everything changed I’d already rehearsed my reinvention through books.

Reading didn’t just let me escape; the stories were helping me imagine myself into a new life. The words on the page became maps.

Nearly 50 years on, I’m still finding myself through what I read. Over the last five months I’ve been lost in romance – a kind of emotional physiotherapy. This week, my mind has felt ready for deeper engagement again and I’ve returned to Rovelli, St Anselm and Nouwen.

That rhythm mirrors what I explored in my Writers & Artists essay, When Consumption Becomes Creation: reading isn’t passive. We metabolise stories. They soothe, restore and provoke; ultimately stirring us back into creative life.

This is why the idea of readers as creators matters. As a writer, editor and most recently Partnerships Lead at Libraro, I’ve seen how often we default to a simple chain: writers create, publishers choose, readers receive. But that’s not how culture works. Readers shape culture as powerfully as writers. They spark trends, champion overlooked voices, create communities and push stories beyond the predictable and commercially ‘safe’.

This has become especially important in a publishing environment that is narrowing under economic pressure. As I wrote recently in my BookBrunch piece on discovery models, when the industry is forced to chase only commercially secure titles, the more lyrical, daring or structurally experimental books begin to disappear. The choices available to readers shrink, often before we realise it. Once those imaginative ecosystems wither, they’re painfully hard to regrow.

Readers, however, resist flattening. They always have. But they need structures that allow their influence to matter before the industry decides what counts. This is where Libraro comes in.

Libraro’s technology supports people-powered publishing. Its safe-sharing model enables readers to engage with work before it’s published and to signal what resonates earlier in the process. It gives writers transparency and advocacy while providing agents and publishers with insight rather than guesswork. By widening the field, Libraro supports the expertise held by traditional publishing while restoring something the industry urgently needs: participation.

The ‘submit, wait, hope’ pipeline was designed for a different era. Today, readers move culture in real time. Their enthusiasm, curiosity and willingness to share and champion books they love – these are creative forces. Libraro simply gives those forces a safe, structured place to act.

The belief that readers are cultural co-creators is shared deeply by LoveReading. It’s why Libraro and LoveReading have created a partnership built on shared values and a social and cultural purpose. LoveReading’s longstanding commitment to literacy, especially for children, mirrors the experience of many of us industry veterans: the writers, readers, booksellers and innovators who make up the Libraro team. The me on my eighth birthday understood what research now confirms: stories are portals. They offer escape and imagination, but also resilience and possibility. Children who read widely create wider worlds for themselves.

By coupling Libraro’s #safediscoverability model with LoveReading’s engaged community of readers, a new kind of ecosystem is building– one driven by purpose as much as opportunity. Here, readers help shape the books that rise; writers gain clarity, agency and support; and publishers encounter stories with genuine evidence of resonance. Together we can help culture benefit from a richer, more textured pipeline of voices.

The Libraro Prize, opening in January 2026, is an expression of this shared vision. Free to enter, aimed at adult and YA fiction writers and strengthened by LoveReading’s community reach, it places reader engagement at the centre of discovery. Opening mid-January and closing a month later, it offers a genuinely career-shaping book deal supported by a £30,000 advance + £20,000 marketing budget. It also includes £20,000 in Reader Prizes, rewarding readers who engage meaningfully with entries, as well as those who refer writers into the Prize. If a referred writer goes on to win, their referrer can receive a £10,000 award, which may be shared with the LoveReading Foundation and will be supported by a Libraro donation.

Readers made me a writer long before I knew that’s what was happening. They shaped the stories I reached for, the courage I found, the inner world I built. And now, through partnerships like this, readers have the opportunity to shape the literary future too – not as bystanders, but as creators in their own right.

Find out more about Libraro:

• Join us for an informal partner webinar on 10 December at 1pm. You can register via the link here: https://libraro.link/mkg *

• You can visit the site here: https://www.libraro.com

* By registering you are consenting to marketing messages and agree to be recorded as part of this interactive webinar.

Madeleine F White is founding editor of Pen to Print’s Write On! publications, a novelist and poet, and Partnerships Lead at Libraro, where she works to democratise publishing through safe-sharing technology, transparent discovery models and community-led engagement.