Ebook Review Central for Dreamspinner Press for November 2011

Posted on December 26, 2011March 18, 2012 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Ebook Review Central> ebooks

Happy Boxing Day to those in the UK, Canada, NZ and Australia! For the rest of us, happy Monday. And welcome to the post-Christmas edition of Ebook Review Central, where it’s still November, and it’s time to look at Dreamspinner Press titles for that month.

Dreamspinner fans seem to have started their Turkey Day comas early in November. Every title received at least one review, but there were no overwhelming favorites this month. Just a nice, steady stream of reviews.

Last month’s featured titles continued to receive acclaim. Rick R. Reed’s Caregiver continued to rack up even more reviews this month. Roux and Urban’s Divide & Conquer not only added to its impressive review tally, it made several “best of 2011” lists, including Samantha’s Top Picks for 2011 at Fiction Vixen and Library Journal’s Best Ebook Romances for 2011.

But we’re here to highlight the November titles.

Cop Out by KC Burn is a story “about love, romance, growth, and doing the right thing,” according to one reviewer. This is a clearly both a police story and a love story with multiple twists on the way to its deserved happy ending. When Kurt’s detective partner is killed in the line of duty, Kurt knows that he must visit his partner’s family. It’s what partners do. But when he tries to locate his partner’s family, he has to do some investigation. His partner was deeply in the closet, and kept his life partner, Davy, isolated and alone to the point of abuse. Now Davy has no friends or support network, and is alone with his grief. Kurt and Davy’s journey to friendship, trust and eventually love make the story of Cop Out.

It’s Not Shakespeare by Amy Lane is an “opposites attract” type of story. James Richards is a college professor on the verge of settling into a rut for the rest of a pretty boring life. Instead, he moves to northern California to escape a bad breakup. One of his students sets him up with a friend of hers, and his life kick-starts its way out of that rut he had started to settle into. Rafael Ochoa is the “friend”, a younger, handsome, motorcycle mechanic from the other side of the tracks who seems like a wet dream come true for James, but they shouldn’t have anything in common. But they are just what each other needs. (And all the reviewers say that James’ dog Marlowe is adorable!)

Unshakeable Faith by Lisa Worrall is an amnesia story. Brody Tyler feels obligated to help a young man who suffers a vicious attack and then walks into his bar with amnesia, so he invites him to stay. They fall deeply in love, in spite of the young man’s lack of memory. Brody calls him “Nash”. Six months later, “Nash” is the victim of a hit and run driver, wakes up in the hospital, and remembers his original life, but not his life with Brody. Brody convinces Nash’s family that he is Nash’s bodyguard, so that he can continue to be near him, and find out who is after him. Ms. Worrall doesn’t just make the amnesia story work, she convinces the readers that the life during the amnesia spell is real enough that we mourn the relationships that are lost when it ends. Amnesia stories can be hard to make believeable, but Lisa Worrall carries it off, according to the reviewers.

That’s all for this week. See you on next week (next year!) for Samhain Publishing’s November 2011 titles.

Ebook Review Central for Carina Press for November 2011

Posted on December 19, 2011 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Ebook Review Central> ebooks

It’s time to take a look at the Carina Press titles from November 2011. When Carina Press posted their November catalog on NetGalley, the whole list looked fairly yummy, and the reviews bear that out. Every title has at least four reviews. This is amazing! Carina published 18 titles in November, and Carina always has the shortest time from the end of the month for reviews to be generated. Clearly, I was not the only reviewer who thought their November list looked really, really good.

And as always, the September and October lists have been updated to include recently published reviews. So keep ’em coming.

This month’s featured books were easy to choose. Any time review numbers start going into double-digits, I sit up and take notice. That means a title has got lots of people not just talking, but reading.

So what were the big three titles in November?

