World Book Night offers the perfect opportunity for you to celebrate with your existing customers, bring new people into your shop and engage with the community.
You can engage customers online through your website and social media, hosting competitions, virtual parties and getting involved in the Reading Hour.
Resources for bookshops including an activity toolkit are available on our resources page.
Using the booklist
The World Book Night list offers the perfect selection of books to offer your customers. We’ve worked with publishers to put together a really exciting and engaging list. There’s something on here for everyone, including fiction, non-fiction and books aimed at teens and young adults.
If you have the books in stock and are able to post books out yourself, you can use the booklist to give ideas to customers looking for something to read. We work with Hive on an affiliate programme, so if your shop is registered, let us know and we can provide a link to allow customers to support both your shop and The Reading Agency. We also have an affiliate page on Bookshop.org.
There are different ways that you can use World Book Night as both a commercial and charitable opportunity for your shop:
1. Buy a book to give away
Encourage shoppers to buy a book to give to someone else. This might be a friend, family member or colleague! World Book Night is all about sharing the joy of reading, and there’s no better gift than a book.
2. Donating books to local organisations
If there’s a local organisation near your shop that you can support, World Book Night is the
perfect opportunity to raise money to send them books. Ask for donations using websites such
as Crowdfunder, then donate books bought with that money.
With many people working so hard to keep our country running and look after us all, we
particularly encourage supporting key workers. If there’s a hospital, school, supermarket or any
other places near your shop where key workers are, why not take some books round to them?
Some light relief at the end of a busy day might be just what they need.
3. Share the #ReadingHour and Road to Reading
Encourage your customers to spend time reading by promoting the #ReadingHour from 7-8pm on 23 April and the Road to Reading to create positive reading habits.
