This past weekend we attended the American Library Association’s big annual conference in INscribe’s home town, San Francisco, and gathered up some fresh marketing tips!
Our biggest takeaways from the conference: Librarians love independent and mid-tier publishers. They see your content as high quality, unique, and fulfilling needs and wants across a broad spectrum of library patrons. Their only complaint: They’ll never discover your titles unless you make a strong effort to market them, so follow the easy steps below and you’ll begin to stand out above the rest.
Get reviewed
With millions of titles to choose from, librarians rely on reviewers to separate the wheat from the chaff. In addition to making sure you have customer reviews at GoodReads and Amazon (librarians really do pay attention to these!), submit your titles to popular blogs and publications that specialize in featuring independent publishers like Foreward Reviews.
Flex your local cred
Collecting the works of local authors is often part of your library’s mission statement. Email your local consortium and ask them to purchase a copy of your eBook. Let them know the ISBN and that it’s available for purchase through major library retailers like OverDrive, Baker & Taylor, and 3M. Once they purchase and create a MARC record for your title, you’re more likely to be discovered by other library systems.
SF Public Library Main Branch south entrance
We notify INscribe clients of library promotions in nearly every weekly newsletter. As a member of a larger distributor’s catalog, your titles are eligible to be included in our library retailer’s genre, subject, and theme based lists, email blasts, and library purchasing portal carousels…but only if you nominate your titles. Again, once one library buys you, your visibility increases exponentially!
Enter contests
Librarians are looking for high quality content and if you win an award, you’ll definitely be on their radar. As with review services, look for awards that focus on independent publishers, like the IPPY Awards and the IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards.