Libraries and the Long Tail
May 18th, 2006Responding to a post by Stephen Abram, The Gypsy Librarian blogs::
“I should say that I personally do not read bestsellers. I sure keep myself aware of them, but I am more of a long tail reader, so to speak. Mr. Abrams asks if bestsellers need more promotion from us. I would venture to say they probably do not. I am not saying public libraries stop displaying the NYT Bestseller list or similar lists, but I am saying they probably should be doing more in terms of promoting other cool books in their collections. If they did that, they would probably find better circulation figures for certain items. The bestsellers are always going to move. I think we should help a few other items move along as well.”
Libraries and the Long Tail remain a fascinating combination. Stephen and Angel make very good points and libraries should heed their advice. What sets up apart from the huge bookstore chains is our vast reach of material (Of course, we have to fix the bureaucratic nonsense that is Interlibrary Loan, but that’s a different post), and we should market it as such.
That said, I had an interesting conversation with someone a few weeks ago (can’t remember who). We were talking about Amazon/libraries and he/she said: “Buying a used book on Amazon is sometimes cheaper and faster than getting it via ILL…and it’s delivered right to your house!”