The Other Shelf

Libraries, and the Market Most Indies Never Enter

Libraries buy books, lend them repeatedly, and pay for the privilege — and they're invisible in indie advice.

The Other Shelf is a book in the Indie Author Guide Line: short, source-checked guides for independent authors who have finished writing and now have to be found. Libraries are absent from indie publishing advice because they run no affiliate program and nobody makes money teaching authors to reach them. The market is small and real, and this book covers the routes in.

This is a short book about a small door, and it says so honestly rather than overselling a modest opportunity as a large one.

What's inside:

• The actual routes an indie author has into library ebook and audiobook lending
• What a library loan pays, and how that compares to a retail sale
• Why the library acquisition decision works nothing like a retail algorithm
• What a librarian is actually looking at when she evaluates your book
• Which categories make this worth an afternoon, and which don't
• How to set expectations honestly, for a market that will never resemble Amazon

This is not a promise of a new income stream that changes your business. What it will do is size this door accurately, so you can decide honestly whether it's worth your afternoon.

From the Indie Author Guide Line, from Novel Concepts Publishing.