Shona Husk’s Dark Vow was definitely a wow. Eleven reviews, including a TOP PICK! review from RT Book Reviews is enough to make anyone take a second look. For anyone who likes stories with a western flavor, or steampunk, or strong female leads, this book is a winner. There is a hint of science fiction/fantasy, but it’s more of a tease than hard core. It made a lot of reviewers think of the TV series Firefly, and that is not a bad thing by any means. RT Book Reviews made a comparison to True Grit. The blend works incredibly well. Shona Husk’s paranormal series starting with The Goblin King is very popular; this will be too.

For Toni Anderson’s Edge of Survival, thirteen turned out to be the lucky number of reviews this month. Even better, one of those thirteen was a feature review on USA Today‘s Happy Ever After blog. Edge of Survival is a romantic suspense story about damaged people in an unforgiving wilderness, trying to find ways to be strong past the broken places. It is an extremely good book, one that keeps the reader guessing until the end. The heroine of this tale is diabetic, and the author is donating 15% of her royalties to diabetes research. Readers of Nora Roberts suspense titles will love this one.

The third featured title is the second novella in Christine d’Abo’s Long Shots series. A Shot in the Dark was the third book this month to break that magic 10+ review number in November. A Shot in the Dark is an erotic novella with much more than a hint of BDSM. The Long Shots series features the Long siblings and their erotic adventures at an upscale local sex club, Maverick’s. Double Shot, the first book, was sister Sadie’s story. A Shot in the Dark leads sister Paige to her happy ever after. According to the reviewers, these stories are steaming hot, even hotter than the coffee served at the Long Family’s coffee shop. If you are looking for erotic stories that lead to a happily ever after, Christine d’Abo’s trilogy may be just the shot of espresso you are looking for. Pulled Long, the third book in the trilogy, just came out in December.

And that’s a wrap for this week. We’ll be back on Boxing Day (the day after Christmas) with the Dreamspinner Press November titles.

Ebook Review Central for Amber Quill, Astraea, Liquid Silver and Riptide for October 2011

Posted on December 12, 2011December 11, 2011 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Ebook Review Central

This multi-publisher issue needs a shorter title! This issue covers Amber Quill, Astraea Publishing, Liquid Silver Books and Riptide Publishing for October 2011. That’s a lot to swallow in a single post, but we’ll get to that later. Also, this is the last issue that covers October, next week cycles back to Carina Press, but we’ll move along to November books.

Riptide Publishing made a huge, huge splash in October. Their multi-blog launch parties created major buzz for this new ebook-only publishing house devoted to M/M romance. In spite of their launch date being the very end of the month, their books generated tremendous interest. Every title received multiple reviews. Almost all were positive, but not 100%. And that’s not the point. Readers will always have different opinions about what they read. The point is that people cared enough about this new venture to post all those opinions. Keeping the conversation going can only be good for the company. Because of all the buzz and all the reviews their new titles generated, Riptide books nabbed two of the three featured slots this month.

On the other hand, there were a significant number of Astraea Press books that were not reviewed anywhere that I could find, not even on Goodreads or Amazon. (The Amazon links are to the book in that case) One of the purposes of Ebook Review Central is to provide a guide to where reviews of ebooks can be found. If there are no reviews to find, that purpose is just not served. Unless readers of this post indicate strong interest in seeing me continue to cover it, this will be the last time that Astraea Press is covered by Ebook Review Central.

As promised two of this week’s featured titles are from Riptide Publishing’s debut list.

Grown Men by Damon Suede is book one in Suede’s HardCell series. This is science fiction romance, with emphasis very much on the science fiction side of the equation according to most of the reviewers. In fact, the two men don’t seem to reach the romance part of the book until very near to the end of the story. On the other hand, every reviewer was very positive that any reader who likes a lot of science fiction in their SFR is going to love this book, and that the world-building is particularly good. There is also a free short story, titled Seedy Business, available from the author. I love the tagline for this series, “Every future has dirty roots”. Sounds like good, gritty science fiction to me.

