What should I do with them? I'm offering some to the local secondary school. I've given one copy of each to MB's primary school. But there are a lot left. I've written somewhere between 200 and 300 books, and of most I need keep only one copy for myself. Of some I keep a working copy and portfolio copy, but there's certainly no need for more than that.
In a country where 400,000 children don't own a single book, there should be ways of getting free books into their hands. Even if it's not the books they would like in an ideal world, surely a handful of mixed books is better than none? Is there something we can do about this? As I live in an area that is on average quite affluent, it's hard for me to get books into the hands of children who really need them. Part of the problem is that books are heavy and postage expensive. I want rid of the books but I don't want rid of hundreds of pounds posting them around the country.
Is there a solution? Is there a way of passing on homeless books? I can't be the only author whose house is groaning under the burden but who doesn't want to send them to landfill (with the exception of a few that are now hopelessly out of date). Charity shops aren't really the answer. They don't want multiple copies of the same book, or the copies in Flemish/Danish/Romanian/whatever, and children don't generally look in charity shops for books. Ideas welcome...
Out now from Oxford University Press, July 2022
4 comments:
If there is a long queue for a book at the library, or it's not listed, or my budget that month doesn't extend to many purchases of new books, or the prospect of a bargain is very much to the forefront..., and I'm not too bothered about whether a book is new or not......
I buy books off eBay. My preferred seller is 'worldofbooks'. They're an outfit that operates on the 'circular economy' model. This accords with my own views, although I don't carry this through to hanging the tea bags out on the washing line.
Perhaps they'd be interested in a bulk delivery ?
Maybe! And WOB is a good thing in that they also pay a royalty to the authors of secondhand books, so your buying from them is benefiting authors :-) My real purpose, though, is to give the books to children who could use them. If that's not possible, I'll try WOB - thank you for the idea.
Maybe you could try schools library services? Because they regularly take loan books into schools perhaps they’d be willing to distribute giveaways too.
Ask your public library staff if they have ideas or can take them. I'm not in the UK, but in both the countries I've worked in (the USA and Canada) I've taken similar offerings from authors in this position and used them as prizes, or giveaways when I was doing school outreach. I can't promise, but they might at least have ideas or contacts that you don't.
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