The top selling product on GoneReading.com in 2012: “The Books I’ve Read” Mini Book Journal

I can hardly believe it’s the end of 2012, an incredible year in the young history of GoneReading!  And while I vacillate between thinking “we’re just getting started” and “it seems like we’ve been doing this forever,” I’ve never been more excited or optimistic about our ability to spread the magic of reading to the far corners of the developing world.

Most importantly, our central business strategy of thinking and acting like a Fortune 500 brand is beginning to bear fruit.  Commerce is a powerful tool, one that can do an awful lot of good in this world, as we are just beginning to see.

A few highlights from 2012:

• We launched our new website early in the year, bringing warehousing, fulfillment and customer service in-house.  This move has dropped our cost-of-goods-sold to less than 50%, dramatically improving our gross income on each product sold.
• At the same time we dramatically increased our product lineup to include an assortment of accessories and gifts, well beyond our in-house line of GoneReading brand apparel.  Although GoneReading brand t-shirts remain our number one category, our best selling items include some of these new accessories such as our mini-book journals (see photo).
• We tested a wide range of marketing techniques, including public relations, blogging, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, email marketing, direct-response advertising, affiliate marketing, partnership marketing and more.  We now know what drives our business, and just as important, what doesn’t.
• We tested four new distribution channels by selling our products on Amazon, Biblio.com, via library fundraisers and book fairs.
• We worked very hard at search engine optimization, and now rank extremely high for a variety of search terms.  Google delivered more shoppers to GoneReading.com than any other method, by far, in 2012.
• We struck an important new partnership with Biblio.com, one of the world’s largest online booksellers and a great company with much of the same DNA as GoneReading.  They now sell all of our products on their website, and we donate 10% of the revenue directly to BiblioWorks, their charity which helps develop libraries in Bolivia.
• We expanded our international shipping program to include more than 35 countries around the world.  Interestingly, Australia is our number one international destination, where we’re developing quite a following!
• Hundreds of bloggers around the world wrote amazing things about GoneReading, and we received some wonderful press from the mainstream media (read some examples here).  We were particularly proud to top Wired Magazine’s list of Perfect Gifts for Reading Geeks!
• We continue to run a lean and mean operation, with overhead of less than $200 per month, no salaries or wages, and a 100% volunteer staff including my wife and myself, who take no compensation from GoneReading.

Our volunteers

Our charitable giving

As you undoubtedly know, GoneReading is in the business of funding non-profits that spread the magic of reading in the developing world.  Our priority is to provide large-scale funding to these organizations, something that comes at the expense of the short-term.  We’re making big investments right now that will pay dividends for many years to come, even though this hurts our short-term profits.

So even though we did NOT turn a profit in 2012, our first full year in business, we managed to pay out almost $5,000 to our charitable partners in 2012, up from $1,500 in 2011.  Look for this figure to continue a similar growth trend for years to come.

Expanding in 2013

Happy Reading!

Once banned: Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”

Post by Lindsay Kelly

Although “Banned Books Week” already passed, occurring from September 30^th to October 6^th, I still think it is a week that deserves due attention, particularly during an election season when we hear so much about the importance of free speech. It was started in the early 1980s in response to increasing attempts to monitor what books were being read in schools and made available in libraries.[1]

This list of books includes works that challenged the limits of what free speech entails, and for various reasons, were deemed too dangerous, too risqué, or too inciting to be read by the public. And perhaps surprisingly (or not!) some of these books are also some of the most influential books in the U.S. (as deemed by the Library of Congress):[2]

1) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

2) The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

3) Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

4) The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

5) Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

6) Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

7) Native Son by Richard Wright

8) The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

9) The Color Purple by Alice Walker

10) The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

11) Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

12) Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Please share your thoughts about this list! Were you surprised by some of the works on here, or not??

Lindsay Kelly is a PhD candidate in English literature at the University of Maryland. She studies Caribbean literature and literature of the black diaspora, and some of her favorite authors include Amitav Ghosh, Edwidge Danticat, Michelle Cliff, Pauline Melville, and Gabriel García Márquez.

Click here for our best selling gifts for book lovers!

Post by Lindsay Kelly

In an era of Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest, there are unsurprisingly sites targeted specifically to readers and book lovers. And in researching this post, I came across several useful and fun sites that encourage social interaction based on books.

Since there are too many to list here, I will focus my post on three innovative sites that are gaining in popularity, Goodreads, Shelfari, and LibraryThing. All three of these sites are fun to explore and provide readers with ways to catalog their reading experiences as well as find new books to enjoy!

