You Can Market Your Self-Published Book to Libraries
Posted by Infnity Author Marketing BLOG on Mon, Dec 13, 2010 @ 03:19 PM
Author Name: Jay Thomas Willis
Book Title(s): Implications For Effective Psychotherapy With African-Americans; As Soon as the Weather Breaks; The Cotton is High; Born to be Destroyed; Paranoid but not Stupid; Why Black Americans Behave as They Do; Hard Luck; When the Village Idiot Get Started; Educated Misunderstanding; The Devil in Angelica.
Marketing Subject: Marketing to Libraries
You may be missing out on a marvelous opportunity to market your book. If you can figure out a way to tap into the library market, you can sell a lot of books. There are approximately 122, 101 libraries of all types in the United States today, not to mention other countries. Every decent size city in the United States have a library, larger cities have any number of libraries.
The last time I checked, most city libraries had a purchasing agent. The title of this person may be different in various cities, but most of them have someone in charge of purchasing their books. Sometimes you will need to contact each city library individually. This person will give you instructions as to how to get your book in the city’s library system. Usually the purchasing agent will have to evaluate the contents of your book before accepting it. If you run into a situation where each library requires you to contact libraries individually, you will have to be a little more labor intensive, and do a lot more leg work. Some libraries require that you have a Library Call Number in addition to an ISBN Number, before they will accept your book.
Personally, I live in the suburbs, and I was told that each library in my area has its own person in charge of purchasing books, even though it is a part of a suburban-wide library system. Again, if this is the case in your area, you will need to contact each library individually. This is a little labor intensive to visit each library, only to sell one book to each library, or maybe not even sell a book at all, after finding out who is in charge of purchasing their books. But hopefully the name of your book will soon get around, and you won’t have to do all the labor-intensive work. Sometimes a library will purchase your book after it has been demanded by so many of its patrons. So you need to in that case stir up a little interest locally. I was told by one library administrator that it depended on the “Reviews” as to what books they purchased.
The international market for libraries is a whole other market, but one that you should consider. I have no idea how to capture that market, but it would be worthwhile to find out how that system can be approached.
If your city doesn’t have a purchasing agent, but requires you to pursue each library individually, you may have your work cut out for you. But then nothing in this business is easy. It’ll be worth it if you can sell your book.