World Book Night 2012

Last night was the second World Book Night. What a great opportunity for a Children in Need-style programme to get everyone excited about books but nope. The whole thing, to me, is quite unsatisfactory. I’d quite happily spend my evening watching author interviews, learning about new books and authors, getting some ideas for my book club but it seems that the whole thing has been played down or is that just me? I just would have thought that, being in the industry, I would have a bit more WBN hype in my inbox…

If you’re like me and seem to have missed this year’s hype, here is the low-down on World Book Night 2012.

Essentially World Book Night was set up by organiser Jamie Byng as a celebration of books and to ‘raise awareness’ of reading by putting books in the hands of non-readers. On the night, 20,000 volunteers head out into their nearby cities armed with their favourite book from the list (this year’s 25 books look pretty good and you can see a full list here), and handed them out to people in the street. So basically 20,000 book geeks ambush your local city - hoorah!

From my point of view, in the Kindle age, it's quite nice that books are being given a bit of help. Unfortunately, the whole point is that they go out for free... quite the debate amongst the publishing community who, ultimately, have to provide the books and sacrifice the royalties. You will notice, though, and for that reason, that most of these are back-list titles, so it's a great opportunity to rave about and get your hands on some great modern, and not-so-modern, classics.