Guest Post: The GoneReading Project by Brad Wirz

Guest post provided by Brad Wirz, founder of not-for-profit project GoneReading

My name is Brad Wirz, and I'm the founder of GoneReading, a philanthropic enterprise founded to spread the magic of reading to the far corners of the world.' We sell a variety of 'Brilliant Products for the Reading Lifestyle' at'www.GoneReading.com'and I hope you will check them out.' But perhaps I should first share a little background'

I'm an American guy who grew up with a deep love of reading.' Of course I read lots of fiction as a kid, but over the course of my life I've turned to books for answers.' Every time I've wanted a new job, a promotion, to start a business, to better myself in any way, it always started with a trip to the library.' I'm a better person for it; frankly I don't know where I would be without my love of reading.' Maybe that sounds familiar.

A couple of years ago, deep in the midst of a 20 year, better-than-I-deserved, career in marketing, I reached the point in my life that I needed a major change.' I remember the exact moment.' I'll spare you the details, but I ended up in a New York City hotel room, curled up in the fetal position during a particularly brutal week of client meetings and late night work sessions.' After 20 years of traveling 3-5 days per week, I had reached my limit.' I called my wife and we agreed it was time for a career change.

A few weeks later I found myself on a volunteer trip to Central America ' a trip I had committed to months prior to my meltdown in New York.' When our group first arrived at our camp in the remote jungles of Honduras I learned we would spend much of the week building a small library for the local villagers.' This would be the first library for more than a hundred miles in any direction.' Dozens of villages, thousands of people, would have access to books for the first time in their lives.

It turns out that there are close to a billion people in the world who live roughly like the villagers I met in Honduras.' Can we even imagine what it would be like to live in a world without the advantages of books and reading?' Even in wealthy countries, library funds are dwindling at a time when demand for their services are on the rise.' I started to think about how I could use my marketing background to increase funding for reading projects and libraries.

I came back from Honduras energised like I hadn't been in years.' It was only a matter of months before I quit my job, ended my career, and started GoneReading to address these challenges.' We're only getting started now, but GoneReading uses the power of commerce to generate profits.' In turn we donate those profits to libraries and reading-centred non-profits around the world.

But we can't do it without readers like yourself, buying our products and sharing our story.' We've worked hard to create a collection of products that readers really seem to love.' In fact, we think you'll want to buy them without even knowing of our philanthropic goals.

Although we are based in the U.S. we recently started shipping to Australia (coming soon to New Zealand)!' To offset the shipping costs, we've put together a 25% off coupon for friends of Read In A Single Sitting.' Just enter the code RIASS25 during checkout (good on all products except our book ends; expires April 7, 2012).

Check us out at'www.GoneReading.com.' Many thanks for your time!