Your Library Loves You Back @ Emerald City Comicon 2017

Get Your Book into Your Public Library​

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• Why? Because the library’s collections drive demand and interest in reading, and discovery through the library drives sales in a similar way to word of mouth.

• Attend writers’ events and publishing panels at your library, to get tips and to network.

• Take advantage of the library’s resources and knowledge to help you format your ebook

• Get your ebook into a mainstream library distribution channel, to make it easy for librarians to discover and buy your book - eg. Smashwords is a self-publishing platform, free for authors, which has ebook creation tools AND a relationship with OverDrive, the main distributor of ebooks to English speaking public libraries.

• Tell your librarians - OverDrive’s discovery tools for local and regional content still need work, so let us know that your book is available! We do have collection standards, and we can’t buy everything - but 99% of the time, if it’s local, we want it in our collection!

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Approach Your Public Library with a Program Idea

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• Find out how they take proposals (VPL has a form, and it really does get to our librarians!), approach well in advance (1-2 quarters), and be patient.

• Be specific about the audience for your program and your technology and space needs.

• Be willing to partner on promotion (poster templates, social media, etc). Most large urban libraries will have marketing departments, but you might be asked to create and/or distribute your own posters.

• Be willing to work within the library’s mandate - most public libraries will have specific priority areas, such as supporting local authors, fostering a creative community, building digital literacy skills, engaging in current events and cultural issues.

• Open your program to everyone - the most important part of a library’s mandate is free, publicly accessible collections and programs - this means that any time we give away our space and tech for free, the program being run must be open to everyone.

• You can sell books, but you can’t sell services. The public library is a neutral and relatively commerce free place - you can sell your book at your reading or program, but you can’t make your program into an infomercial for your editing services or your friend’s print shop. Your main goal should be to educate, entertain, and engage the community members that come to the program.