Read an E-Book Week 2010 may be over but the amount of downloaded reading material should last readers for quite a while. Several participants of the event commented that traffic on their websites was up dramatically from last year. The Read an E-Book website had well over 60,000 page hits just prior to, and during the week. Mobile phone traffic – both Android and iPhone – was also up from last year.
Libraries from around the world were visitors this year. Wright State University Libraries did an article on Read an E-Book Week and produced lapel button templates. Several libraries in Canada and the U.S. contacted me for the templates so they could produce buttons for their own staff.
Visitors came from 137 countries speaking 74 languages. Countries included: U.S., U.K., Canada, Germany, Australia, Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Poland, India, Argentina, South Africa, Egypt, Peru, Croatia, Serbia, Albania, Cuba and American Samoa.Two websites partnering for the week were non-English speaking: one from Spain and one from Venezuela.
The intent for the website was to be content rich – to provide more than just a list of places to get free e-books. Aside from the participating partners page, two very popular pages on the site were the review of the PocketBook e-reader and Sara Rosso’s article on the benefits of e-books. The high hits on those pages indicates that people came for information as well as books.
Several independent blogs asked an interesting question during the event – “Where are the major book publishers?” Good question. Since most of the major book publishers offer e-book versions of their print books, it would be nice to see involvement from them next year. Participation doesn’t have to mean giving away a free e-book. Public reading events using all manner of devices for reading e-books would be one option, or a reading challenge through their book clubs.
Rita Toews
founder – Read an E-Book Week
