Thoughts about giving away books (or trying to...)

[resqgeek]

Saturday, the City of Gaithersburg, Maryland, held their third annual Gaithersburg Book Festival, and I joined with other local members of BookCrossing.com to give away BookCrossing books. The festival was scheduled to run from 10am to 6pm, but we arrived around 9am so we would have time to set up and get organized. That turned out to be a good thing, as people started to stop at our booth and look through the books by 9:30 and by 9:45 we had a small crowd forming. From that point on, we had a pretty steady crowd through the rest of the morning, and the books were going away fast enough that we worried that we didn’t have enough to last for the entire event (I don’t have a firm number, but we had somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,250 books when we started). Thankfully, around 1pm, the crowds around our booth thinned out somewhat as people began to fill the various tents that were the venues for the guest speakers. By the end of the event we only had about 40-50 books left on our table, which made packing up a breeze!

That success was a marked contrast to the struggles I had on and around World Book Night. When I signed up to be a ‘book giver’ for World Book Night (WBN), I figured it would be easy to give away 20 copies of one of the WBN titles. After all, we give away hundreds (even thousands) of books every year at the Book Festivals in Kensington and Maryland, and I ‘release’ hundreds every year as part of my BookCrossing hobby. However, the organizers of the WBN expressed a preference for a person-to-person hand-off of the books and an emphasis on trying to place the books in the hands of light- or non-readers. I wanted to respect these preferences, which pretty much ruled out my usual release technique of ‘abandoning’ the book in a public location and walking away. Still, how hard could it be to hand people free copies of a book?

Heh! Turns out that it is very difficult to just hand out free books to strangers on the street. The difference between our success in Gaithersburg and my struggles on WBN, I think, comes down to demographics. The people who attend Book Festivals, like the one we participated in on Saturday, are already predisposed to be open to books. They enjoy reading and appreciate books, and welcome an opportunity to get books for free. On the other hand, my efforts in relation to WBN were totally random, as I simply stopped people on the street to offer them a book. For the most part, my pitch was met with skepticism (“What’s the catch?”), but many people wouldn’t even let me finish my pitch, interrupting with a dismissive comment and walking away. Some people almost acted as if they might catch something if they took my book (“Why would I want a book?” was what their body language seemed to say). In the end, I was so happy when someone was willing to take a book that I couldn’t be bothered to try and figure out if they were a light- or non-reader.

Next year, I think I want a better plan. After talking to some of the other BookCrossers who also participated in WBN, I’m think that we might want to combine our efforts. Not only would that help build morale, but we would also have a variety of titles to offer people, which (perhaps) will make it easier to give them away. But that is next year, so we have plenty of time to plan. Meanwhile, I’m left wondering about how wide the gap is between those who love books and those who simply can’t be bothered.

Comments

[melydia.livejournal.com]

I think another issue with WBN is that if you look at basically everybody else on the street who wants to give you something free, it's either (a) not really free at all, or (b) religious material.

I also am skeptical about the efficacy of handing books to "light- or non-readers", as if that will somehow make them read more. I'm a voracious reader and I'd still be far more likely to read something recommended by a friend than handed to me by some random dude on the street. I know plenty of non-readers, and none of them eschew the practice out of a lack of books. They just don't like reading, and won't go out of their way to read, no matter how many books are shoved in their hands.

But I suppose that's a disagreement with WBN's core philosophy, which is why I didn't sign up to distribute books anyway. :)

But ooooh if Art-o-matic is happening at the same time next year, maybe you could do something with that. Heh.

[mojosmom.livejournal.com]

everybody else on the street who wants to give you something free, it's either (a) not really free at all, or (b) religious material.

or (c) Wild Animus

[resqgeek]

or (c) Wild Animus

Ackk! That's the second or third reference to that horid title I've heard in the last couple of weeks. And yes, if anyone had been given that book for free, I could completely understand their reluctance to accept unsolicited free boook!

[florafloraflora.livejournal.com]

What she said: it's just hard to give things away for free. Thanks to millions of hucksters over the years, people expect either a) there's a catch, or b) the book's not any good, or both. And then some people, like me, are just shy and don't want to risk talking to a stranger. In a situation like G'burg where you let people come to you, the odds are much better.