Review in Practice: “An Author’s Guide to Working with Libraries & Bookstores”

An Author’s Guide to Working with Libraries & Bookstores, by Mark Leslie Lafabvre offers the inside scoop on how to develop relationships with bookstores and libraries, so local and global readers can find your books. It isn’t enough to get your book onto a distributor’s list. That doesn’t guarantee that your book will be purchased and stocked in brick and mortar bookstores or libraries, it just makes them aware of your book’s availability, but the competition is tough and there is still no guarantee that those in charge of acquisitions will actually see or notice your book.

Independent authors have come a long way since I’ve been writing in this game. As more authors go indie and do it well, independent authors are becoming hard to ignore, even though traditional publishing has tried very hard to do just that.

Although dependent authors have made strides in leaps and bounds to legitimize indie authorship, traditional publishers still have an in with brick-and -mortar bookstores and libraries; they have a system in place, even if it really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Indie authors are still finding their way in this area, and this book provides the map for how to get there.

Mark Leslie Lafabvre was publishing independently long before it was ‘a thing’, as well as working for first, Kobo and developing their self-publishing platform, Kobo Life, and now, for Draft-2-Digital as their director of business development, so he definitely has the experience and expertise to offer up this wonderful blueprint for getting our own books into bookstores and libraries.

Authors want to sell books, and to do that, we need to get our books in front of as many eyes as possible, because each new eye is a potential reader. Getting into bookstores and libraries offers the opportunity for a huge increase in the number of eyes on our books, and in the number of eyes that then may go on to purchase more of our work and become fans, and perhaps superfan’s that will buy everything we write. But we need to get our books into these outlets first and in An Author’s Guide to Working with Libraries & Bookstores, Mark Leslie Lafabvre has given us a secret for opening those doors. Relationships.

With all the valuable information packed into An Author’s Guide to Working with Libraries & Bookstores, every author who is serious about selling their books should have a copy. I give it five quills.