Goodreads

When you open the homepage for Goodreads it invitingly states, “Meet your next favorite book.”[1] This site is designed to help you find books that meet your interests. You enter what books you love and have read in the past and get recommendations on what to read next (sounds fun right!), and you can also see what books others are reading and what they’re saying about them.

Shelfari

Shelfari is a site run by Amazon and describes itself as “a community-powered encyclopedia for book lovers.”[2] On Shelfari you can create a virtual bookshelf displaying the books you’ve read, and you can actually use your purchases on amazon.com to “stock” your shelf. It also provides a resource for finding new books to read, as you can browse through popular and recommended books and see other users’ reviews of those books. In addition, each book has what are called “book extras” that you can edit, sort of like Wikipedia!

LibraryThing

LibraryThing is a site that allows you to create your own online catalog of books, including the books you’ve read and the books you hope to read. And it provides a forum to comment on books and discuss them with others. For each book entry there is information provided and tags that will connect that book to others. This site has over 1,500,000 viewers, so chances are you might find another reader with very similar interests and get some great ideas of what to read next![3]

Let me know what you think of these social networking book sites, if you would use them, or if you already are using them! How do you think this would, or how has it, altered your reading experience?

Lindsay Kelly is a PhD candidate in English literature at the University of Maryland. She studies Caribbean literature and literature of the black diaspora, and some of her favorite authors include Amitav Ghosh, Edwidge Danticat, Michelle Cliff, Pauline Melville, and Gabriel García Márquez.

Click here for our best selling gifts for book lovers!

Post by Lindsay Kelly

The other day I was perusing aisles at my local library and out of the corner of my eye spotted a very colorful, large edition of Jane Austen’s Emma. Upon closer examination I realized I was in the comics section, and that this was in fact a Marvel comic book edition of a Jane Austen novel.

To properly convey why this excited me so much, it must be stated that I am a huge Marvel comic fan. The X-Men were by far my favorite group of “super heroes” growing up. And as a literature major, an appreciation of Austen almost seems mandatory. So, this was pretty much one of the greatest mash-ups I could have imagined.

As I looked through the rest of the section, I noticed several other similar adaptations, including Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and classics from African American literature. Perhaps this is a growing trend I wondered…

Doing some research into this, however, it seems that turning literature into comic books has been going on for a few decades now, with a “comic book” series called “Classics Illustrated,” running from 1941 to 1971.[1] Such a series was aimed at getting young people to read and understand classic literature. Is the goal the same for these more recent adaptations? In part, yes. But I also think the growing popularity of literary comic books can be tied to the recent success of graphic novels, like Watchmen and 300.

Clearly there is something compelling about the visual element of storytelling, something that might also speak to our growing intolerance for long winded texts. Perhaps twitter and pinterest are necessitating a different approach to marketing classic literature and making these works accessible to a 21^st century audience. And maybe its just super fun, bringing back some of the child-like wonder to one’s reading experience!

What do you think of these comic book adaptations of literary texts? Why might there be a rise in their popularity, and would you pick one up??

Lindsay Kelly is a PhD candidate in English literature at the University of Maryland. She studies Caribbean literature and literature of the black diaspora, and some of her favorite authors include Amitav Ghosh, Edwidge Danticat, Michelle Cliff, Pauline Melville, and Gabriel García Márquez.

Click here for our best selling gifts for book lovers!

Kids experience the magic of reading, courtesy of a donkey-powered library from Ethiopia Reads.

By Lindsey Kelly

In honor of International Literacy Day today on September 8, 2012 I want to highlight GoneReading’s preferred charities, the organizations we help fund in order to combat illiteracy across the world.  I will also point to the various ways in which these organizations are attempting to support reading and learning.  And yes, donkeys are one of those ways….

READ Global:

READ Global is an organization that works to foster long-lasting change in rural areas, working with local villages to make this a reality. Such change is made possible through the creation of READ centers, which are “Community library and resource centers” that help all members of the community gain access to educational resources. READ Global, like GoneReading, believes in the power of literacy to enact social change and bring about economic stability.  And they seek to make these centers self-sustaining by helping those communities to create a for-profit business that funds the center in an on-going capacity. Such an approach helps to tackle the literacy issue long-term and empowers each community. READ Global works in Bhutan, India, and Nepal, areas that have literacy rates under 50 percent.

Ethiopia Reads:

Ethiopia Reads is an organization that works to promote education for Ethiopian children. Through the work they have done, they have developed over 60 libraries across Ethiopia.  And they are also working to make these libraries sustainable by training library managers and monitoring the progress of established libraries and learning centers in order to offer professional development and support. They also partner with schools to create libraries and have an initiative called “Donkey Mobile Libraries,” where donkey carts are used to get books to children in rural areas. Watch a video of this by clicking here.

