C4 to launch Facebook reading campaign

Channel 4 Education has confirmed plans to launch a Facebook application aimed at getting more teenagers reading books and discussing them.

Titled Bookstash, the application will enable users to flag up the covers of their favourite novels, while also passing on recommendations and learning about new releases. It will launch on March 15.

The service has been designed by NeonTribe, the award-winning agency behind Channel 4's Phantasmagoria creative widgets project, which launched last year.

Channel 4 hopes to tap into the active teenage Facebook audience to primarily encourage young people who are not interested in books to start reading.

Bookstash will allow users to display the covers of their favourite books as 'stickers' and include a tagged blurb indicating the style, content and genre for other people.

"A Bookstash sticker is a highly visual shorthand for showing a book's appeal," said Neon Tribe developer Harry Harold.

"It's a condensed synopsis. It's a micro-review, a structured visualisation of a blurb. We believe that stickers are a really effective way of getting teens talking about books. It's a simple action: Stash. Sticker. Share."

The Bookstash database can also be searched for different genres of books, with links available to online retailer Amazon for further reviews and purchase options.

Users can also win Bookstash achievement badges for the size and nature of their book collection, such as having a certain number of novels by the same author.

Channel 4 Education commissioning editor Alice Taylor said: "We think Bookstash is built in just the right way to appeal to teenagers. Facebook is where most young people are currently hanging out online, talking and sharing information, so it's the perfect place to introduce Bookstash.

"Bookstash turns finding and sharing books into something more playful, in the same way people find and share music with titles and covers displayed as coveted collections. With the added tagging and stickering of content, hopefully more fun finding books will result in more reading of them too."