Pat's Convention Note #11 of 100 things I learned from attending FIVE LITERARY CONFERENCES in 2014

#11. What’s happening at the libraries? But first, I’ve reached out to Kiffer Brown who taught the workshop on +1 and she agreed to answer questions for the blog. I wanted to make sure I am as accurate as possible on these important tools for authors that I am sharing, so I’m waiting for her responses.

At Romance Slam Jam (RSJ 2014), I sat in on a workshop entitled Romance Readers Advisory: A Librarian Prospective with LaToya Devezin. She said the top African-American romance genres checked out at her New Orleans branch was urban fiction, Christian fiction and erotica. YA, graphic novels and paranormal also made the list. She also mentioned Overdrive.org—the first time I heard about this. It’s an electronic catalog system where library patrons can borrow eBooks. So I logged onto http://overdrive.slcl.org to see if any of my books showed up from my previous publishers—none at my public library. But on a main database, I did see all three novels from Moody. You can check to see if any of your eBooks under emedia at your local library. So now I’m thinking, why not try to get some of my self-published titles on Overdrive? But author BEWARE. My understanding is you sell one copy of your eBook for $2.99 to a library. That one copy can be download unlimited times from the library. According to a local librarian, this is the way for new authors to get noticed. Since you don’t earn royalties when someone checks out your eBook, you might not be worth it to you, or you might want to look at it as a promotion. Either way, now you know something I didn’t, or maybe you already knew and can add to the conversation. Feel free. I hope this post has been a blessing to you.