Balloon Race

Good news, everyone.

Aside from reading a newspaper, the most popular commuting activity for the evening is reading a book. According to the Metro newspaper Urban Life survey, just passed to me by our marketing people, 51% of people asked like to read a book. (Yes, books have a clear 33% lead over being unconscious.)

Thought provoking. I’ve often wondered what happens when you leave a book on a commuter train/bus. If half the people commuting want to read a book, then it’s got quite a good chance of being picked up.

Is a few copies of a book being picked up for free and shared a good thing? I think there’s a strong case to be made. It’s not a dissimilar model from libraries, surely? We distribute a number of review copies free of charge to industry insiders, so why not do so with a potential new fan of the author who’ll really appreciate the work and spread the word?

Let’s suppose for a minute a third of that 51% of people (like me) forget on a regular basis to carry their book and are wishing they had something (oh please anything) to read, and then a third of the remaining, non-reading, 49% will pick up something out of sheer boredom, even if it is a book: that’s a good amount of potential people to adopt your book.

Against this group of people, factor in the diligent litter-pickers* and cleaners on the commuter train. Who will get to the book first: the reader or the waste disposal unit?

So this week I’m trying an experiment, with a little help from BookCrossing.com, a really interesting community site that helps members to release books into the wild and then tracks their progress, just like a balloon race. The fact that it has half a million members and huge word-of-mouth potential shouldn’t go unnoticed by writers.

I’m releasing 5 finished copies of a paperback into the ‘wild’. To stand a good chance, I picked a book I think is genuinely excellent reading (I won’t tell you which yet, it will spoil the surprise, but, trust me, it is outstanding).

If you find one of the handful of copies I released and, as a result, you’re reading this, it’s a happy urban miracle so why not leave a comment here as well as on BookCrossing? Let us know how the book (and you) are doing out there in commuterland. I’m intrigued to know if books get passed on, thrown away or kept by the original owner.

And because I always got really excited about balloon races, the first person to show me that a released book has gone over 100 miles gets a prize (I’m trusting you to tell me the truth as well as the BCID, here).

I’ll let you know what happens.

*I did wonder for a while if it was Ok to leave a book lying about for a few minutes on a train. Is it litter? (If you’re from a transport company, can you let me know how you view this?) Bookcrossing.com have this to say:

Aw, come on. Nobody considers books “litter” (we could do focus groups to prove this, but you’ll have to take our word for it here). Also, it’s nearly impossible to throw a book away; it’s just one of those objects with some special kind of intrinsic value that tells you it’s to be saved, to be treasured. So lighten up! What’s the worst that could happen… you might see a few books on park benches, or bus seats, or diner tables? Make the world one big library! Or take the safer, more conventional route… just pass them on so they can touch more lives.