Cat Grant’s Once a Marine received the highest and the lowest reviews, but everyone had a very strong opinion. The two heroes of this romance are a former marine with PTSD and a writer of male/male romance who is making ends meet by waiting tables. The writer is also a military brat who happens to have a thing for men in uniform, even men formerly in uniform. Most of the reviewers thought that the story of these two working through their issues and towards each other made for a powerful romance. Try it for yourself and see.

The final featured title is another trip to hell. We went there last week and we’re back. The third book in Eve Langlais’ Princess of Hell trilogy is Hell’s Revenge. Published by Liquid Silver Books, this book, following Lucifer’s Daughter and Snowballs in Hell, sounds like a really fun, and funny book! Muriel is the Princess of Hell. She’s Lucifer’s daughter, and she’s actually a good girl. So good, that she makes Lucifer a laughingstock in Hell because she’s not bad enough. Take this concept to it’s nth degree, and you’ve got a series. I think I’m in! This sounds like it might be a good one for fans of MaryJanice Davidson’s Undead series.

Tune in next week for the Carina Press November titles!

Ebook Review Central for Dreamspinner Press for October 2011

Posted on November 28, 2011 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Ebook Review Central> ebooks

It’s time for Ebook Review Central to take a look at the Dreamspinner Press titles from October 2011.

But before we move to the featured titles, let’s take a moment to look back at September. The September list has been updated to reflect additional reviews since the last time we looked at Dreamspinner, and there are a couple of titles that need to be mentioned. Legal Artistry by Andrew Grey, one of last month’s featured titles, received even more praise this month, probably because the sequel, Artistic Appeal, was published in October. Chasing Seth, another ERC featured title, also received even more reviews. It was a late entry in September (Sept. 30), so people may have been still reading it mid-month.

Now on to the October titles! Dreamspinner published 25 titles again this month. There were a lot of titles from continuing series this month, and it was clear from the reviews that reviewers were definitely waiting for those series books, because they generated most, but not all, of the reviewing buzz this month.

The Dreamspinner featured titles are:

Caregiver by Rick R. Reed was the only non-series title to generate a significant number of new reviews this month. From the book blurbs in the reviews, it sounds like a “three-hankie special”, but in a really good way. Every reviewer describes it as a fantastic book that they read with a lump in their throats. This novel is about the AIDS epidemic, and it is set in 1991, at a time when AZT was the only drug available and infection was still considered a death sentence. The reviewers all mention that the way the novel is written is unconventional, and that the author lets the plot drive the story, but that the characters make this a story well worth reading.

Divide & Conquer by Abigail Roux and Madeleine Urban is the fourth book in their Cut & Run series. Not only did it run away with the reviews, but the most of the reviewers were looking for ratings higher than they normally use in order to rate it. Everyone who follows this series, and it seemed like that was everyone, had fantastic things to say. The Cut & Run series is a mystery/suspense series about two FBI agents, Ty Grady and Zane Garrett, who aren’t even sure they can work together at first. Falling for each other isn’t even on the radar, at least at the beginning. But by the point of this fourth book these two men have definitely managed to figure out a working partnership–the personal partnership is still a work in progress. And it’s that work in progress that keeps readers coming back for more, along with the adrenaline of the suspense plot in each new book. (For the release of Divide & Conquer, Dreamspinner made all four titles in this series available to reviewers on NetGalley. A couple of the reviewers listed mentioned that they read the entire series in one gulp because of this. The strategy definitely paid off!)

Talker’s Graduation by Amy Lane is the final featured title. Based on the reviews, this one comes with a caveat. On the one hand, readers clearly loved this book. On the other hand, it apparently only makes sense if you’ve read the other two first. This novella is the “payoff” story to the two previous books in the series, Talker and Talker’s Redemption. It’s very clear that Tate Walker and Brian Cooper, the two characters in this story, have had an extremely difficult life. Graduation is when they finally get their happy ending. They just have to earn it first.

And that wraps up the Dreamspinner titles for this month! Please come back next week when Ebook Review Central will be looking at the Samhain Publishing titles for October 2011.

