First Book, a nonprofit organization serving children in low-income communities by distributing books to schools and community programs throughout North America, has partnered with the #1 Free eBooks site online, to fight illiteracy in the off-line world. The web site’s owner, Paradise Publishers Inc., is donating a portion of all V.I.P. Membership subscriptions to support First Book’s activities and projects.

Carson City, NV (PRWEB) September 22, 2011

The nonprofit organization First Book is partnering with one of the world’s largest online eBook distributors, Free-eBooks.net, to challenge illiteracy. Paradise Publishers, owners of Free-eBooks.net, will donate a portion of all the site's V.I.P. membership subscriptions to further the battle against poor reading skills. The funds raised online go toward distributing books off-line to children from low-income families across North America.

“An estimated 771 million adults, one-fifth of the world’s population, do not have the ability to read and write, with understanding, a short, simple sentence about one’s own life” (UNESCO, 2006). With the development and availability of digital books, called eBooks, it’s hoped that more reading material will eventually be made more affordable and easily available, without the expense of paper-based books and the expensive distribution of these works. However, today, in low-income communities with less handy computer access, real books remain the foundation for education and literacy.

“Adult low literacy has been connected to almost every socio-economic issue facing every nation around the world,” says Nic Gremion, the C.E.O. of Paradise Publishers Inc., who publishes the free eBook site at http://www.Free-eBooks.net. “We want to contribute. I was shocked when shown data about illiteracy’s effects, including declining health, increasing numbers of prison inmates, lost money in the billions each year from non-productivity in the workforce, crime, and loss of tax revenue due to unemployment.”

There remains a disparity between well-to-do and needy communities’ ability to give advantages to all children and students for a brighter future. “Disadvantaged students in the first grade have a vocabulary that is approximately half that of an advantaged student (2,900 and 5,800 respectively),” (Source: White, Graves & Slater, 1990). This contributes to future gaps in employment status, opportunities and especially income.

“With our Free-eBooks members downloading an average of nearly 19,000 ebooks, every single day, we know they love reading! Plus, the power of reading skills is critical for a better society for all of us,” says Martin Wales, President of Paradise Publishers. “Therefore, we’re proud and happy to donate 10% of all our sales for V.I.P. Memberships to First Book to support their wonderful and continued efforts to stimulate literacy in schools today.”

First Book has distributed more than 85 million books and educational resources to programs and schools serving children from low-income families throughout the United States and Canada. By making new, high-quality books available on an ongoing basis, First Book is transforming the lives of children in need and the elevating the quality of education.

Paradise Publishers Inc. is a U.S.-based, global, online publisher of both fiction and non-fiction books. It distributes digital eBooks at no cost via http://www.Free-eBooks.net and is about to launch a highly anticipated social publishing site http://www.Foboko.com aim to help anybody become an author and easily publish, promote and profit from their own eBooks.

See release: http://www.paradisepublishers.com/pr-24/