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90 thousand of free e-books and audiobooks were rented as part of the biggest actions in Poland and one of the biggest in the world promoting reading – Czytaj PL. Virtual books even reached the furthest parts of the world, the antipodes, among others. It was the fifth – and again a record edition of the action that gives access to free bestsellers. This year, it let the Poles read 12 million pages. If we printed and put all the pages in a line, that would make up a path stretching from Poland to the Arctic Sea!
As every year, the action was extremely popular, and the information about it was spread among millions of Poles through traditional media and social media. For the first time in history, on the initiative of the Book Institute, the project was implemented in 1,000 high schools all around the country. 7,000 yellow posters were hung in over 500 cities and towns in total. The action that was initiated in Krakow UNESCO City of Literature, crossed the borders on such a scale for the first time, reaching 12 UNESCO Cities of Literature across the world, including far Dunedin in New Zealand.
The organisers of the action are still looking for some new ways to effectively infect the Poles with reading. As part of the Read PL as an appetizer) action, some special menu inserts were distributed in 200 restaurants throughout Poland, making the waiting time for the meal more pleasant for the guests. In turn, there was a huge book weighing nearly half a ton, placed in the Krakow Main Square – a symbol and a specific monument of the action. The battle of books organized in one of Warsaw bookshops triggered lots of emotions – a provocative video promoting the action got viral on the Internet, reaching almost three million Poles.
The most important thing in the action though, and the thing that has been its greatest success and characteristic is the effective involvement of book lovers in the active promotion of reading. Almost 10,000 people encouraged their friends and relatives to take advantage of the action and just read, in many different ways. The readers sent over 10,500 invitations to take part in the action, shared 650 photos with books and the tag #czytajpl on Instagram, wrote 324 notes on books as part of a competition on the Lubimy Czytać portal, and above all hung 200 additional posters in their work places, schools and libraries as part of the action Książka za obietnicę (A Book for a Promise). For the first time the action had a real army of ambassadors – 1,000 teachers and 1,000 students selected from 5,000 applications, who wore T-shirts with funny, enigmatic slogans (“I am holding fresh folios,” “I am collecting thick almanacs,” “I am squandering the incunabulums”) and who encouraged their friends to read
The list of books available:
1. Wojciech Drewniak Historia bez cenzury 2 (History Uncensored 2)
2. Krzysztof Piskorski Czterdzieści i cztery (Forty and four)
3. Gregory David Roberts Shantaram
4. Filip Springer Miasto Archipelag. Polska mniejszych miast (Archipelago City. Poland of Lesser Towns)
5. Anna Kamińska Wanda
6. Jakub Małecki Ślady (Tracks)
7. Dan Ariely The Honest) Truth About Dishonesty
8. Elżbieta Cherezińska Korona śniegu i krwi (Crown of Snow and Blood)
9. Camilla Lackberg The Ice Princess
10. Peter Wohlleben (The Hidden Life of Trees)
11. Jon Ronson So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed
12. Marek Kamiński Marek i czaszka jaguara (Marek and the Jaguar’s Skull)
Organisers of Read PL: Krakow Festival Office, Woblink
Strategic Partner: Polish Book Institute
Organisers of the initiative in schools (Hunt your own book): Polish Book Institute, Krakow Festival Office, Woblink
Publishers: Znak Horyzont, Wydawnictwo Literackie, Wydawnictwo Marginesy, Wydawnictwo Karakter, SQN, Smak Słowa, Zysk, Wydawnictwo Czarna Owca, Otwarte, Insignis Media, Znak Emotikon
Partner cities: Kraków, Poznań, Łódź, Wrocław, Gdańsk, Katowice, Lublin, Toruń, Częstochowa, Opole, Gdynia, Rzeszów
Other cities taking part: Warszawa, Białystok, Bydgoszcz, Bytom, Chorzów, Mysłowice, Rybnik, Sosnowiec, Szczecin, Tychy
UNESCO Cities of Literature participating: Barcelona, Dublin, Dundee, Dunedin, Edinburgh, Lviv, Norwich, Nottingham, Prague, Reykjavik
Co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and Cultural Heritage as part of the National Programme for the Promotion of Reading. The initiative is organised under the patronage of Ministry of National Education.