Now this is very interesting. There was a lot of controversy, apparently, about giving away a million books to people in the streets on World Book Night. Apparently many booksellers thought that giving away good books to people would devalue books, and take away from sales.
However the creators of this event have been vindicated, since sales actually ROSE for books included in the sale.
Now this does make sense. As Tim Waterstone, the founder of the UK chain Waterstones noted, books are not a finite market: you can always draw in new readers, and you can always get old readers to buy more books (I look myself in the mirror: I tend to buy more books than I ever have time to read!!! Suck me in, suck me in!!).
Some books sold over 60% more copies on the SAME DAY as the giveaway (presumably as their profile was raised, either in the media or by people getting them and talking about them) AND some of the books had a double or triple increase in sales in the weeks following the giveaway.
Now this all makes sense to me. When they give away iPads for a day, does it devalue iPads or create a buzz and a feeding frenzy? If they gave away cars for a day and you saw your friends driving that spiffy new Toyota hatchback the next day, or got a ride in it to work, might you not want to pick one up for yourself? And unlike cars, books are "consumables", ie when you finish one, if it was good, you put it down and look for another one, esp another one the same or similar flavour. Kind of like ice cream giveaways, or imported organic chocolate giveaways. Food vendors have understood the "give away today, create a fan for tomorrow" consumer for ever... why not book publishers and vendors.
I think this is a fantastic idea, and can only hope to see it here in Canada.
Similar initiatives? Free Comic Book Day (on May 7 this year), and the TD bank's Canadian Children's Reading Week book giveaway to all grade one students in Canada each year. I was lucky enough to have a book I illustrated, "The Girl Who Hated Books" be the featured book in 2003! Let me say that it cuts a nice royalty cheque!
Give a book today!
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