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Getting Your Self-Published Book in a Library – A Guest Post From Eseme

Mar22

This is a guest post from Eseme

Intro

Aldersprig has invited me to do a guest post on libraries, and how the acquire books, because this is something that some self-published indie authors don’t know much about. And they are curious. Great. Getting your book into a library is a super cool thing!

Why do I think this? I’m a librarian. I got my Library Science degree in May of 2007. I had worked in two libraries, one prior to starting the degree, and one while I was getting it (though that one was a university library which did not buy fiction). After getting the degree I job hunted for a while, the worked at a small rural public library (a town of 5,000) and I now work in what my state, Maine, would consider a medium-sized to large library (town of 20,000) but which most of the country considers a small library.

So I know a bit about how libraries buy books, how they add them to their collections (cataloging books and other items is among my job duties), author events at libraries (I have arranged more than one), and ebooks in libraries. I am also going to end with a few links I have found about bookstores and self-published books (I lurk on Publishers Weekly’s website, and read a blog written by bookstore owners).

Do I read indie books? Some. I read two web serials, and I have read MCA Hogarth’s self-published titles. But I haven’t read many. However, given that it is March and I have read a grand total of one novel in 2011, I don’t have much time to read anyone’s books, be they from Big Publishing or self-published. I do not hate self-published books (though I will admit that I have been handed some dubious ones in my work as a librarian). I think indie publishing lets people find the books they like, even if a Big Publisher won’t take a chance on that book.

I will warn you, this is not all rosy. Libraries, as they currently order books and add them to their collections, are not set up to easily find indie books, and it is more difficult to add them to collections. I’m going to explain why, and I hope this will give you ideas about how to reach out to your local library (and bookstores) effectively.

Also, I am a long winded individual. Particularly when talking, but I get wordy with my writing as well. I am going to do my best to keep this short, but there is a lot of info. So sorry, Aldersprig, but this is going to be about five posts, I think.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/26058.html. You can comment here or there.

3WW: Pause in the Journey

Mar20

Three Word Wednesday is a once-weekly 3-word writing prompt.

The three words are breeze, mellow, tickle. This is set in the Rin & Girey world, before View-Point

Pause in the Journey

Girey was either still asleep, or faking it well, but the day was too nice, the sun streaming in through the tiny glass windows; Rin couldn’t stay abed any longer. She glanced again at her captive, who was, for the first time since Ossulund, sleeping comfortably and solidly, with a smile on his face. Let him rest. They would be into Callanthe civilization soon, and there would be no rest for either of them.

She slipped on her outer qitari but left her shoes and hose off. The weather was unseasonably mellow, and she wanted to enjoy it. She opened and closed the door to the way-station as quietly as she could, and stepped out into the sunlight; for the first time she since and Girey had started on their trip, she was alone.

The grass was growing, as it often did in the wet season, so quickly you could almost see it growing, and the breeze was warm, bringing a current from the sea that smelled, however faintly, of salt-water and fish. But it hadn’t been raining all that much in the last week, and the ground didn’t squish beneath her toes, so she walked out onto the small yard, kept well-cropped by visitors’ goats, as theirs were doing now, and let the wind tickle at the back of her neck and the grass tease between her toes.

It was nice to be going home, she had to admit, and yet, at the same time, terrifying. What would she do with him, her staid, grumpy Bitrani prisoner, when they were in Lannamer? What would she do with herself? The war was over, and the mopping-up stage would have far less need for healers, so she’d been given her release. She was no longer part of the Emperor’s Army, except in the most formal sense. She wasn’t a student anymore, and, though she could have gone back to the University, she didn’t think Girey would be happy there. That left palace life, and politics, or putting on the guise of a wandering healer, and taking to the roads again.

