World Book Night Deadline Extended to February 6

World Book Night (WBN) has extended the sign-up deadline to midnight on Monday, February 6, for book givers and for stores and libraries that would like to serve as book pick-up locations for the April 23 celebration of reading. The goal is to recruit 50,000 book givers and hundreds of bookstores and libraries to be book pick-up locations across the country.

WBN is urging ABA members to keep promoting book giver sign-up to their staff members and customers and is asking stores to fill out the online form to become a book pick-up location without delay.

Each of the book givers will choose a store or library from a menu of local choices for their book pick-up. WBN will then ship specifically labeled boxes to the store, one for each giver who chooses that store as his or her pick-up location.

Part of WBN’s mission is to get more people into stores and libraries, and serving as a focal point of WBN activity is a perfect opportunity to extend a bookstore’s community outreach.

To help booksellers encourage more customers to become book givers, WBN has provided sample language (at the end of this article) that can easily be customized for an e-mail blast to a store’s mailing list.

Later in February or early March, if a store develops a creative idea for involving a group of givers who have not yet signed up, there will be the opportunity to complete a bulk copy order form to bring in extra cartons of World Book Night editions. The store would need “to agree to get the group organized, sign a WBN pledge, and send them on their way,” explained World Book Night U.S. Executive Director Carl Lennertz. Likewise, WBN will also ask for volunteer stores to be World Book Night state captains (as many per state as needed) to serve as a location to bring in additional boxes as a back-up to boxes gone missing elsewhere and, more importantly, for any customers who come in close to the date of WBN and say, “Hey, can I still participate?”

Lennertz is encouraging booksellers to muse on the group activity idea for later this month. Questions can be sent to carl@worldbooknight.org.

Dear customer of {your store name},

Want to be part of a million-book giveaway? To volunteer to change a life? You can, as part of World Book Night, on April 23, 2012. The deadline to sign up to be a book giver has just been extended to February 6.

But give us a moment to explain.

World Book Night is a campaign to find light or non-readers in the community and hand them each a book.

Person-to-person.

It was started in the U.K. last year, and it is coming to our shores on April 23, 2012 – Shakespeare’s birthday, not coincidentally – as well!

The World Book Night organization is printing hundreds of thousands of special free paperback editions, and they are looking for thousands of volunteers to go out on April 23 and give books out across America to get more people reading.

You pick the place: hospital or diner, school or ... well, lots of possibilities. Be creative.

Sign up by February 6 to be a book giver on World Book Night! Please go the website to read up on its mission, the books you can choose from to give away, and some rules and regulations. All you need to become a giver is a little time, a love of books, and the desire to give something to your community.
 
Think about where you’d like to give away the books before you go online to apply. And thank you! We love this idea and we will be your community center for World Book Night support.

www.worldbooknight.org

{Store Name}