StadtLesen Gets City Dwellers Reading

StadtLesen - which means "city reading" - is a project started by an innovation agency in Austria in 2009. The event features packed bookshelves, beautiful reading spots in the open air, food and readings to pull in visitors to the cities visited on the tour.

Previously held only in Austria, this year the event will take place also in Germany and the few regions of Italy in the north with some German speakers. The bookshelves contents have also expanded: In the first year there were 2,000 books taken on tour to nine cities. This summer, it will be 5,000 books and 20 cities.

Ullstein Buchverlage and arsEdition are two of the publishing houses providing books for the event.

"StadtLesen is an innovative way of getting books to readers," says Anne Gentes, who is responsible for the event at Ullstein. "Since the reading places are so public, often in the middle of a city's biggest square or similar open spot, the campaign is really visible."

The StadLesen books are recently published, says Gentes, not classics or from the publishers' back lists, with five to ten copies of each book. While they aren't for sale, via cooperations with local booksellers visitors can purchase the books at the nearest book shop.

"We hope naturally that readers find new favorites among our books and then go and buy them from the bookseller!" says Gentes.