It Starts with Literacy

If the book-buying market is to grow, the first step is to create more readers by ensuring that all Americans can read. While the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, which, through the Reading First provision, will provide nearly $1 billion in funding for the acquisition of reading materials, reading will only become a larger player in the American culture if there are people willing to spread the joys of reading. One such person is the entertainer Dolly Parton.

In March 2000, the Association of American Publishers presented Parton with one of its first AAP Honors Awards, which the organization gives to someone outside of the publishing industry for promoting books and authors. Parton won the award for her Imagination Library, a children's book program that she launched in 1996. At the time of the AAP award, the Imagination Library had just passed its fourth anniversary and was primarily dedicated to serving the children of Parton's home town, Locust Ridge, in Sevier County, Tenn. A little more than two years later, the Imagination Library is in 183 communities in 25 states and is growing faster than expected, according to David Dotson, executive director of the Dollywood Foundation, which oversees the Imagination Library.

Dotson says the Imagination Library had its genesis in Parton's belief that the best way to help kids succeed in life is to ensure that they have a good education, and the best way to ensure they have a good education is to introduce them to books. "Dolly wants to inspire parents to read to their children, and she wants to make reading fun," Dotson explains.

Through Parton's Imagination Library, children who register for the program receive a book a month from birth until they reach the age of five. Under the program, a local agency teams up with Parton to sponsor the Library in their geographic location, usually a town or county. The organization registers the children in each locality using brochures that are available at libraries, grocery stores, doctors' offices and other public places. The most effective place, however, to enroll someone in the program is at the hospital as soon as the baby is born. "You give the mother a book and a brochure," Dotson says. A key to making the program a success is ensuring that the parents see the books "as a gift, not a social service," Dotson notes.

After a child is registered, his or her name is placed in a database managed by the Dollywood Foundation. Each month, the local organization e-mails its database of names and addresses to the Direct Mail Service in Knoxville, Tenn., and its book orders to the Dollywood offices in Pigeon Forge, Tenn. The foundation orders the books from Penguin, which ships the books to Direct Mail Service, which then mails the books to each child. Dollywood has established a committee to determine what books are appropriate for each age group, although the first title is always The Little Engine That Could. Dotson says that 12 to 15 books in the program are switched each year so younger siblings receive different books and also because as the volume of orders grows, the economies of scale permit the Library to buy better books.

The Dollywood Foundation takes care of the administrative costs at its headquarters, which has a staff of only five people. Most of the funds are raised by Parton through three shows that she gives at Dollywood each year; Dotson estimates Parton personally raises about $350,000 annually for the program. Cost for the local agencies is $27 per child for the entire year.

The agency that Imagination Library partners with most frequently is the United Way. Last month, the federal government became involved with the program for the first time when the Bureau of Indian Affairs signed on to run the Library in as many as 92 Indian communities. And more rapid growth could be ahead. The recently elected governor of Tennessee, Phil Bredeson, promised to make the Imagination Library available to any child in the state who wants to participate.

Dotson estimates that by the end of the first quarter of 2003, the Imagination Library will be mailing 65,000 books per month, up from an average in the last part of 2002 of 35,000 to 40,000. Another sign of the accelerated pace of growth is that, of the 500,000 books the Library has shipped since its launch, 300,000 were sent in 2002. Dotson projects that the Library could ship up to one million books in 2003, and he credits the "begatting" factor for spreading the word. "When one town hears that the town next door has set up the Imagination Library, we usually hear from them," Dotson said.

There's nothing like word of mouth to build a market.