She thought through that one for a few minutes, her face tilted upwards to the sun, her hands out flat to the breeze. She could do it, and Girey would likely be all right with a small wagon and a box-bed (a long wagon, of course, for his stretched-out height, but they could still do with two goats). No one would think to look for the missing heir of Bithrain in an itinerant healer’s wagon. Nor would they look for an heir of Callenia there. It would be just the two of them, and her clients. Just the two of them…

…a flea chose that moment to bite her, and she swore softly. The palace, at least, would have more regular baths. Baths, and beds that would fit her captive. The day no longer looking quite as beautiful, she headed back into the way-station.

http://www.addergoole.com/lyn/
http://addergoole.com

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/25534.html. You can comment here or there.

15minuteFiclet – Old Soul

Mar19

Originally posted here, in response to the lyrics prompt “You don’t need a spaceship / They don’t know you’ve already lived / On the other side of the galaxy”

She opened her eyes to the world around her, her memories already fading.

She’d shared some of them with her parents-to-be beforehand, but there was a bit of a language barrier, an image barrier. They could understand, through careful, patient relaying of images, that this was not her first life. They were predisposed to believe in reincarnation – she would not have picked a host family who were not. The belief would be central to things she would need to do, if her mission were to succeed.

So would their knowledge, however faint, in what she had been before. And it seemed it would be faint, indeed. She hadn’t counted on just how different their peoples were, how vastly separated their languages, even their most basic concepts, were. She found the metaphors that would work, and left notes, signposts, for herself in her forming brain, hoping the two, combined, would get her pointed in the right direction. Then she let go, and was born.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/25050.html. You can comment here or there.

15 Minute Ficlet in Vas’ World: Observe and Report

Mar16

Originally posted here in response to the quote prompt “If it bleeds, we can kill it.”

“If it bleeds, we can kill it.” Paz muttered.

“And if it farts, we can smell it. Lovely science there, Paz,” Malia snorted softly. “You’re all getting pretty creepy about this.” Still, she kept her voice soft, and watched the sides of their path carefully. She’d done her time in the space service, after all; she’d done basic training.

“The planet was supposed to be uninhabited,” Ezra complained; he, too, kept his voice quiet, but what she could hear in the tone suggested he felt betrayed. They all acted that way, like wall-building creatures had somehow done it just to thwart them. Like they were thwarted at all, just by a little ancient construction. And now they were tracking… what? They still didn’t know.

“Well, from all the satellites, it is,” she answered reasonably. “It’s not as if there’s any major cities here, no radio traffic. We know the planet has no wide-spread civilization.”

“But it has sentient life,” Vas grumbled. “And sentient life-forms cannot share a planet comfortably.”

That, of course, was completely subjective, but Vas liked to make blanket statements like that. It was easier to just let him make them. Except…

“…no, it won’t be very comfortable if we go by the ‘it’s bleeding, let’s kill it’ philosophy, will it?” She narrowly avoided slapping her hand over her mouth to keep in the words she’d already said. She’d done it now.

“Malia, don’t be stupid. It took a shot at us.”

“And we took a shot at it. And now we’re… what? Tracking it back to its lair? What happened to observe and record?”

“I’m perfectly fine,” Paz grumbled, setting one big hand over the wound where the arrow had grazed flesh, “observing and recording this thing dying.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/23976.html. You can comment here or there.

Reiassan map, with mountain ranges and cities

Mar14

Reiassan map, with mountain ranges & 10 major cities
Reiassan map, with mountain ranges & 10 major cities

also the updated most-recent-border between Bithrain & Callenia and two small border settlements.

Population, etc. notes:

Approx 540,000 sq. miles of land
Approx 328,969 sq. miles of arable farmland
Approx 164,484 sq. miles of grazing/pasture land

Population of the continent about 7.2 million, of which 10% is urban and of that 50% is in biggest 10 cities.
Divvied by city approx:
69,335 Lannamer
41,601 Ouyknan
37,441 Arran 1
35,361
32,934
31,201
28,427
27,041
24,267
22,881