Week 15 Prompt- Marketing Your Library's Fiction Collection

1.) Create an "employee favorites/ recommendations" display

Whether it's a bookstore or a library, I always make a beeline for the employee recommendations display.  As someone who has worked in libraries for many years, I loved it when people asked me what I was reading, and I was always asking my coworkers what they were reading.  For folks who are too shy to directly ask a librarian to recommend something, this is a perfect way to help them find their next great read.  The important thing, however, is to keep the display fresh.  Having the same recommendations on a shelf for six months would be a little tacky (in my opinion), so rotting those titles every few weeks is essential.  However,  once a book is removed from a recommendations display, placing a noticeable sticker on the spine that indicates it is a staff-recommended book is a great way to keep those titles alive.  " ...merely placing a red dot on spines of books on the regular shelves with signs on the end panels saying red dots mean recommended books increased circulation of those books by 9% to 179%. Dots of different colors could represent different genres, different awards (e.g., Nebula vs. Hugo) or different sources of recommendation (e.g., Modern Library list best novels)." (Rippel).

2.) Book Lists
Creating book lists, whether they are staff-recommended titles or genre-specific lists, is an easy way to promote your fiction collection, especially those titles that fall outside of the ever-popular "bestseller" list.  Award winners, obscure titles from popular genres, or author-specific lists, made available in bookmark form at the circulation desk, gives patrons access to titles they might not otherwise notice. but also a handy way to remember them!

3.) Book Graph on Library Website
Barnes & Noble's website features a Book Graph that is, quite honestly, one of the coolest tools I've ever used!  If you have not played around with it, I highly recommend doing so.  It operates on linked data, first by having the reader select one book, and then literally branching out other book recommendations based on subject headings in the original book.  Clicking on one of those books yields yet another web/branches of results.  It is so easy to go down the rabbit hole on this thing, and I have discovered  dozens of titles that I never knew existed based on my interest in one book.  Not only does it give you a ton of book ideas, it is SO much fun to play with!  Any public library could benefit from this (trademarked) tool, and as an added bonus, would possibly draw in more readers who traditionally shop (and pay for) book on the Barnes & Noble website.
Here is a link to the book graph.  I DARE you not to get sucked in!
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/book-graph/bookGraph-results.jsp#/book/9781250099679



Works cited

Rippel, Chris. “What Libraries Can Learn from Bookstores.” WebJunction, 21 Mar. 2012, www.webjunction.org/documents/webjunction/What_Libraries_Can_Learn_from_Bookstores.html.