World Book Night

As a footnote to my post earlier today about World Book Day I thought I’d draw readers’ attention to an alternative supplementary event taking place on March the 5th.The inaugural World Book Night will see a million books being given away for free by members of the public. It’s certainly an interesting idea and anything that promotes the joy of reading has got to be a good thing. However, there is a danger that the plan could have a detrimental impact on independent booksellers and in some way suppress the book trade.

A rather more innovative idea has been proposed by the author Nicola Morgan (award winning author of books such as Wasted, Deaqthwatch and Fleshmarket). Writing on her blog she suggested that rather than a mass give away by publishers of pre-selected books, individual members of the public should be encouraged to purchase a book (preferably from an independent bookseller or directly from the publisher) and give it away to a friend, stranger, doctor’s surgery or the like with the following inscription: ‘Given in the spirit of World Book Night, March 5th 2011 and bought from [insert name of shop] – please enjoy and tell people about it.’. You can read her blog entry here.