You might have noticed we’ve been a little quiet about our World Book Night online giveaway over the past few days – we’ve been in discussion with representatives from the organisation after concerns were raised that we intended to give away the copies of Iain M. Banks’ Player of Games in a way that would not encourage new or casual readers to be more involved in the hobby.
This has come about from two directions – firstly, due to oversight on our part, we failed to mention in the original post about the giveaway that these books – as with all titles supplied by the World Book Night organisation – are intended for casual or non-readers.
The second issue is that some people felt that with us being a publishing house, the demographic breakdown of our followers meant that we were more likely to attract existing readers to participate in the giveaway than non-readers.
To attempt to mitigate these issues, we would like to say the following: as there are only a few hours left until the giveaway closes to entries, we do not expect there to be sufficient new entries in the time remaining to substantially alter the demographics of those we have reached thus far. As a result we believe that changing rules now will only confuse people and take attention away from what should be the focus of the night – celebrating reading in all forms, and encouraging people of all ages to participate in this.
At this stage, all we feel able to do is to reiterate that books supplied to us by the World Book Night organisation are intended not for regular readers, but for those who have less opportunity or inclination to read under normal circumstances. While we will not be changing the rules, we would implore anybody whose name is selected to receive a copy of Iain M. Banks’ book from us to pass the book onto a more deserving friend or relative if they feel that they are more than just a casual reader themselves.
