A Book Token is a brand of gift voucher redeemable in hundreds of participating bookshops as an alternative to cash.
The term Book Token was first coined the 1920s by Harold Raymond, an English publisher who noticed that for Christmas his friends had received a collective total of only three books out of 119 total gifts. He felt that some sort of coupon could be used to take the risk out of book gift giving and invented the "Book Token". The Book Token was launched in 1932 and soon after, Book Tokens Ltd was established as the sole issuer of Book Tokens in the UK. Book Tokens have now grown into one of the largest multi-retail gift cards in the UK and Ireland and were renamed "National Book Tokens" in 2000, the year the token was also sold online for the first time by firstbookshop.com.
Book Tokens in the UK and Ireland are run by Book Tokens Ltd (part of the Booksellers Association Group of Companies).
National book voucher schemes also run in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands and Norway.
Famous quotes containing the words book and/or token:
“To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all.... A message from the gods should be delivered at once. It is damnably blasphemous to talk about the autumn season and so on. How dare the author or publisher demand a price for doing his duty, the highest and most honourable to which a man can be called?”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)
“To become a token woman—whether you win the Nobel Prize or merely get tenure at the cost of denying your sisters—is to become something less than a man ... since men are loyal at least to their own world-view, their laws of brotherhood and self-interest.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)