Guest Blogger Mike Cowan is the Director of Marketing at Demand Studios, an online community of freelancers and copy editors who produce articles for several online outlets. Demand Studios is partnering with First Book this December to provide thousands of books to children in need.

I believe you are a lucky child if you grow up in an environment surrounded by books.  Considering that my mother is a librarian, I feel that I truly hit the jackpot in this regard.  In our family room we had a huge wall unit filled with hundreds of books and before my brother and I could read we had already chosen our favorites based on their size and colors.  I was a huge War and Peace fan due to its sheer enormity while my brother was a fan of a book called Trinity by Leon Uris because of its green color.  When we were actually able to read these books my brother was drawn to the fantasy of books like The Hobbit while I seemed to gravitate towards non-fiction titles like The History of Hockey and The Guinness Book of World Records.   Safe to say that his choices won him a little more credibility with my mother.

Now that I’m all grown up, I’m lucky enough to work with the thousands of creative, literary people every day at Demand Studios. As one of the world’s largest communities of freelance writers and copy editors, we bring together more than 5,000 talented creators to produce top-quality articles for sites like LIVESTRONG.com and eHow.com.  And just like me, they all have a story about how they first fell in love with the wonder of the written word.

That’s why we decided to reach out to First Book to create a program that would inspire our freelance community to take action and support childhood literacy.  Our “Write for a Cause” program is simple: For every eight articles written and approved by Demand Studios during the month of December, we’ll donate a book on behalf of our writers and copy editors.  We’ve challenged our creators to contribute their talents to the cause, and we’re targeting a total donation of 20,000 brand new books this holiday season.

We’re excited to put our scale to excellent use, by mobilizing our freelance community to play an active role in increasing childhood literacy.  In partnership with First Book, we hope to rewrite the future for thousands of kids. Please visit our “Write for a Cause” information page to learn how you can help!

Happy holidays!