WBN US

I wanted to share some insights into the process behind how we are choosing the World Night Books in the U. S.

As you my have read elsewhere on this site, 25 books will be chosen and 40,000 special World Book Night editions of each will be printed, for a total of 1 million books to be given away by thousands of volunteers on Monday, April 23. (I hope you will apply to be one! Not yet; soon!)

On that day, book lovers will be out and about in their community with 20 copies of one of the 25 books – and one they have requested, so it’s a favorite. Why? So they can say: “May I give you a copy of this book that I love. I think you’ll love it, too.” Each person will do this in their own way and style and voice, but it’s clear that World Book Night books must be drawn from the larger pool of books that especially inspire us to say this to friends and acquaintance: “Hey you gotta read this amazing book.”

Well, guess who else does this every day in their working lives? Booksellers and librarians. So we decided to tap their expertise in choosing the books. We decided that the larger pool would be drawn from the paperbacks that are popular with reading groups, that have perhaps also won an award or, yes, are selling well out of bookstores. All are indications of passion and popularity, as well as both quality and accessibility.

In the final selection of the 25, we’re looking for a good mix of fiction, non-fiction, and YA; literary and commercial. Gender and ethnic balances. Even a geographic distribution of where the authors live.

So I asked 5 of my Denver Publishing Institute grads to do research on line and put onto excel just the title and author of ten years’ worth of the following: Indie Next/Book Sense Reading Group Picks; Barnes & Noble Discover Picks; ALA best books of the year; and NBA and Pulitzer winners. Also: ReadingGroupGuide.com’s most requested reading group guides, the Goodreads top 100’s and Above the Treeline’s bestsellers.

I combined all the excels (2,500 total lines), resorted by title, put a Y by any book that met three of the criteria above, resorted, and voila, a 200-title long list of fantastic books.

That long list went to a committee of independent bookstore owners, B&N buyers, and librarians, who each picked their top 25. I asked them not to think of this as a ‘best books of all time’ list; it’s not. It’s just the books they themselves could envision handing out with passion and enthusiasm at a coffee shop or community center.

They agonized over their 25, and sent me their excels. An hour or so of recombination, and bingo, a top 100. Several suggested some additional great books and into the mix they went. Back out to the committee to vote again, more agony, and now a top 50, with a very clear top 10 . . . with a lot of amazing books all grouped together as books to take the other 15 slots. You would’ve salivated over the list of 200, 100, and the 50. Imagine having to get that down to 25?

Lastly, I began the process of entering publisher, author residence, and subject category into columns, and seeing if all the balances were, well, balanced. We wanted some books from smaller presses to make the 25; plus a poetry book; 5 YA’s or middle readers (I’ll write more about the thinking behind this next time); some genre fiction; at least one book we could print in a Spanish edition. And so on. Lastly, the authors whose books would be chosen needed to agree to waive royalties so we could print the special editions economically; they were assured that these books were going to new readers, underserved readers, light readers, all for the greater good of increasing reading in general. And that the authors would agree to promote World Book Night in their own ways, and be a part of things on April 23. And the publishers need to absorb some of the printing costs, which for a million books total, even if we get some paper and printing time donated, is a lot of dough. But everyone’s into it; everyone sees the many benefits of World Book Night and its mission to increase reading in America.

So, dear reader, we are close. It will be a wonderful group of 25 books, with some of your favorites and hopefully some surprises. Serendipity is good. As for the hundreds of equally amazing books that didn’t make this list? There’s next year, and for many more years if we can make World Book Night the annual celebration of books and reading it needs to be. Agreed?

Carl Lennertz