Week Five

Week 5: Assignment 1
What useful information have you learned from the resource that you have been monitoring since week one? Blog about it.

To be honest, I frequently check Early Word so I won't say that I've had any great revelations.  However I now have a potential stack of reading for my vacation and I picked up both "Shining Girls" and "Sense of an Ending" from reading it.  I tend to find something that sounds good on Early World and then I add it to my "To Read" shelf on Good Reads.  I wish that somehow Early Word, Good Reads and Polaris let us share better.  I also have to admit:  I don't love book trailers.  I think that they frequently create visuals for a book that do not reflect my mental imagery.


Week 5: Assignment 2
What’s popular in your branch? If it’s “popular” or “commercial” fiction then you want be sure to look at The New York Times Best Seller List or People Magazine. For forthcoming titles check the Publisher’s Weekly On Sale calendar. If literary fiction and narrative nonfiction is popular, you can monitor the Indie Next Best Seller List (formerly BookSense) and NPR. Do your customers want to read the book before the movie comes out? More than likely, you have a diverse mix of customers who have equally diverse reading preferences, but all of these resources are available via Early Word. Take a look at the site and click around; there are lots of links in both sidebars. Post to your blog: What resources are new discoveries for you? What do you think that you will continue to use?

Unfortunately, the preponderance of the requests that we get in Information Services are NOT the newest and hottest stuff but more frequently reflect older and half forgotten titles.  "It's an adult book and had a talking turtle and took place in a garden in England" is my favorite and we found it via NoveList.  I also really like to use the Polaris sort for "popularity".  Its so easy to find the newest or best with that sort (ie:  the most popular mysteries).  Most of the genre sites that we are reviewing for this training are new to me and the Indie Next Best Seller list is sort of interesting and seems a bit less commercially than NYT and others do.  Frankly:  I wish that our own catalog did as good of a job at connecting customers with street dates as these sites do.

Week 5: Assignment 3
Pick a title from the highly anticipated titles of 2013, found under the right hand “Coming Soon- Season Previews” sidebar on Early Word. Write a blog post using appeal factors or read-alikes to describe the title. Why is this title expected to be popular and to whom would it appeal?

Shining Girl has been described as "Silence of the Lambs" meets "The Time Traveler's Wife" and that is a good place to start with this fast paced, dark and violent novel.  The narrative is intentionally choppy and breaks across different time periods as the unfinished victim of a serial killer hunts her time traveling would be assassin.