As night must follow day, so World Book Night came into being. The response from the rest of the group, led by Julia Kingsford, marketing director at Foyles, was immediately and unanimously positive. Well, to the Night part at least! Because I also said that if we were going to launch a new initiative then we needed to do so in a way that was ambitious, attention-grabbing and unprecedented. And that giving a million books away on a single night was all three of these things. As well as generous. And quite possibly crazy too.
Counter-intuitive not crazy, is my firmly held belief. I’ve spent 18 years in publishing and nothing will persuade me that anything is more important than what is inside the covers of a book. This is not to say that I don’t recognise the importance of marketing, publicity or production values. These can all help a book to find its audience, but what matters most is that when someone finishes reading a book they are so affected by it that they have to tell other people about it. This is what creates the elusive ‘word of mouth’ that results in a great book selling for many years.
By taking 25 great books, printing a million of them, and then recruiting 20,000 people to give these books away in whatever way they choose, we have set something into motion that should have a hugely beneficial impact on reading in this country. The thought of a million people having a physical book pressed into their hands along with a recommendation by the giver, who has no reason to give the book other than a desire to share it, is also a hugely exciting one. It will result in millions of additional conversations about books. And in books being read by people who otherwise might not have read them. And in books being shared and inspiring more conversations, dreams and ideas.
World Book Night is unquestionably idealistic, but at the heart of this cross-industry initiative lies the physical book, a remarkable invention that is facing fresh digital challenges to its position at the heart of our culture. For as well as World Book Night being a celebration of writing and reading, it is a celebration of the book as an object, a thing than can be shared. And the World Book Night editions, designed by Pentagram and printed by Clays, should act as a spur for additional book sales as people are reminded of the remarkable power a book can wield.
Time will tell how big an impact World Book Night has on reading in this country. But in 2012, it looks set to go global and become truly a World Book Night. The possibilities are dizzying and endless.
Jamie Byng is chair of World Book Night and publisher and managing director of Canongate Books
Books: a print phenomenon at the heart of our culture
World Book Night was conceived last May during a roundtable conversation on the second day of the Book Industry Conference. The group I was in was tasked with discussing World Book Day and how to make it more effective as an adult promotion. World Book Day's positive impact on children's reading and writing has been, and continues to be, considerable but it had never really 'worked' for adult readers. Could we, in an hour, come up with some ideas that could then be shared with the other delegates?
