Categories: Social Media

World Book Night: Giving away one million free books in one night

Several of the UK and Ireland’s largest publishers will be giving away 1 million free books to members of the public this Saturday in what is being described as “the most ambitious and far-reaching celebration of adult books and reading ever attempted.”

World Book Night, the UK charity, responsible for the event is turning to social media to promote the more traditional print media. Since December 2010 the World Book Night charity has been recruiting 20,000 volunteers through their website, Twitter and Facebook pages to act as a crowdsourced army of book hawkers. These volunteers will give out free editions to their friends, family and complete strangers on the night itself. The event will take place two days after the larger World Book Day on March 3.

Each volunteer will give away a selection of 25 books from different authors and genres, from Erich Maria Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front” to the more recent “Cloud Atlas” by David Mitchell (no, not that David Mitchell).

The night will be a transmedia affair with the state broadcasters BBC and RTÉ joining with the Publishers Association, the Booksellers Association, the Independent Publishers Guild, the Reading Agency with libraries and World Book Day. Graham Norton will host a television broadcast with the charity’s patrons John Le Carré, Rupert Everett, Alan Bennett and Nick Cave.

New media will be represented by Sony who will be hosting “live virtual book club” event on March 3 in London’s Trafalgar Square and on Twitter with @WorldBookNight via the #tag #agooderead.

But with Borders having filed for bankruptcy and Waterstones shutting dozens on high street shops times are hard for the book trade, so can giving away free books really promote renewed audience for books?

Let us know what you think here.

Ajit Jain

Ajit Jain is marketing and sales head at Octal Info Solution, a leading iPhone app development company and offering platform to hire Android app developers for your own app development project. He is available to connect on Google Plus, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

View Comments

  • So how does this actually work, are large book retailers going to be giving the public free books or is this some sort of book exchange that memebers of the public give away their own books inexcgange for other books from strangers.

Recent Posts

Bridging Traditional Venture Capital and the Masses: Democratizing Startup and Private Market Investments

Article by Luis X Barrios, CEO of Arkangeles For far too long, venture capital has…

19 hours ago

WEF scrubs ‘Valuing Nature’s Assets’ session from Sustainable Development Impact Meetings

The World Economic Forum (WEF) deletes a session entitled, "Valuing Nature's Assets," from its Sustainable…

3 days ago

Horasis India Meeting 2024: Here’s look at 10 key speakers this week in Athens

The theme of the 2024 Horasis India Meeting is cooperation, impact investing, and sustainable growth…

5 days ago

UN Summit of the Future Global Call: World leaders advocate Agenda 2030, UN reform

World leaders gather on the UN Summit of the Future Global Call to advocate for…

1 week ago

A Look Into AI and the Risks to Elections

Image via: Freepik When an entire nation devotes its attention to Vice President Kamala Harris…

1 week ago

5 ‘interconnected shifts’ are driving ‘profound systemic transformation’: Klaus Schwab, WEF report

World Economic Forum (WEF) founder Klaus Schwab says that the world is undergoing profound systemic…

1 week ago