UK charity will give away 1,000,000 books, and you can hand them out!

BillT sez, "A UK-based charity plans to give away a million books - 40,000 copies each of twenty-five selected titles - on March 5 next year. The list of authors includes Toni Morrison, Seamus Heaney, Mark Haddon, Margaret Atwood and Erich Maria Remarque... If you live in the UK and Ireland you can sign up as a book-giver - 20,000 will be selected and each will receive a box of books to hand out." WorldBookNight (Thanks, Bill!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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my mom has a us$73 touch screen phone that can be used to read TXT documents and novels.

In the long run wouldn’t getting poor people cheap e-readers and e-books cheaper? Not 100% foolproof but it deserves a look.
ill lich

There is a thrift store in my neighborhood that every week throws away (pulps?) a full haul-away dumpster of books. It breaks my heart. I have looked at it and fantasized about opening a used book warehouse/store, but in this economy (and Kindle/iPad world) what’s the point?
- Anonymous
  
  Hi! I work for a company called World of Rare Books (and World of Books), we recycle books much like those thrown away by your thrift store, in the UK. Charities here benefit from it massively, they get paid for the books we take away, and we then scan them in or list the non-isbn ones online. We’ve built a thriving, and hopefully soon profitable business around this very premise! (Link to a Telegraph article about the company: http://tinyurl.com/yfgvqvw)
  
  Best wishes, Benj.
BillT

Well, SonofSamSeaborn, it did for a little – but our hosting company have upped the configuration and I’ve tweaked mysql and apache2 so I think it will be a little more robust. Or perhaps not… but I’d rather be killed by BB than ignored – so thanks, Cory :-)
- SonOfSamSeaborn
  
  Glad to hear it! I made sure to leave it unread so that I could check back.
  
  I’m signing up. Wouldn’t mind taking them back to my old neighbourhood in the hopes of turning people off aggravated burglary!