Ebook Review Central for Dreamspinner Press September 2011

Posted on October 31, 2011November 14, 2011 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Ebook Review Central> ebooks

The second issue of Ebook Review Central covers Dreamspinner Press ebooks for the month of September 2011.

In September, Dreamspinner published 25 ebook titles. Because all Dreamspinner ebooks are available to libraries on OverDrive, and because reviews for Dreamspinner titles are hard to find, all Dreamspinner ebooks are listed whether or not there was also a print book.

The basic information listed is for the ebook format, since this is Ebook Review Central! So there’s title, author, date, publisher, series if applicable, suggested categories from the publisher, price and eISBN. And the-ever popular book cover.

Then there’s the review listings. Who, where, a link and a grade or rating if the reviewer gave a rating or ranking. Not everyone who reviews does.

For a complete review of how Ebook Review Central came about, the not necessarily gory details are here. And if you are interested in the particulars of what might be included in ranking or reviewing, the complete explication of ranking and reviewing is in the first issue, along with the featured titles for Carina Press. The total list of reviews and titles for Carina is at Ebooks Review Central.

The list of reviews was up-to-date as of 10/29/11. I will be cycling through Carina Press, Dreamspinner Press, Samhain Press, and a “player-to-be-named-later” every four weeks, always looking at one month previous, so there’s a chance for the reviews to be posted. I’m still looking for that fourth publisher or publishers, so I’d appreciate any suggestions. I will add updates to the September list when I come back around to Dreamspinner next month.

As I did last week, I want to highlight the titles that had the most buzz, based on the reviews.

Chasing Seth, by J.R. Loveless garnered the most reviews. Based on what the blogosphere is saying, it is a good story because it succeeds on multiple levels. This is a male/male romance that deals with bigotry between whites and Native Americans, and it’s also a paranormal story dealing with shapeshifters, werewolves specifically, and apparently does an excellent job on that front as well.

Legal Artistry by Andrew Grey is the fifth book in the Bottled Up series. Series books in general tend to be highly anticipated, and either they satisfy pent up demand, or occasionally they disappoint. Legal Artistry seems to be just what fans of this series were waiting for, and the extremely positive reviews reflect that. Several reviewers mention that Grey’s books are the ones that started their enjoyment of the M/M genre. Librarians might consider this when looking for books to purchase.

Angel by Laura Lee certainly got talked about a lot. Angel is Dreamspinner’s first title in their new Itineris Press, where they intend to publish faith-based GLBT literature. The book was discussed in some surprising places, both as a story and for it’s faith-based aspects. Read the reviews and see what you think.

That’s a wrap for this week. See you next week for a look at Samhain’s September titles.

Introducing Ebook Review Central

Posted on October 24, 2011November 8, 2011 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | book reviews> Ebook Review Central> ebooks

So what is “Ebook Review Central“? I’m so glad you asked.

Every Monday, Ebook Review Central will publish a list of all the ebooks published by a particular publisher the previous month, with links to all the published reviews. Today’s first issue contains all the Carina Press titles for September 2011, along with links to all the reviews as of Sunday, 10/23/11.

In the upcoming weeks I will do the same thing for Dreamspinner Press and Samhain Publishing. I would be interested in hearing from you, the readers, your suggestions for which publisher or publishers to include for week 4. After the 4th week, I’ll cycle around to Carina’s October titles, and back through Dreamspinner and Samhain and “the player to be named later” again.

Why am I doing this? People decide what books to buy based on browsing at a bookstore or recommendations. Ebook-only books can’t be browsed in a bookstore, so we all blog to create more recommendations when we like a book. But each of us blogs about the books we like, and it’s fantastic.

But, when a reader is undecided, where do they go? Amazon or Goodreads, and not all of us post our reviews there. Sometimes none of us. And that debate is for another post someday. Yet an ebook may have tons of reviews.