BiblioWorks:

BiblioWorks seeks to promote education and learning in impoverished areas in Bolivia, believing that education is the key to a successful community. BiblioWorks carries this work out by building libraries in rural Bolivia and making them self-sustaining through the training of librarians and teachers. They also promote literacy by donating books to schools, hospitals, and other institutions that need them.  Learn more by visiting their website.

So please continue to support these organizations and GoneReading, as literacy continues to be an enormous issue, one that should demand our attention!

Lindsay Kelly is a PhD candidate in English literature at the University of Maryland. She studies Caribbean literature and literature of the black diaspora, and some of her favorite authors include Amitav Ghosh, Edwidge Danticat, Michelle Cliff, Pauline Melville, and Gabriel García Márquez.

With the approach of fall and the start of the school year, it’s the perfect time to get in the collegiate spirit with your reading. And you don’t have to go back to college to do this. An unexpected source for discovering great reads is to look at what college freshmen are reading this fall, not in their Intro to Psychology classes, but in their freshmen reading programs.

Most colleges choose one book to have their freshmen read as a collective, incoming class. And often, the books have a philanthropic or socially conscious bent to them, which also fits in great with the philosophy at GoneReading.

To help get you started, I’ve compiled a list of 15 books that have recently been read by college freshmen:

1)   The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (University of Maryland 2011, Providence College 2012)

2)   Pig Candy: Taking My Father South, Taking My Father Home by Lise Funderburg (Drexel University 2012)

3)   The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (Stony Brook University 2010)

4)   Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (Smith College 2010)

5)   The Influencing Machine by Brooke Gladstone (Unversity of Maryland 2012)

6)   No Impact Man by Colin Beavan (Ohio State University 2010)

7)   The Tiger’s Wife by Teá Obreht (New York University 2012, Georgetown University 2012)

8)   Enrique’s Journey by Sonia Nazario (St. Louis University 2012, Loyola University Chicago 2012)

9)   Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo (University of Delware 2012)

10) Full Body Burden: Growing up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats by Kristen Iversen (Virginia Commonwealth University 2012)

11) Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (University of Massachusetts Amherst 2012)

12) Start Something That Matters by Blake Mycoskie (Philadelphia University 2012)

13) The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman (Johns Hopkins University 2012)

14) The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson (Baylor University 2012)

15) The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba (Purdue University 2012)

I myself have not read all of these books. However, as I have learned in reading and teaching books like Half the Sky, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, it seems like a pretty safe bet that any of these books will be interesting, and possibly even inspiring.

As always, I would love to hear what you think of these books, whether or not you have read any on the list, whether you yourself have started looking for books that college freshmen are reading, and whether you think you will now!

Lindsay Kelly is a PhD candidate in English literature at the University of Maryland. She studies Caribbean literature and literature of the black diaspora, and some of her favorite authors include Amitav Ghosh, Edwidge Danticat, Michelle Cliff, Pauline Melville, and Gabriel García Márquez.

GoneReading products now available on Biblio.com!

I’m thrilled to announce an incredible new partnership between GoneReading and Biblio.com, one of the world’s largest online booksellers.  Thanks to this partnership, Biblio now carries all GoneReading products in it’s newly created Bibliophiles’ Shop, extending GoneReading’s exposure to millions of new shoppers each year.

GoneReading and Biblio make a terrific match, as both companies share a love of books and reading, and both are committed to spreading the magic of reading in the developing world.  In 2004 the founders of Biblio.com founded BiblioWorks, a 501(c)(3) non-profit that has since built eight rural libraries in South America.  In fact, 10% of GoneReading merchandise sales from their site goes directly to BiblioWorks.

Biblio.com is also committed to supporting independent booksellers around the world.  They help more than 5,000 independent booksellers sell their books on their website, providing shoppers with tens of millions of books, many with free shipping.

So in addition to GoneReading’s pledge to donate all after-tax profits to help fund libraries across the developing world, we’re now making monthly contributions to BiblioWorks.  If you support GoneReading and it’s philanthropic mission, we hope you’ll also support Biblio whenever you’re shopping for books.

Thanks so much and happy reading!

Looking for some reading inspiration? Lose the Snuggie!

I might be writing this blog post more for myself than for anyone else (a kind of therapeutic exercise as a PhD student), in that at times, even as I LOVE to read, I get restless with the process and need to remind myself of why I fell in love with books in the first place.

