World Book Night Media Exposure Exceeds Expectations

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World Book Night U.S. tripled its media exposure for this year’s campaign compared to the previous year. Cision Media and Google Analytics reports recorded a total of 373 million media impressions in April 2014 versus 137 million for April 2013. Additionally, WBN’s Klout score hit 75 on April 23 and 79 two days later, one point lower than the Boston Marathon’s Klout score the week before.

“As a measure of our engagement with our givers and resonance with local and national media, the 373 million media impression figure shows us that our message is getting through across the country and over a long period of time,” said World Book Night U.S. Executive Director Carl Lennertz, who added that “much of the local media is due to independent bookstores’ amazing work and support!”

The number of media impressions is above WBN’s initial projections due to New Yorker, O Magazine, and New York Times mentions, as well as a very high social media reach figure. “Blogs, local TV and radio, and online news sites were also all up significantly,” said Lennertz. “This figure also represents a major public service campaign, in effect, promoting reading, giving, and community.”

The WBN 2014 campaign began last summer with a vote by givers to help choose this year’s titles and a free BEA BookBuzz; it ran into the fall with the announcement of this year’s titles and through the winter with a book-a-day Facebook campaign.  A giver survey and essay contest is underway now.

Givers whose e-mail addresses were provided to WBN have been offered three free digital audiobook downloads by Audiobooks.com, which reported a 52 percent open rate on its offer e-mail. A complete report on the number of audiobook downloads as well as downloads of the free WBN e-book will be announced June 1.