Sell a Book, Plant a Tree

Did you know that in the United States alone 30 million trees are cut down annually to produce virgin paper used in making books? Trees are very important to the health of our planet; they provide much needed oxygen, eat up the carbon dioxide we dump into the atmosphere daily, prevent soil erosion, and play a vital role in the water cycle. As an author, how do you feel about the fact that with each book you sell you may be contributing to the deforestation of our fragile planet? Well, you needn’t worry anymore because Eco-Libris has the answer.

Eco-Libris is an environmental organisation setting out to balance the effect of book publishing on our environment. They have a special programme where they work with authors and publishers so that when a book is sold a tree is planted mitigating the effect on the environment. If your book is signed up for this programme (there is a reduced rate for authors and publishers, by the way) you can put the Eco-Libris logo on the cover (“One tree was planted for this book”) , and they will market your book on their website, Facebook, and MySpace. Your commitment to the environment will be a positive marketing angle and will appeal to your readers’ environmental concerns.

Simon and Schuster’s Children’s Publishers are among the companies now signed up for the Eco-Libris programme. Others include the Canadian publisher Raincoast Books, Norwegian based Flux, and UK/USA publisher Barefoot Books among others.

For more information click here.
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Lauri Kubuitsile is a full time writer in Botswana. To make a living, this means she writes anything that requires words being placed sensibly on a page. She blogs at Thoughts from Botswana.