Also, I’m a librarian by training. Librarians need a place where they can find reviews of ebooks, just like they do print books. Their budgets are tight. They want to add ebooks from ebook-only publishers, but if they can only buy 3 or 5 Carina Press titles this month and 3 or 5 Dreamspinner titles this month, there is no place to go to find which ones were the best. Ebook Review Central will be that place.

A question that will be asked, because I had to ask myself when I created this, is why the one month delay? Why am I only publishing the September titles now, when it’s already mid-October?

It takes about a month for the blogosphere to generate reviews for all the titles. I wanted to put up last week’s titles this week, but when I started my research, half the titles weren’t reviewed yet. When I looked at last month’s titles, almost everything had a review someplace. That won’t always be 100% true, but at least it turns out to be a reasonable way to bet.

One other note: Amazon and Goodreads will not be listed as review sources unless that was the only thing I could find.

If you have suggestions, let me know. If you find this useful, definitely let me know. I will update published lists, so if later reviews are published, or if you have a review that should be listed but I missed (Google is good, but it is not perfect), send email to marlene@readingreality.net.

A billion wicked thoughts about ebooks and libraries

Posted on October 13, 2011 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | conferences> ebooks> libraries

On October 12 I attended the second annual virtual conference about ebooks and libraries, sponsored by Library Journal and School Library Journal. The title of the conference was Ebooks: the New Normal, and I wondered, is it really?

The conference itself was really cool. This is a conference about ebooks, after all. It should be a virtual conference. Requiring a physical conference to talk about a virtual product would be either ironic or contradictory. The sessions were great! At the same time, as one of the attendees pointed out on Twitter, it’s hard to sit down for drinks together afterwards to rehash the conference. Putting it another way, hash tags just don’t taste as good as a glass of wine with new friends after the conference is over.

But back to that thought about whether ebooks are the new normal, or not. Ebooks are definitely a permanent part of the library landscape. Ian Singer of Media Source quoted adoption rate statistics that ebooks are in over 90% of academic libraries and over 80% of public libraries. But “in” and “integrated” are two different things. A lot of academic library ebook collections are mostly for research. And a lot of public library ebook collections are just getting started.

What about those “billion wicked thoughts”? One of the speakers in the afternoon Pecha Kucha session was Ogi Ogas, author of A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World’s Largest Experiment Reveals About Human Desire. His advice to libraries regarding ebooks is that we need to not just stock a lot of ebook romances, but that we need to get involved in archiving fanfiction. Wow! Why? Because men like pictures and women like stories, meaning romance fiction. His research follows the publishing trends, and the library ebook circulation trends, that romance sells, and romance circulates. Ebook romances of all stripes and types are the hottest circulating genre of ebooks, and romance authors are the hottest circulating authors except for the big name bestsellers like Patterson and Roberts. Except, hey wait a minute, Nora Roberts is a romance author.

Robin Bradford, Fiction Collection Development Specialist at the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library, said something similar in her earlier presentation. She said that purchasing for the ebook collection isn’t like buying for the print collection. She showed the top 20 ebooks from IMCPL, and there they were, hot romance authors in the top 20. Lauren Dane had 4 books in the top 20. (Go Lauren, she’s really good!) Robin’s point in general was that the ebook audience may be different from the print audience and we have to purchase what will circulate. Another one of her comments that was clearly a big takeaway based on the Twitter chat was that the ebook users want the authors’ backlist if it’s available. And it increasingly is thanks to publishers like Open Road Media.

But about that whole normal thing? One of the issues that’s part of the old normal, and an even bigger part of the new normal, is budget limitations. Ebooks may not take up any room, and genre fiction can be less expensive than hardcover books, but library budgets have shrunk. We can reallocate money from some other places, like periodicals, and standing orders, and reference books. But databases also cost more, and that expense isn’t going away.

