Week 15 Prompt: Marketing Fiction Collections

Fiction titles for adults – this is an area of my library’s collection that sees HUGE circulation statistics and interest from patrons. I do feel that we do a fantastic job of marketing these titles (we actually are lucky enough to have our own PR/marketing team that work in conjunction with our reference department fiction selectors.)

One way of marketing within the library that has been very successful in the past is the physical location of our new fiction title arrivals. As soon as patrons walk in the door, they are greeted with a special area dedicated to new fiction arrivals. They know where to go to look for the newest materials, and this also seems to increase browsing in patrons, as well. Near this area, we also have a digital display from OverDrive that is actually a large LCD monitor mounted onto the wall, which displays our entire OverDrive eBook catalog, including fiction titles, which patrons can browse and read samples through. This has also been very popular, and has helped to increase knowledge of our rapidly growing eBook fiction collection.

Special programming throughout the year, such as author talks and readings, can also help to bring patrons in to the library. We usually offer handouts and bookmarks on similar fiction titles both at these special events and at the reference and RA desks to help increase awareness of fiction titles in the collection.

We use displays to highlight parts of the collection when you first enter the library in our glass cases. We’ve had everything from African American authors for Black History Month to Downton Abbey read-a-likes. We also on occasion have taken out small ads in a local newspaper for popular fiction title releases.  We also feature new fiction titles in our physical, paper copy of the library newsletter, along with our digital library newsletter. I prefer the digital newsletter because the patron can simply click the link for the fiction title in the e-mail newsletter and be directed straight the our library’s OverDrive site, where they can place the title on hold, get a sample or check it out and begin reading immediately!

We are currently investigating the idea of a ‘mobile library.’ One option would be to have an LCD screen on the exterior of the bookmobile that would rotate, featuring not only information on the bookmobile but specific titles, such as fiction items. We utilize Pinterest to promote our fiction collection heavily, and receive a TON of unique visitors to our library’s site from this social bookmarking service. We also use Animoto to create short book trailers to promote some adult fiction titles. The videos are posted to our site and our blog. We often use Twitter to promote new fiction titles, but these tweets are rarely re-tweeted. Our catalog is linked through our Facebook site, which allows patrons to access fiction titles easily, but we never really post about the collection (aside from eBook titles.)

There is a HUGE Fourth of July festival and parade in the city where my library is. We are part of the parade every year, and I would like to see a float themed around fiction titles and popular areas of the collection that somehow relate to the holiday.