World Book Night, which will give away half a million free books on April 23, 2013, announced the following milestones leading up to the event:
- Giver applications for this year closed two weeks ahead of last year’s deadline with all targets met for an ideal number of qualified givers in a broad range of geographical locations and community environments. 6,200 towns and cities will be represented in April 2013, up from 5,800 last year.
- Plans are set for twelve simultaneous World Book Night Kick-Off Events around the country on the evening of Monday, April 22 featuring WBN authors. One of the anchor events will be Ann Patchett and James Patterson appearing together at Parnassus Books in Nashville that evening. A map of all the events will be released shortly.
- The popular WBN book-and-author social media campaign that kicked off last fall will continue year-round, with the current phase featuring WBN pick theme discussions, followed by giver anecdotes about sharing and community this spring and book recipient feedback this summer.
- The 500,000 special WBN 2013 paperbacks are coming off press ahead of schedule.
- Giver acceptances are on schedule to go out by email in late February; bookstores and libraries will be notified of their givers in late March.
- Host bookstore and library sign-up is completed, and there will again be over 2,000 WBN host locations this year. Of note, 250 more libraries signed up this year than last year thanks to coordination by the ALA.
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