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Authors—a simple way to make your book easier to order

Recommending library purchases

I buy a lot of books, but I also borrow books from the library.

If I want to read a book and it isn’t in my local library, I will request it. Most of the time—if the book is available in Australia—the library will purchase it for me.

This has lots of advantages.

I get to read the book. If I like the author, I then go on to purchase his or her books. Not just that one, but potentially future books.

Even better, because it’s in the library system, other people who might never have seen the book get a chance to read it as well.

But it has to be there for them to read.

Some things authors can do to make it easier to get their books into libraries

Today I tried to recommend a book for my library to purchase. I knew the book was out because the author had tweeted about it, and the details were on her website.

Unfortunately, it was hard to get details to put into the Spydus request form. It took some digging to find out. I was about to give up, when I finally thought to click on the first chapter excerpt. Luckily for me, the information was there.

If you’re an author, I strongly recommend you make this information available on your website. The easier it is to find, the more likely people like me will request it.

The information you require:

  • Name of the novel
  • If it’s part of a series, the name of the series and the number in the series
  • The name of the author
  • The date it was published
  • The name of the publisher
  • The ISBN

Eat your own dog food

I’m off to ensure all of this is readily available on our website.

2 replies on “Authors—a simple way to make your book easier to order”

Coincidentally, I just stumbled across Linesman in my local library (in Nashua, NH, USA) and enjoyed it enormously. I’m looking forward to the next one in February!

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