Week 15 Prompt: Marketing the Fiction Collection

Marketing the fiction collection can be done in many different ways, but I think if you really want to make a splash and get those items circulating, here are some ideas to get it done:

Host an Author Fair
Do you have any local authors in your area? Chances are, you probably do. They might be self-publishing or not well-known, but they still exist! Host an author fair and invite these people to talk about their work. Most authors will bring copies of their work for people to buy, but have the titles available for checkout as well. By visiting other author fairs or big library book events, you can find more authors who might be willing to come to your event as well. It never hurts to send a letter or an email to different writing agents, either! Contact publishers, contact agents, contact authors-- all of these are viable options to get these fiction writers into the library promoting their work--and, in turn, promoting your collection (that contains their work!). Maybe they'll sign a copy for the library!

This can be a good opportunity to invite authors who would be willing to talk about the writing process as well. Contact colleges and universities to see if they have a Creative Writing focus in their English department. Most of these require their professors to continue publishing as they teach, so there's a good chance you'll find authors there who are willing to talk (and teach!) about their work.

Offer read-alikes of the works that these authors produce! Not only will it allow patrons to check out materials that could be similar to the authors who are present, but it could lead other patrons to those same authors through a different book they've enjoyed.

It can be hard to coordinate schedules, so make it a longer-than-a-day event. Let different authors come on different days. Curate displays to keep up the entire time, and remember to refresh them as the event goes on and people check out display materials.

Speaking of displays....

Curate Displays
We've been talking about appeals and read-alikes all semester long. We all know that there are books on every subject ever written, so why not curate displays around the materials that might not be circulating as well as others? If there's a section of your fiction collection that's just not doing as well as you'd hoped, take a look at the appeal terms and see if there are connections to be made to other areas that are doing better.

Collect similar titles, make a neat sign, arrange them in an aesthetically-pleasing way, and watch them circulate! Curate displays around current events, holidays, the weather, or library programs! There are so many different options here-- you can make a display around ANYTHING.

We talked about integrated advisory earlier in the semester--this is a place to make that work. See something similar (appeal-wise) in a book and a movie? A book and a videogame? Display them together! If you like Red Dead Redemption, try Cormac McCarthy's western titles! If you like the Jack Reacher movies, hey! Here's the book series it's based on!

Create Book Lists
Not everybody has time to just casually browse the stacks and find the "diamond in the rough." Create book lists of similar authors and have a small desk-top display of these brochures for patrons to take and find books quickly and easily. Sound familiar? It should! Essentially, it's one of the options for our final--Create an annotated book list. Here's an example from my library.

Pictured here, we've got a list of Amish Fiction authors, a guide to Local History, "Cozy" Mysteries, read-alikes for Jane Austen, and the Leavitta Hamilton collection of Enduring Literature (Classics). Aside from the Local History guide, these lists are all curated by our Fiction Librarian. 

Another way to provide a book list for patrons is to subscribe to BookPage. Our Friends group purchases a subscription for us, but if you've got it in your budget to provide it to your patrons, it's a great resource for them to find new reads.