Book of the Month
Project Guidelines
Six Branching Out authorities worked with HarperCollins and BfS to focus on 12 new paperbacks during 2000 and how they might be actively promoted. To help you roll out the promotion in your authority should you choose, the project team - Durham, Herefordshire, Kirklees, North Tyneside, Shropshire and Westminster - have fed back their thoughts and ideas on its management at branch level. Although the 6 authorities are very different, there are many positive suggestions for getting the most out of a Paperback Book of the Month promotion. We hope you're encouraged enough to give it a go.
HEREFORDSHIRE - Carolyn Huckfield
Servicing, cataloguing, adding to stock, identifying as BOTM takes approximately 1 hour if you are lucky. You need Bib services to be prepared to fast track these items - I do it myself here! The books need to arrive in time to get out to the actual libraries - ours go via a delivery van & we`ve caught it every time so far but you may have to be prepared to take them over in person.Mechanics of the quantitative survey are time consuming - but hopefully the results at the end of the year will mean others don`t have to do it. Our system allows me to know approximate age and the gender of the borrower, time of day borrowed, length of loan etc.
Useful tip? I am also trying out other titles by same author where possible to see the issues, with the same title being held in a non-participating library for comparison.
Staff need to be enthused - their comments are as valuable as the readers comments. They need to know how the system works & why and briefed to handle queries.I have been talking to staff in the libraries as well as keeping senior management informed. You must work out a way to record both reader & staff comments.
Problem with the display bins emptying out really quickly and our loan period is 4 weeks. Do we need more copies - is 18 enough?
Interestingly not a single bad comment about BOTM so far! All positive and Andrea Barrett is going down a real storm. This along with Open Ticket is showing that Branching Out is paying off - our biggest service point now wants to organise monthly promotions & staff are prepared to do all the work - this is real progress.
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KIRKLEES - Janet Pearson for Catherine Morris
BOTM has been for us a victim of its own success. The books on the display issue very quickly, usually in the first day, leaving us with a "tantalising" display but no books. Our loan period is 3 weeks and books can be renewed 3 times before they must be returned. Although some of our readers seem to be very speedy the majority are not and the returns are therefore very slow. This leaves us for the majority of the month a display that is empty. It may therefore be worth considering issuing the books on a shorter term loan, with no renewal - increasing the potential readership.At the end of the month our copies are gathered together and passed on to another library (I'm not sure if everyone does this!). Shorter loans would also mean that they were ready to pass on more quickly while they are still relatively "hot off the press".
The only real problem we have experienced is that the books come to us unprocessed and are not usually here in time to get them processed and on to the shelves by publication date.
It has to be said that display really works, the control copy of Bill Broady's Swimmer - shelved in the normal fiction sequence - has yet to issue.
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WESTMINSTER - Mike Morten
PREPARATION1 It was important to get our Cataloguing Services staff on board before the start of the project. This helped them to plan their workload and make necessary arrangements.
2 Equally important to speak to our systems unit at the same time to make arrangements for statistical evaluation.
3 Also, to inform participating sites about the project. They need to know what to do when mysterious packages start to arrive! In general, give as much notice to anyone involved as you can!CIRCULATING
1 Useful to involve all sites for maximum use of stock.
2 No perfect model for circulating but my instinct is that it's probably best to do it in rotation rather than at random. This makes it easier to build up a core of readers at each site who come to expect a BOTM to appear regularly at their library. The only downside is that some sites will enter the scheme at a later point than others.DELIVERY POINT
It's easier for publisher and bookseller if there is one delivery point and you distribute.
CATALOGUING AND PROCESSING
1 It was useful to send schedule and AI to cataloguers in advance so they could plan their workload. Changes of title are not problematic if enough notice is given.
2 Processing and mounting displays very time-consuming. Grab any admin and site support you can for both!LONG-TERM SCOPE OF THE PROJECT
It also occurs to me that we have never discussed the long-term practicalities of the project. Ideally we are creating a model that other publishers and booksellers can adopt but this does raise questions about the workload of cataloguing departments if they come to deal with something on a much larger scale. This is one of the first questions our own cataloguers asked and we may want to think of this in more detail.
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NORTH TYNESIDE - Val Page
BOTM is going great guns here in North Tyneside. 18 copies of Gretta Mulrooney's Marble Heart out on the display stand at 9am on the day of publication - gives you a nice warm feeling! Readers here are now beginning to look for BOTM.We are prepping our BOTM titles differently to ordinary stock. Each BOTM has a coloured date label and a "Book of the Month" flash across the inside of the book jacket. This helps us keep track if titles stray from the dumpbin, and also helps us to retrieve copies when the collection is ready to move on.
We are running BOTM in 3 service points (soon to be 4). Central library first, then 2 area libraries (alternately) then, once we have 4 collections, our brand new large branch library at Killingworth.
Must say that I am finding the qualitative evaluation difficult as my day job is in a different area. However, I just have a gut feeling that its going really well (I do inspect the dumpbin every morning at Central, check copies on loan, speak to staff at area libraries etc. I feel that any qualitative evaluation needs to run for at least 6 months, maybe even the full 12, before we can offer anything worthwhile.
Personally I'd like to see this continue after 2000 in North Tyneside. Perhaps extend it to more than one title so that each service point gets a current BOTM. It's obviously answering a need - all of our February & March titles went out within a few days - some have had repeated issues.
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DURHAM - Maureen Robinson
Book of the Month is going very well. My problems are the problems that we always experience in a County with 42 service points i.e transport and making an impact.We do not have a central library, so I have organised a rota so that the books travel to key locations. Even so, progress has been slow,and we are considering buying either 1 or 2 extra sets per month so that the logistics will be simpler and there will be a greater impact.
It sounds as though I am making excuses here, but I think that smaller more compact authorities with a large central library have more opportunities for instant success on this type of project. However, this project is taking off in Durham and already well received but it will take a little longer.
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HARPERCOLLINS - Guy Pringle
From the publisher's perspective, Book of the Month has been a success although we have had teething problems - release dates of stock have been tighter than we had thought and BfS were terrific at getting our late delivery of one title processed and on to the project team the same day.The upside of this has been greater vigilance on our part when these books are so time sensitive. However, it is still comparatively early days and, with four BOTM's now out there, we are now providing further dumpbins so that the displays are maximised.
The interesting 'problem' of having empty display bins because all the stock is out on loan seems to have encouraged some lateral thinking. From a marketing viewpoint, I believe shortening the loan period will actually add value to the whole proposition - and it will, of course, improve your issue statistics!
One other idea I've heard from another Branching Out authority who are coming on board is to back track on all the BOTM's to date in order to get a display of 3 BOTM's on one site - it will be interesting to see what effect it has. The over-riding conclusion seems to be that getting your colleagues involved and enthused will almost guarantee success.
