April 23rd 2013 is a day I wont forget – it’s my birthday. It’s also World Book Night – a chance to have 20 copies of one of the books above to hand out to people locally. There’s an interesting choice this year – and for once I don’t think I’ve read any of them – though there’s time to put that right before I get my application in.

What do you do? You put in the application from now onwards until sometime next year. You’ll find out around February time if your application has been successful, and if it has then you’ll also find out which book you’ve got.

Then what? You pick up the books from the place you chose to get them from (I went for Sutton Library and they looked on very confused, though had some other titles out on a table so I grabbed ‘Touching The Void’), add your BookCrossing info in the front, then on the 23rd just take a load out with you and hand them out to people.

Don’t they think you’re a bit weird? Yes. I was handing out Pride and Prejudice last year and people were REALLY suspicious. You get over it after a while, as at first you feel like a pushy salesperson who isn’t selling anything – and eventually you just go “look! It’s free! Read it!” and thrust it into their hands, so they realise there’s no catch. I left a few at local Children’s Centres as they too looked at me oddly (it’s a good job I don’t get too paranoid about these things) and left my very last couple in a bookshelf at our local station for random people to pick up – they’d gone within a day (and someone else locally had done the same – and had the same book as me!).

So this year I’m hoping to get together with some other locals and either hand them out as a group, or get a table in a cafe or something. If World Book Night want me back, that is…

You can apply here at the World Book Night site. It’s free, the only thing it takes from you is your time.