The Foundation of Success with Libraries is Quality

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Build Bridges

Here’s a real-life example of why we need to build many bridges to our readership. This week on Thursday evening, I was notified my Facebook Ad Account was restricted, shutting down my ads and preventing me to run any until the review is complete.

The issue was caused by a glitch Facebook is experiencing. I won’t bore you with the details, but the moral of the story is simple: I did nothing wrong, and yet, my business of selling books came to a screeching halt.

And I’ll be honest, for about three hours on Thursday night, I sulked, pouted, and licked my wounds. For me that looked like a few extra cans of Miller Lite and a Zelda, Breath of the Wild binge. If you know, you know.

But enough about my woes, let’s dive back into our discussion about libraries. And I’ll start by sharing some great news. The 9 Lives of Marva DeLonghi sold 7 copies into the Nebraska Libraries System Oakland Branch this week. I donated one copy to the library and followed up to see how it was doing on loans.

The librarian had read and enjoyed it, and it had remained checked out since so she bought seven copies for the local book club. You can imagine my excitement.

All this happened because I prioritized quality first. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. How do you ensure your book is high-quality enough to retain the readers you gain?

Get Reviews by Giving

I recently stumbled on a YouTuber who publishes unique reviews, but what’s different about his channel is its approachability. It’s vulgar. It’s accessible. It’s fun. Check it out: Thoughts Before REM.

I’m excited that the channel is going to give a shoutout for my novel, and I’ll get you a link when it’s live.

Next up, I got a book review from a former podcast guest, Jason Cheng, and you can read it in its entirety here. I struggled with many elements of the review, and did the unforgivable thing, sending a comprehensive rebuttal to him, in private. Do like I say, not like I do, in this regard. And it may be wise not to read reviews. Our health matters, and reviews tend to be bad for our health.

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Quality Matters, and It Costs Too

No surprise here, but quality is the most important aspect of any writer’s journey.

You simply can’t expect to be a bestselling author much less sell anything if you choose to publish books that lack professional editing and formatting. 

Lately, I’ve begun to question my firm stance on buying a cover from a professional artist, because I’ve seen that many successful, six-figure authors do just fine with in-house book cover designs.

At the same time, I still can spot a homemade cover almost always. And if I am like other readers, the hesitancy I feel to read a book with a homemade cover may affect sales.

But here is where things get interesting. Consider, libraries are peopled by employees who have masters degrees in library science. These people spend their entire days surrounded by books published by the Big Five publishing houses. 

That means librarians not only have a keen eye for cover art of a certain kind, but they’ll be biased toward cover art that doesn’t meet the standard they’re used to seeing. 

Excepting librarians from your hometown and those you’ve made close relationships with, every pitch to get your book in the library will be happening electronically or over the phone, which means you have only the appearance of your book cover to make that first impression. Nothing you can do can change how a librarian will see your book cover.

If the librarian thinks the book cover appears amateurish what are the chances your book ends up on those library shelves? So, if for no other reason than that you want to consider professionally designed but covers.

But all the work you do on a book cover means nothing if the work you do inside the book doesn’t merit readership. 

Pudding Proof

I’ve lately been swapping reviews with authors on Twitter in an effort to get my reviews on Amazon higher. You’d be shocked by the number of authors I’ve read who lack proofreading. Run-on sentences abound. Commas are missed or out of place. Quotations are missing or out of place. 

Worse, you see authors who have had no developmental editing on their books, trying to sell them through Amazon. It may work for a while, but if you approach a library with a book like that you will have no chance of success.

But why should you care about libraries? 

Remember last week how we talked about the number of libraries available to carry your books? Nearly 20,000 if you need a refresher.

With a disciplined process and a good plan in place you could easily sell $200,000 or more worth of books to library’s in just a week of time. 

Can you imagine the opportunities presented to you if your books were in that many libraries at that kind of volume? 

And first impressions matter for a lifetime. If you are able to get a book into libraries at scale, every future book you write will have a first impression that is positive and lasting. That means as quickly as you can write quality books you have a six-figure customer to buy quality books.

Time To Reflect

Right now if you’re in a similar position to me in that you have a small income on your published work and few reviews, you may be wondering if it’s worth spending several thousand dollars on your book, when that’s money you might have to put on a credit card and pay interest charges to repay.

The little Dave Ramsey on all our shoulders tells us debt is bad. But the little Dave Ramsey on all our shoulders is lying.

Actually, Dave Ramsey in real life is lying. Mostly…

If you have a problem with excessive debt it can be really great to do the Dave Ramsey thing, but once you’ve learned discipline with your money there are much smarter ways to control your finances. Enough said about that. This isn’t a finance podcast. Though, sometimes I wonder if I should start one…

Businesses Require Investments

The point I’m making is that you want to spend money building a great book and I use the word build intentionally. 

This is art, but it is also business. Libraries expect good businesspeople to bring them high-quality products that have been designed for readers to experience the least friction. 

If you can do that, you have a great chance of adding a full-time revenue stream to your current income for every book you publish as well as tens of thousands of readers, because, look, I read from library’s and many of you do as well, and how often have we fallen in love with an author and bought other books by them after checking one out from the library.

Finally, remember that this is a strategy that works well for self published or traditionally published authors. If you went the traditional route you might not be thinking much about the design of your book because the publisher did it for you, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to design professional materials around the package you pitch to libraries.

That means getting yourself a professional email address. The days of using Gmail are finished. You now need an @authorname.com email. If that sounds intimidating, you can just go to ZOHO and set up one email address that will have a business name domain associated with it, and you’ll pay nothing.

When it comes time to begin pitching libraries to carry your books you’ll want to make sure your pitch deck looks as professional as any business has ever looked. But now we’re starting to move into topics for future weeks.

Your homework for this week’s library episode is to look at the books you have already published and reflect: are they professionally designed? Have you developed a cover that librarians will want on their shelves? Is the editing and proofreading of your manuscript at a professional level? Are you afraid to spend money? And if you are afraid to spend money publishing your books, ask why you expect to make money on something you didn’t invest in.

Until next week. Write hard, and think about investing in you.

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