Two Major World Book Night Deadlines Approach

Promotional ideas for right now

Friday, January 11, is the absolute final date for independent booksellers to file marketing agreements to be host stores for World Book Night. “If you didn’t receive an e-mail from me last week with updates: a) please check your spam folder, and b) I haven’t received a form from you,” World Book Night U.S. Executive Director Carl Lennertz said. “Please e-mail me [1], and I’ll send back the form — no worries. It’s also in the Resources section of the WBN website [2] along with other useful items.

And Wednesday, January 23, will be the final day for giver applications to be submitted via the WBN website. Lennertz added this good news: “I’ve sent indie booksellers an Excel form that they can fill out to make becoming a giver simpler. The Excel was included in last week’s e-mail. Let me know if you need it again.”

Lennertz also passed along two simple ideas for right now — before the January 23 giver application deadline — to help indie booksellers promote WBN participation at their stores:

• E-mail and Tweet your customers and encourage them to apply.  The message is much simpler this year: Apply to be a World Book Night book giver by January 23. That’s it.  All the rest of it — guidelines and everything else — is on the WBN site; just link to www.us.worldbooknight.org [3].
   
• And a display idea from Christie Olson Day of Gallery Bookshop & Bookwinkle’s Children’s Books [4] in Mendocino, California: “Last year, we noticed that when we put up the WBN book display in April, everybody wanted to volunteer. So we’re carving out space now for a smaller preview display on our New Year’s table: ‘Resolution: Volunteer to be a World Book Night Giver.’ We think it’ll sell books AND recruit lots of volunteers.”