Getting Paperbacks in Libraries

If you’re an author with a handful of books published (or you’ve published nonfiction and have one book with a great program to help clients), AMMO is unlike any other program on the market. You’re going to have to work the program to find success, and bestseller status likely won’t hit in weeks of joining the program, but for many authors, AMMO is the beginning of a lucrative career that puts books first. Learn more here.

THIS IS THE LINK TO MY SUBSTACK if you’re listening elsewhere.

Starting Small to Go Big

Libraries are really going to be a big project, but as I’ve said, the payoff is nothing short of career stability. So in order to begin the process, we’re going to start close to home.

You can sell your paperback directly into your home library. In the same way direct fulfillment is the best path for author and reader, direct fulfillment is the best for authors and libraries.

You may have heard me say this, and if not, check out parts 1 and 2 of the library series to recap, but if a library buys from Ingram Spark, they pay double the price of your retail cost.

If they buy direct from you, you can sell at retail, save the library 50%, and gross 97% of you sale. Every time you sell your paperback into a library this way, you earn full-price, and enable local readers to read for free.

Few, if any, channels will be more profitable to your author business. Often times, a simple visit to the library can lead to a purchase of a paperback. And if you find you meet resistance, donating a copy can be a great way to start a relationship, but if you donate, you need to commit to follow-up visits to ensure the library is giving your book a fair chance.

One technique that can lead to a thriving snowball effect is returning to the library after your book is catalogued to encourage a patron to borrow the book. This does require a measure of extroverting yourself—which is a skill all of us should strive to build. You’ll want to select a good time to visit the library when the most patrons are likely to be on location.

Find someone browsing in your genre and recommend your book. It’s tough because it means talking to a stranger, but it’s an easy sell because they read your kind of book and it’s a free checkout.

Once your book is checked out, you have data to export to get your book in more libraries.

And here’s the deal, according to wordsrated.com the average book gets checked out 8 to 10 times per year, but what that statistic manages to misrepresent is that averages account equally for powerhouse books like Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow as well as that one book you never heard of that sits on the shelf gathering dust. What that means is averages make poorly circulated books seem more successful.

I called my local lending library here in Omaha and spoke with Autumn at the Ralston branch. She agreed that the 20/80 principle probably fit pretty well with lending trends. In other words, 20% of books account for the majority of borrows while 80% may see fewer than 1 checkouts on a given week.

(Honestly, it is very likely that 50% of books in a library will see fewer than a single checkout per year. Using our example of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, consider that just one branch the OPL system, say the Sorenson location, may have as many as 50 copies of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow in circulation. If that one book remains constantly loaned for even six months, it would account for 1,200 borrows.

With a little bit of fast math, we can determine that it would take about 86 books being checked out just once a week for six months to bring the lending average to 8-10 times a week for the lot of them. That means one successful book can impact the average for almost a hundred library rejects.

Anecdotally, my best guess is that most books are checked out in the single digits per year and many books are never checked out.

Are Checkout Statistics Depressing?

You might be tempted to feel depressed by the stats on the majority of books, but I feel encouraged by them. It means the hardest work you’ll do is getting your book in libraries. After that, all you need to do is visit the branch to ensure your book is consistently borrowed, and by doing that, you’ll strengthen bonds with your local librarians and begin to build a case study for why your book is a great addition to regional, state, and national locations.

See, the thing is, most libraries are figh...