Libraries do a lot of their collection development from reviews. Not for the upcoming bestsellers, the sure things, but authors and titles they don’t know and have never heard of, they do. When a library is looking at an ebook collection, as Robin Bradford and other speakers pointed out, the library shouldn’t be duplicating its print collection. There are a lot of titles from publishers such as Carina and Dreamspinner and Samhain that are ebook-only, and many are written by new or relatively unknown authors. In other words, if these were print, collection development would look for reviews. Even when the individual titles cost less than $5, the money does add up. There are reviews out there, if a librarian is willing to go hunting through the blogosphere, but that takes a lot of time. Or it’s a labor of love. Library Journal has been reviewing ebook-only titles in their Xpress Reviews online since July 2011 (full disclosure: I am one of their reviewers), but libraries need more resources in order to integrate ebook ordering into collection development. We need the equivalent of AudioFile or VOYA for ebook only titles, except online, of course! When that exists, ebooks will truly be the new normal in libraries.

Who’s with me on this?

South Carolina Librarians Rock!

Posted on September 15, 2011 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | About> Librarians> presentations

The South Carolina Collection Development Mini-Conference was an absolute blast! What an amazing event. Three days devoted to collection development, sponsored by the South Carolina State Library. There were 80 attendees every day, and folks were going home at night and letting their colleagues come in, so it wasn’t the same 80 people each day. One day was devoted to ebooks, one to adult collections, and one to kids and teens.

I was very fortunate to present for the adult collections and the teens on genre fiction. And, I was able to attend the day on kids and teens. Wow!

My presentation for the crowd on adult collection development was about genre fiction selection. “The Brave New World of Genre Fiction Selection, the Rap Sheet on the Fiction Vixen, or what the Locus are all these book blogs about?” It was a big title for a pretty big subject. I want to encourage collection development librarians to use book blogs as selection tools.

Why? The bloggers, including yours truly, cover more than just the traditional publishers. We cover a lot of ebook-only titles. Blogs may be the only review source for most ebook-only titles.

Blogs are as much, probably more, labors of love as they are anything else. Many are niche publications. If they cover a subgenre such as steampunk or biopunk or paranormal romance, they cover it more thoroughly than a general review magazine that has to cover the waterfront. And for a patron who wants stuff in their love and only their love, a specialized resource is where it’s at.

The slides for the presentation included pictures representing some of the different subgenres, along with breakdowns of the components that make up those niches. A lot of us who read in a genre throw around our own jargon, like steampunk or cyberpunk or dystopia, and assume that everyone knows what we mean. (Us librarians do that too!) Hunting for images to show not just what cyberpunk looks like, but displaying a formula of what pieces of what genres make it up (Science fiction+ hackers+ artificial intelligence+ post-industrial dystopias+ very hard-boiled detectives) seemed to go over well.

I know the bibliography (webliography?) of recommended bloggers for book reviews I handed out disappeared like snow in July. I could have done a magic trick with that thing.

The kids and teens day on September 14 was absolutely fabulous. Pat Scales, an expert not just on children’s literature but also on intellectual freedom issues (Pat is a member of the National Coalition Against Censorship Council of Advisors) spoke eloquently about ratings systems as censorship tools. The post-lunch panel discussion tackled a broad range of questions, including the debate whether users should find the materials they want in the library or should only be able to find “quality” material. This version of the “give them what they want” conundrum is usually applied to so-called trashy fiction, but is just as applicable to SpongeBob SquarePants. The audience participation on this question was spirited. I think nearly everyone in the audience believed that every patron, no matter what their age, should find both their entertainment and their educational needs met at their local library. If we provide entertainment fiction, then we provide Spongebob.

After the Great Debate, the Talk Tables started. I had a two-table sized group on the endless proliferation of vampire books in teen fiction. “V is for Vampire, W is for Werewolf, Z is for Zombie,” was the title. But I didn’t intend to talk about just the vamps. As one member of the group commented, in every box or cart of teen books, all the books are grey or black, with just a tiny hint of red on the cover. Everything is dark and angsty, whether there are vampires involved or not. It seems as if things are always darkest just before they turn completely black. Even the non-creepy books are dark and gritty. Based on the group discussion, teens may be tired of vampires in particular, but their literature isn’t turning toward sweetness and light any time soon. Just towards a different shade of grey. Or black.

