facet publishing

It's 10 years since The Library Marketing Toolkit was published!

It’s a summer of Tin anniversaries for me - first 10 years of freelancing, and now 10 years since my book, The Library Marketing Toolkit, was launched into the world on this very day in 2012.

Facet Publishing approached me in late 2010 about writing a book on marketing libraries. They were actively seeking to bring more ‘new professionals’ into their author-pool at the time, and I think I was a major beneficiary of that - I wasn’t nearly as qualified to write a book on this subject back then than I am now! Bethan Ruddock also wrote The New Professionals Toolkit over the same sort of time-period, and it was an exciting era for sure.

The timing was actually pretty tricky for me, because another thing that happened in 2010 was my daughter being born. When I was asked about writing the book I initially said ‘I would love to do this but I can’t do it this year’ and whilst Facet were very understanding, they did say that the book would be written by SOMEONE this year and they’d like it be me, but if it would happen without me if I couldn’t do it. So my wife and I talked about it and decided that for the doors it would open, writing a book would be a worthwhile short-term crisis to have… It was, just about, but I wouldn’t recommend having a new baby and a book to write to anyone, because if you’ve got a full-time job as I did then you’re writing at weekends and in the evenings, whilst trying to parent, and that is pretty brutal. Thank you so much to Alice for putting up with all the accommodations necessary to get the book done.

The sales figures

Books about libraries are niche. There are a handful of publishers, most selling books at VERY high prices in order to meet their costs, selling mainly to libraries and sometimes to librarians. The books don’t sell in large numbers; I was told that 300 would be a decent number to sell.

Mine turned out to be one of Facet’s best ever sellers, and the total sales figures after a decade are these: 2118 books sold, of which 1916 are paperbacks and 202 are ebooks. It continues to sell a handful of copies each year.

I took this screenshot when it reached number 1 in the Amazon.co.uk chart (and by chart I mean the super-specialist chart library-related books go into…); I had a similar one when it did the same thing in the US Amazon chart but I can’t find it now. I don’t mind telling you I was unashamedly thrilled about this!

Screenshot the Amazon library management chart, showing The Library Marketing Toolkit at number 1

Is this Windows XP? Either way it’s time-capsule of a screen-shot…

I didn’t keep a regular track on its chart position, but in 2013 it did briefly rise to number 17 in the overall (not just library-related, but all industries) chart for Public Relations, which was exciting…

The Open Access debate: does it harm sales? (Spoiler alert: no.)

One particular detail I find interesting, is what happened when I made chapters available Open Access. When I wrote the book in 2010/11, OA was not something I was aware of at all. Then as I was educated about it by my network on Twitter, I started to pester Facet about letting me make some or all of the Toolkit available Open Access. They were kind enough to let me make four chapters available OA: I know this isn’t the ideal scenario of the whole book but this was a new area to them with their policy still under development, and I really appreciated them being more flexible than saying either ‘no’ or ‘one chapter only’.

Anyway, up until 2015, the Toolkit sales had basically halved each year. It happened like clockwork - around 1,000 sales in the first year, around 500 in the second, around 250 in the third and so on. However, the year after I made the OA chapters available, sales didn’t halve, for the first time ever; in fact they stayed the same as the previous year.

Now, there is definitely correlation there - can we claim causation? Of course we can’t be completely sure - who knows what other factors were at play in book sales over the 12 months - but I see it as fairly compelling evidence that apart from being A Good Thing generally, OA can also lead to more book sales than would have been the case without it.

In addition to this of course, lots more people have read the OA chapters so more people see the work. At the time of writing, the most popular OA chapter from the Toolkit is the Strategic Marketing chapter, which has been downloaded 2,042 times, which is very close to the 2,118 book sales; between them the OA chapters have been downloaded over 4,000 times.

The writing process

Some stuff came very easily as I was writing - all the social media things for example - and other things required a lot more chipping away at to work properly. I showed the chapter on strategy to my friend Andy Priestner because I was really struggling with it. He gave me SUCH useful feedback, especially about the level of ambition the chapter was showing: essentially his point was (and my memory is genuinely abject so sorry if I’m misquoting you here Andy): if you’re going to get people to do strategic marketing, they need to aim higher than you’re suggesting in your chapter: they need to change user behaviour and that’s no small thing. This advice was so important, no just to the book but to my overall approach to marketing, and I still talk about ambition in marketing in the workshops I run today, 11 years later.

