Week Six Prompt: Integrated Advisory and Promoting the Emotional Genres
I'm sure you've noticed--but our Horror titles aren't exactly flying off the shelves. I've been thinking about how we might be able to promote this collection, and I've come up with a way we might be able to get some of our other circ stats up as well.
While our Horror books aren't moving, our survival horror video games are. These games are extremely popular right now, and with Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding getting ready to come out, they're only going to increase in popularity. So, what I'm thinking we could do is a combined display, where we pair up horror book titles with similarly-themed horror video games. For example, we could pair up the popular PS4 title Until Dawn (a slasher-style game about teens trying to survive, a la Cabin in the Woods, Friday the 13th, etc.) with Riley Sager's Final Girls (about the survivors of slasher-style attacks). These both play off the idea of surviving a slasher-style horror event. I wouldn't necessarily put these bundled together for checkout, but if the display had something like "If you liked _________, try ______________", I think it could work well. We could put the titles out together on a template using that phrasing, and I think it would help boost circulation stats in both these areas. We could even branch these out to include other video game titles outside of the survival horror genre, kind of like "If you enjoyed Madden 18, try Creature by John Saul." Mixing themes and pulling on the different appeals within the horror genres could really expand a display like this. The titles in these genres both pull on people emotionally--just look at The Last of Us game and World War Z--there's strong connection to characters in these that readers and players just can't shake.
I think our only setback in this area might be appealing to people who don't have game systems--but even then, we might still be able to reach them by expanding into the rest of our A/V collection.
While our Horror books aren't moving, our survival horror video games are. These games are extremely popular right now, and with Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding getting ready to come out, they're only going to increase in popularity. So, what I'm thinking we could do is a combined display, where we pair up horror book titles with similarly-themed horror video games. For example, we could pair up the popular PS4 title Until Dawn (a slasher-style game about teens trying to survive, a la Cabin in the Woods, Friday the 13th, etc.) with Riley Sager's Final Girls (about the survivors of slasher-style attacks). These both play off the idea of surviving a slasher-style horror event. I wouldn't necessarily put these bundled together for checkout, but if the display had something like "If you liked _________, try ______________", I think it could work well. We could put the titles out together on a template using that phrasing, and I think it would help boost circulation stats in both these areas. We could even branch these out to include other video game titles outside of the survival horror genre, kind of like "If you enjoyed Madden 18, try Creature by John Saul." Mixing themes and pulling on the different appeals within the horror genres could really expand a display like this. The titles in these genres both pull on people emotionally--just look at The Last of Us game and World War Z--there's strong connection to characters in these that readers and players just can't shake.
I think our only setback in this area might be appealing to people who don't have game systems--but even then, we might still be able to reach them by expanding into the rest of our A/V collection.
I proposed a similar "pairing" for Romance novels and Rom-Com DVDs in my prompt response. I wonder if some of this, in both instances, is an accessibility thing. Simply that some people struggle to take time to read. I wonder if in both instances if we "paired" audiobooks with the game/dvd medium we would see even better circulation results ...
ReplyDeleteI feel like the audiobook would work really well for a mostly silent video game, like Limbo. It could be something paired together, like “Listen to _______ while you play!” (Although Limbo isn’t the greatest example here, since it’s a download-only title). I get what you mean, though, about the accessibility. Good thinking there!
DeleteI like the accessible nature of your promotion. The usage of the this/that formula is easy for the patron to use and can be applied to many different types of media at the library. Using video games as the first tie-in to novels is also great! I'm not sure how your video game circulation is, but I know in general the industry is putting up such strong sales numbers it makes sense that a lot of people may know about 'Until Dawn' but not be aware of 'Final Girls'!
ReplyDeleteVery interesting concept here. It would definitely help younger generations branch out and try reading these types of novels. If you did research (or if you know already) about famous video game characters or movie characters, you could connect them with books. For example, you can say "If you like John Marston from the video game "Red Dead Redemption" you may like "(character name)" in "(book title)" here. "Red Dead Redemption" is a western game, so you could do a western book here.
ReplyDeleteExactly! For one like that, I’d go with something that has a bit of a tragic ending, or a generational story, to keep with how Red Dead (spoiler alert) passes on to John’s son, James, later in the game. Something like The Winter Family by Clifford Jackson fits the bill here. Or, a book with the Western feel of Kill Bill would suffice, too, especially with the drawn out revenge storyline at work. The brand new title from Ethan Wolfe, The Devil’s Waltz, would work, as it has a man hunting down members of his former gang.
DeleteFantastic idea!! Full points!
ReplyDelete