World Book Night Reaches Major Milestones

This week, U.S. Executive Director Carl Lennertz announced several major milestones in the preparations for this year’s giveaway of a half million free books during the April 23 celebration of World Book Night.  [1] During the second annual U.S. event, givers will fan out in 6,200 cities and towns across the country to distribute 500,000 special edition books to light or non-readers.

Among the milestones announced this week:

• Plans are set for simultaneous World Book Night Kick-Off Events around the country on the evening of Monday, April 22, featuring WBN authors. One of the anchor events will feature Ann Patchett and James Patterson appearing together at Parnassus Books [2] in Nashville, Tennessee. A map of all the events will be released shortly.
   
• The WBN book-and-author social media campaign, which kicked off last fall, will continue year-round. The next phase features themed discussions based on WBN title picks, followed by giver anecdotes about sharing and the sense of community generated by WBN this spring, and book recipient feedback this summer.
   
• The 500,000 special WBN 2013 paperbacks are coming off press ahead of schedule.
   
• Giver acceptances are on schedule to go out by e-mail in late February; bookstores and libraries will be notified of their givers in late March.
   
• Host bookstore and library sign-up is completed, and there will again be more than 2,000 WBN host locations this year. An additional 250 libraries signed up this year thanks to coordination by the American Library Association.

Lennertz also told BTW that WBN will be starting up a regular newsletter (“a brief one, promise!” he said) to keep participating booksellers and librarians informed of imminent deadlines as well as in the loop about what the givers are hearing and when.

“So much work has already been done by the booksellers and librarians, the printers and binders, and the great Ingram team,” Lennertz said. “I also want to thank the participating authors and their wonderful publicists who helped me work out the simultaneous event plan, which I’m calling ‘From Berkeley to Boston, Portland to Pass Christian.’ And, ultimately, all credit to the volunteer givers, whose enthusiasm and passion has made reading their applications an emotional and rewarding rollercoaster. There are a lot of people in need in this country, and the givers’ desire to share the joy of a book is something to behold.”