I have learned things about the way my brain works over time: one is that I have to get SOMETHING down and then make it good later, rather than trying to write well straight away. Whether it’s a presentation, an article, or even a whole book: some sort of draft - honestly, it can be any old nonsense - is needed before I can make sense of ideas and organise them. I then rewrite the rubbish draft, and then refine, refine, refine. So in I finished a draft and sent it off to Facet in December 2011, not in the hope that they’d like it but in order to have finished part 1 of the process - writing something down - so I could get on with part 2, writing something good.

At this point I started making major revisions, literally ditching entire chapters and restructuring whole sections of the book, and in the meantime Facet sent the 1st draft to Antony Brewerton, I think at my suggestion because I really admired his thoughts on libraries. He came back with a review of it, and quite honestly it was BRUTAL. There was nothing unkind about it and he was very encouraging, but he pointed some flaws I was all too aware of and it was savage to read it.

I just found it and reread it, 10 and a half years later, and it was still painful: my skin went hot and I think I probably went red, sat here at my PC in 2022 - it was so spot on as to the problems with the book. As well as pointing out stuff I already knew was a problem, he also had a huge number of constructive suggestions and drew attention to lots of things I didn’t know were problematic until he pointed them out.

In short, it was exactly what I needed. Some things I couldn’t change (Antony wanted to see more evidence of marketing campaigns I’d run, but at that stage I simply hadn’t led any!) but all the things I could change I did. In early 2012 between January 25 and February 20 I rewrote the book into the version that exists today.

If by any chance you’ve read the book and found it useful, thank Andy and Antony if you see them!

The publishing process

The publishing process itself was surprisingly painless. An early conversation with the publisher was about writing style - could I write in my own voice? The answer came back yes, very much so. I think this the only way I could have got through it, because I dislike academic writing intensely. The amount of great ideas that haven’t had the traction they should have in librarianship, because their authors have used the construct of academic writing to communicate, drives me mad.

Facet worked with me on the process of working out exactly what the book should be and the kinds of chapters it should contain. They were happy for me to either write it all or edit a volume of contributed chapters; I wanted a halfway house with case studies, which they were fine with. We agreed the deadline and wordcount, they supplied me with a style guide, and then largely left me to get on with it, rather than constantly checking on progress, which I hugely appreciated. They were really supportive when I needed support (especially Sarah Busby, the commissioning editor at the time), but didn’t micromanage anything.

I opted to pay for an indexer rather than to do the indexing myself - a decision I would highly recommend! They’re really good at it and by that stage of the process you are completely sick of your own work… It’s worth noting that while a publisher will do some marketing of your book, it’s really on you. If you want to sell copies, you need to put the work in to market it. So I set up a website for mine, I made a Slideshare presentation about it, it had its own twitter account. I really went for it, and that’s what you have to do to raise awareness and shift copies.

There were some great reviews, and the ones I loved were the ones which really got where I was coming from - not just telling people how to market their library, but trying to reassure them that they could. One review in the Australian Library Journal ended like this and really made my week:

“The whole book has a reassuring and inspiring tone: ideas and approaches outlined in the book appear absolutely achievable and commonsensical. I suggest that you buy, borrow or beg a copy today.”

The case studies

To be absolutely frank, there’s not a lot of my own writing in the book which I fully stand by now. It’s not that I disagree with past me, it’s that I’ve learned so much since that’s superseded what I wrote.

However what really holds up a decade later is the case studies. I could not believe the people who said yes to writing for my book! I am still honoured they did, and they wrote REALLY great stuff. Thank you so much to everyone who contributed to this! They all did so for free (I actually negotiated my own royalties down in order to get them each a free copy of the book as payment) and I’m hugely grateful.

The follow-up…

I’ve been asked more than once to write a sequel to the book, and I have not done so. This is mainly because it was a huge amount of work, a sort of once-in-a-lifetime level of commitment.

I haven’t ruled out self-publishing a book though: the attraction would be I could sell it waaay cheaper, I could publish it on the timeline of my choosing, and make it the length I wanted rather than needing to achieve any sort of target. So if I ever write a follow-up, I’ll let you know.

If you’ve bought the Toolkit for yourself or your library, or read any of the OA chapters, then thank you! I hope it was useful.

The Library Marketing Toolkit is OUT NOW! Here's what's in it

The book I spent 2011 writing is finally out! Facet Publishing have printed and released the Library Marketing Toolkit and the pre-orders have been sent. There are details of what the book contains, and who writes its 27 case studies, on librarymarketingtoolkit.com, but as you'll know if you've read this blog before I really like slide-presentations as a way of getting info across in a non-boring way; with that in mind, here's what you can expect from the book. Chapters, themes covered, case studies, etc.