This was a great conference. I really enjoyed the energy. And I truly believe that book blogs are a terrific resource for library collection development, and I would love to have the opportunity to take the show on the road again. Hopefully to a library conference near you!

From Columbia to…Columbia!

Posted on September 13, 2011September 15, 2011 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | About> presentations

Reading Reality is going on the road again. On September 13 and September 14 I will be at the South Carolina Collection Development Conference taking place in Columbia, South Carolina.

The entire day tomorrow is devoted to adult collection development. There will be talk tables and a keynote speech in the morning. I’m the afternoon speaker. My topic: “The Brave New World of Genre Fiction Selection, the Rap Sheet on the Fiction Vixen, or what the Locus are all these book blogs about?” I’m going to be encouraging collection development librarians to use book blogs as sources for not just reviews, but as trend spotters, to help them find what readers are looking for. I’ve got a whole list of my favorites. I’ve also got a whole lot of slides to show, not just the increasing importance of genre, but what some of those genres are. Steampunk is just so much cooler when you have a picture!

On Wednesday I’ll be leading one of the table talks. Wednesday is the children’s and teens CD day. A lot of YA literature these days is genre fiction, particularly of the creepy-crawly variety. And that’s where I come in. I’ll be leading a table talk on the “creature features” of YA fiction, titled “V is for Vampire, W is for Werewolf, Z is for Zombie: the continued trend of the dark, weird and scary in teen literature”. It should be a scream.

The official title of the conference is “Collection Development for South Carolina Libraries”, and it is presented and sponsored by the South Carolina State Library. I was incredibly excited when Kathy Sheppard from the SC State Library emailed me last month, right after I got back from Missouri State Library Summer Institute in Columbia, Missouri. The happy coincidence makes for a good omen. And I’m looking forward to thanking Kathy in person for inviting me.

One person in eight

Posted on August 24, 2011August 24, 2011 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | digital libraries> ebooks

If one person in eight was known to be user of a particular service, would your library offer that service?

Let’s make some assumptions here, just to get the ball rolling. 1) The service is related to libraries’ core missions fairly closely, 2) That the figure of one person in eight applies nationwide, so there is a reason to believe it applies in your community, and 3) one person in eight is a rising tide, usage is measurably growing, and growing fast.

If the census showed that a particular demographic group had come to make up 12% or 13% of the population your library served, would you not immediately provide collections and services that targeted that group, if you had not already done so?

Now, what if I said that one user in three expected service to be provided to them in a particular way, would you provide service in that way? If you were a business, you would. But libraries are not businesses. Should we still provide services in the ways that people want them, instead of the ways that we are used to providing them? Those are the questions.

When these questions generally come up, the services and the delivery usually get mentioned first. This time, I talked about the numbers first, because the numbers are more important. The numbers represent people, and people are our users. Our users are our supporters, or, we want them to be. In order to keep their “mind-share” we need to provide service to them the ways they want and expect it, not just the ways we’re used to and are comfortable with.

According to a recent (July 11, 2011) Pew International Report, 35% of all Americans have a smartphone. All Americans: not just teenagers and not just high-tech early adopters. According to studies done by Nielsen earlier this year, adoption rates for smartphones are high among all races and ethnic groups.

As the Pew Report found, people use their smartphones to surf the web, not just make phone calls. Two-thirds used their phones to search the internet every day. That means they expect to search for the library on their phone, not just on a computer, or maybe not at all on their computer. Are we optimized for that?

And about that one person in eight number, that’s from an “Infographic” created by Masters in Education on “Traditional Books vs. Digital Readers.” Statistics show that 12% of men and 11% of women owned a digital reader of some kind. Those statistics did not include smartphones, which are also capable of and are used as digital readers. One person in eight is searching for digital books for their ereaders, and that number is growing.

We want them to come to think of their library first. But in order for them to do that, we need to be thinking of them first, and we need to do it now.

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