The Challenges of World Book Night
April 24, 2012
Judith Rosen describes the challenges of giving away free books on World Book Night (when publishers call on volunteers to distribute books to people who do not ordinarily read much). Apparently, people in New York are suspicious of those giving away books, and many readers have already switched over to a Kindle. In one case, Rosen made a mistake, accidentally giving a book to a woman who was already a “reader.”
Kris Merino talked about World Book Night last month on her blog; I hope she updates us on her experiences.
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World Book Night in Edinburgh:
http://schietree.wordpress.com/2012/04/23/world-book-night-how-it-went-down/
Sounds like it was an interesting experience.
Thanks for the link Nina — I would have missed that.
I have some sympathy for these people. Last year, I dramatically culled my own library, and found myself with about two thousand books to give away (94 bankers boxes worth of books, to be exact.) The books were mostly high quality volumes in excellent condition. All I hoped was that the books did not go to waste — I did not want any money or even a tax donation credit for the books. What I found is that it was very hard to give away a lot of books — every public library and school library within a twenty mile radius turned down the donation. Even used bookstores were uninterested in processing that many books.
I finally found a place that would take the books (and it even sent out people to pick up the many boxes) but it was much harder that I would have thought.
(Don’t feel sorry for me though — I still own thousands of books, even after the give-away. At least for now, I have enough reading material to keep me happy for decades — and I still continue to buy new books.)