Still too early for full reviews, but some pre-prints were sent out and have been getting some good feedback:

‘Ned Potter's  book will help any library succeed in creating a community that is aware and engaged in its library. He has written an easy to follow tool kit targeted at the specific marketing needs of librarians that is sure to become a favourite resource for anyone involved in marketing a library. There are case studies from libraries around the world that will inspire you no matter whether your library is large or small. You'll love this book!’ - NANCY DOWD, AUTHOR OF 'BITE-SIZED MARKETING'

[The Toolkit] is brilliant and  a great addition to the library professional discourse.’ – ANDY WOODWORTH

'The Library Marketing Toolkit is packed full of useful, informative and above all practical information about the best ways of getting your message across, and it should be on the shelf of every librarian and information professional who needs to promote the idea of the library and its value in a modern day society.' – PHIL BRADLEY, CILIP PRESIDENT

You can click here to buy in the US, via Amazon.com, or if you're in Canada you can click to buy via Amazon.ca or finally in the UK you can click here to order via Amazon UK - or just get it straight from the publisher.

It's finally done!

- Ned

Introducing the Library Marketing Toolkit website!

Months in the planning, the library marketing toolkit website is finally live! It can be found at www.librarymarketingtoolkit.com. A screengrab of the Library Marketing Toolkit website

What's on it?

The site is essentially designed to give you lots of practical advice on how to market your library - be that public, academic, special or archive. There are tools and resources, lots of useful links, new case studies which will be added to on an ongoing basis, and there's info about the Library Marketing Toolkit book and its contributors.

There's also a blog, which will give tips and aim to highlight the best (and sometimes the worst) marketing from libraries around the world. The first post is Marketing libraries with new technologies: what you need to know, and what to do next and features this presentation, which I gave yesterday at an Academic and Research Libraries Group conference on new technologies in libraries:

(Works best on full-screen mode)

What's coming up next?

The next post on the site will be a fantastic case study from the Bodleian library at Oxford, about their amazing smartphone app which has had everyone from Stephen Fry downwards swooning over it's amazingness.

There's also some additional case study material which I couldn't fit into the book, and several other brand new case studies including stuff from the UnLibrary in Crouch End, high-level tips on crowd-sourcing from JISC's Ben Showers, and a brilliant how-to on social monitoring from Andy Burkhardt.

Subscribing etc

I'd love it if you subscribed to the new blog - you can subscribe by clicking here - and there's a Twitter account too, @libmarketing, which you can follow here. If you want to spread the word about the new website on Twitter (for which I'll love you forever!) here's a ready made click-to-tweet link to it.

About The Library Marketing Toolkit book itself

The Library Marketing Toolkit will be published by Facet Publishing this Summer (probably 20th of July in the UK, and slightly later in the US / Canada. Stateside it will be distrubuted and marketed by Neal-Schuman, who've just been bought by the ALA). It is aimed at public libraries, special libraries, academic libraries and archives, and is extremely practical in nature - ideas you can apply right away to market your library more succesfully.

The best part is, it has 27 fantastic case studies from really amazing people and libraries from the UK, the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Singapore. Contributors include organisations like the British Library and the National Archive, New York Public Library, University of Cambridge, JISC - and amazing individuals too: see the Contributor's page of the Toolkit website for details of all of them.

You can order it direct from Facet, or via Amazon UK, Amazon US, Amazon Canada etc. As mentioned in the previous post, a free chapter is available for download, here (PDF).

We have one advance-copy review so far, a great one from Nancy Dowd, the vertiable QUEEN of marketing libraries!

Ned Potter's  book will help any library succeed in creating a community that is aware and engaged in its library. He has written an easy to follow tool kit targeted at the specific marketing needs of librarians that is sure to become a favourite resource for anyone involved in marketing a library. There are case studies from libraries around the world that will inspire you no matter whether your library is large or small. You'll love this book!’ - Nancy Dowd, Author of ALA's Best Selling Book, Bite-Sized Marketing

- thewikiman

Free chapter of the Library Marketing Toolkit available for download!

My book on marketing libraries is completely finished, done, dusted, and is currently awaiting printing by Facet Publishing. It'll be out in July. Picture of the Library Marketing Toolkit

WOOT! :)

You can get info about how to order it from Facet, if you think it'll be useful for your library - in the meantime, anyone can download a free chapter (PDF) from the CILIP website. We've chosen the Introduction because it talks about the importance of marketing libraries, gives an overview of the book and descriptions of each chapter, and contains a case-study matrix which lists every single one of the 27 contributors, where they're from, what they cover, which sector they're relevant to etc etc. So basically it provides the best possible overview of the book, so you can decide if you want to order a copy or not...

This is a pre-final proofs version of the chapter so there will be one or two minor changes in the real thing, but most of the content is the same.

Let me know if you have any feedback!

- thewikiman