Perhaps it’s that I can’t decide what to pick up next. Or maybe I’m in a reading “rut” and keep revisiting the same books, authors, or subjects ad nauseam. Or maybe HGTV has mysteriously captivated my attention yet AGAIN. Whatever the reason, at times my love for reading can be a difficult hobby to keep up.

But have no fear! There are ways to reenergize your love and passion for reading!

1)   Step out of your comfort zone: As an English literature major I love compelling stories and have pretty much always focused my reading on fiction. Yet I started picking up nonfiction books on a number of topics, including how to raise a puppy (yes, I’m getting a puppy!), web design, and biographies of interesting people. While the web design books remain unopened, I have really enjoyed spending my evenings learning about puppies and the lives of influential people (I mean who wouldn’t), and it’s surprisingly left me more energized to return to my usual array of novels.

2)   Join a book club: This might sound old fashioned or it might interfere with your image of reading as a solitary, cozy activity to be done in the comfort of pajamas/and or a snuggie.  However, reading as a social activity can help motivate you to finish the book by a certain time as well as provide fresh perspectives on the books you are reading. Additionally, you might end up reading things you never would have picked up otherwise! (Always a great idea in my “book”)

3)   Read to your kids: There’s nothing that can reenergize your excitement for reading as much as seeing that excitement reflected on the face of a little kid. So take the opportunity to spend time with your kids and partake in an activity that benefits you both!

4)   Turn off the television: It’s easy to get stuck in a routine and feel like you don’t have enough time to enjoy your hobbies and passions, but often we waste time in other ways. So schedule in some reading time for yourself and turn off your devices.

5)   Write: The process of reading and writing are so interconnected, and one can often lead to the other, so start keeping a journal, blogging, or write some of your own short stories (or a novel if you have time). It might lead you to some unexpected places and bring you back to your initial activity of reading with some fresh perspective and appreciation.

Lindsay Kelly is a PhD candidate in English literature at the University of Maryland. She studies Caribbean literature and literature of the black diaspora, and some of her favorite authors include Amitav Ghosh, Edwidge Danticat, Michelle Cliff, Pauline Melville, and Gabriel García Márquez.

Beat the heat with a “cool” book this summer.

Guest post by Lindsay Kelly

Get your kids (and yourself) out of the hot sun this August by putting a focus on reading.

Here are a few suggestions about how to spend a hot summer day indoors, while still making it fun for the whole family!

• Take a trip to your local library- There are usually planned indoor activities in the summer to take advantage of at the library. Additionally, you can check out some new books and movies to enjoy with your family, and perhaps even grab a few hours to yourself with a book and bubble bath.
• Read a book set in a cool or frosty climate- like The Call of the Wild  by Jack London or The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis for your kids, helping you to forget it’s actually a scorcher outside and cutting out one more trip to the pool!
• Plan an art activity, where you and your kids create illustrations for some of their favorite books. Ask them, what do you imagine this character to look like? What color is their outfit? Where do you want to draw them?
• Create a board game together based on one of their favorite books. This was always a fun activity in my family, where my dad would create a board game based on a place we were going to visit or one of our favorite movies or books, and this was something my brother and I tried to replicate, often using markers and clothing boxes!
• Play a book-themed board game (check out some bookish games from GoneReading). If you don’t have time to make one, there are plenty of book themed board games out there to enjoy! In fact, I have a Trivial Pursuits for Book Lovers edition, which is great fun!
• Take your family to a bookstore and enjoy a couple of hours perusing. Then take your new purchases home and have some quiet reading time or read aloud to your kids!

I’d love to hear your suggestions for how to spend a summer day reading or encouraging reading in your kids!  How do you enjoy reading in the summer sans beach?!

P.S.  CHECK OUT OUR NEW LIST OF OUR BEST SELLING GIFTS FOR BOOK LOVERS!

GoneReading is in search of an experienced graphic designer to help improve the quality of our promotional materials and advertising.  Specifically, here is what we are looking for:

• A graphic designer with 2+ years of professional experience
• Deep experience with Photoshop
• Ability to meet deadlines
• Ideally, experience with online banner ad design
• Your commitment to helping us fulfill our philanthropic mission through great work!

Although you will not be financially compensated, you will feel great about helping to spread the magic of reading to the developing world.  You can volunteer on your own schedule, from any location with access to phone and Internet!  Our needs will change over time, but we anticipate an average of just 2-3 hours per week.

If you or someone you know meets these qualifications, please email us at designer@gonereading.com today.

Thanks and happy reading!