Just about every book promotion article I have read suggests that the author launch a public library marketing campaign by sending hundreds of letters to libraries nationwide. The problem with doing this is twofold. First, it is expensive and time consuming, and second, it is not very effective. I recently read a case about an author that mailed out letters to 1,500 libraries to promote his book and the entire campaign resulted in one sale that he could attribute to the mailing campaign. That sure doesn't sound very cost effective to me.

Public libraries do not typically add titles to their collections based on mail solicitations, they base their purchase selections on a book's popularity and whether or not patrons are requesting it. Furthermore, despite the urban myth, most do not care if your book has a Library of Congress Catalog Number either, they only care that it is in demand and prefer that it is still in print. Thus, if you want libraries to buy your book it would probably be more effective to launch a random population mail campaign that intrigues the recipients enough that they request your book from their local library.

Well, even though this approach would probably be more effective that directly soliciting the libraries, I am not suggesting you try it. What I would suggest that you do is to encourage your website visitors to ask their local branch library to add your book to their collection. This not only results in more book sales for you, it gives patrons of the library access to your book and in many cases they will buy their own copy if they like what you have to say.

Michael Mould

Michael Mould is a licensed professional engineer in the State of Washington and by day is a Flight Test engineer. Several years ago, to earn a supplemental income, he and his wife started an online-bookselling business to finance their shared travel hobby. As a consequence of the bookselling success, several friends of friends asked to learn the business and Mike coached them to be successful online booksellers as well.

The requests and coaching became overwhelming and Mike decided to write a book about online bookselling that captured everything he could put in writing about the subject. The result, "Online-Bookselling: A Practical Guide with Detailed Explanations and Insightful Tips," [CD-ROM ISBN 1599714876, Paperback ISBN 1427600708] was made available in February 2006 with the initial CD-ROM release.

Being an engineer (a.k.a. someone that enjoys torturing data and making it conform to the likes of graphs and charts) and having a dislike for spending time filling out tax forms, Mike developed "Bookkeeping for Booksellers," [CD ISBN 1427600694] a 19 sheet linked Excel Workbook that did all of the record keeping for his online bookselling business. Also being one that did not like to see only the numbers, Mike incorporated 55 graphs so that he could see at a glance how his online bookselling business was performing.

All of these works have received very positive reviews and Mike has really enjoyed the feedback and correspondence with his customers. Since he also enjoys writing very much, you can expect additional works on this topic as well as others.