Desperate on the side of the publishers anyway ….
My library (I’m a public library director) was approached a couple months ago by an “author publicist” eager to set up a few author visits here at the library. For free.
It seems that the publicity arms of some publishers are beginning to realize that it has long been bookstores and libraries that actually sell books by exposing people to new authors … and that with fewer bookstores out there they were going to have to start talking to the libraries.
It’s a good deal for us and for our readers. The authors sell a few books and they get their names in the papers (plus in our own publicity material). We don’t incur the costs associated with other types of programming.
I do wonder how long this will last. Publishers, after all, are not printers and their true functions have always been author development, editing, or publicity. These are all costs and, truth be told, we librarians (and the bookstore owners) likely did the last as much or more than the publishers themselves.
Here’s the thing: local authors without either talent or story approach libraries on a regular basis, convinced that our publicity can help their sales. That would be true if we wanted to lower our standards (and thus also public expectations for what we vet for our collections).
What happens when non-local authors with talent and with good stories decide to avoid publishers altogether?
We’ll soon see.
Weird – I thought that key library visits by authors were already a natural part of a canny publisher’s itinerary. I know our library features plenty of local authors but we’re an unusually literary neighbourhood.
Well, it’s not the locals … it’s the big publishers getting out into the semi-boonies. We’ve had such authors before and paid a good price, but now we’re seen (at least by some!) as a partner rather than a competitor.
(I should note that US practice and UK practice viz copyright are very different. US libraries do not pay extra for the privilege of lending.)