World Book Night U.S. Launches Website, Social Media Presence

World Book Night U.S. has launched www.worldbooknight.com [1], the official website for the April 23 celebration that aims to spread a love of reading and books through the giveaway of a million books across the country on one night. WBN also launched this week on Twitter [2] and Facebook [3].

“This is a soft launch, with much more to come,” said World Book Night U.S. Executive Director Carl Lennertz. “With the U.K.’s ongoing support, we adapted their website template to our needs. We especially wanted to highlight links to all of our sponsors, and we will soon have downloadable bookseller and library promotional materials, as well as, of course, news of the book picks and the book giver registration process starting in December.” Links to the nine regional bookseller association websites will also be added soon.

The American Booksellers Association is forming a bookseller task force to help guide member bookseller participation in World Book Night. Booksellers who are interested in serving on the task force are asked to e-mail ABA CEO Oren Teicher. [4]

Work on WBN’s Twitter and Facebook presence has been undertaken by students in the Master of Science Publishing program at the NYU-SCPS Center for Publishing under the direction of Andrea Chambers. Students working on the project are Erin Cox, Laura Flavin, Melodie George, Lavanya Narasimhan, Alicia Olivares, Laura Peraza and Hannah Werthan.

World Book Night U.S. is on Twitter at twitter.com/wbnamerica [5]and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/worldbooknightusa [3]. Questions should be addressed to carl@worldbooknight.org [6].

During the April 23 celebration of World Book Night in the U.S., 50,000 book givers will hand out 20 copies of one of the 25 World Book Night picks in communities across the U.S. Over the course of the night, a total of a million paperbacks will be given away. Bookstores and libraries will be encouraged to put up displays of the books in their regular editions.

World Book Night in the U.S. is a 501(c)3 charitable organization, supported by publishers, Barnes & Noble, the American Booksellers Association, the Association of American Publishers, and Ingram.