BEYOND BESTSELLER LISTS—INSIGHTS FOR LOCAL BOOKSELLERS, POWERED BY PUBLIC LIBRARIES
The latest Panorama Picks have been released by the Panorama Project, spotlighting recent fiction, nonfiction, and young adult books library patrons were waiting to read in 9 different regions across the United States. The new lists measure unmet demand from July – September 2019 and reflect updated methodology designed to identify titles that are more likely to still be in booksellers’ inventory but may have fallen off the radar as their publishers’ promotional efforts faded. Some were brief national bestsellers, while others are notable midlist gems with strong regional interest.
“Public libraries serve a diverse group of avid readers with varied interests across the United States,” explained project lead, Guy LeCharles Gonzalez, “but limited budgets and expensive terms for acquiring and lending ebooks means they’re not always able to meet patrons’ demands in the moment. That’s an opportunity for local booksellers if they have actionable data on readers’ interests in their regions—as opposed to national bestseller lists—and that’s where Panorama Picks comes in.”
Popular selections in multiple regions from the Q3 2019 lists.
Titles that were especially popular in multiple regions but had limited availability in public libraries include Julie Berry's Lovely War (Penguin Young Readers, 3/19), Yangsze Choo's The Night Tiger (Flatiron Books, 2/19), David Goggins' Can't Hurt Me (Lioncrest Publishing, 12/18), Cal Newport's Digital Minimalism (Penguin, 2/19), Natasha Ngan's Girls of Paper and Fire (Little, Brown, 11/18), and Lauren Wilkinson's American Spy (Random House, 2/19).
Each region’s list features 25 titles in fiction, nonfiction, and young adult categories for a total of 202 unique titles—76 of which appear on only one region’s list—reflecting the diverse interests and unmet demand of avid readers in each region.
“Knowing that there’s uniquely high demand and limited availability for Alan Brennert's Daughter of Moloka'i (St. Martin's, 2/19) and Laila Lalami's The Other Americans (Pantheon, 3/19) in California, or Luanne Rice's Pretend She's Here (Scholastic, 2/19) in the Midwest,” said Gonzalez, “is a potential marketing opportunity for booksellers in those regions to spotlight and sell more of those books, or host author events.”
“One of our main goals for Panorama Picks is to encourage deeper relationships between public libraries and local booksellers, and help establish the value of library access not only in the discovery process, but also in driving sales. While libraries would love to be able to provide every patron with a copy of any book they’re interested in reading, in the format they prefer, that’s unrealistic. If Panorama Picks can help booksellers identify specific titles and authors that readers in their region are looking for, that’s a step in the right direction.”
The regional lists are optimized for local booksellers via groupings aligned with the American Booksellers Association’s (ABA) regional associations, and are intended to help libraries and booksellers work together more effectively to better serve active readers in their communities, while helping publishers and authors identify regional marketing opportunities for titles (and authors) that have moved beyond their initial marketing windows.
For more information on Panorama Picks, visit panoramaproject.org/panorama-picks or contact Guy LeCharles Gonzalez via email at glecharles@panoramaproject.org.