The Panorama Project is focused on promoting data-informed conversations about public libraries and their impact on book discovery, author recognition, and consumer sales. One of our primary methods to help guide these conversations is conducting research on the various ways libraries engage with patrons to promote books and authors, including our overview of Readers’ Advisory Services.

One of the key findings in that research was that the vast majority of public libraries explicitly market themselves as a place to discover books and get reading recommendations, and that library-hosted book groups, book talks, and author visits were key drivers of both discovery and sales. 81% of public libraries sell books at their events to attendees, and nearly 2/3rds partnered with local booksellers, ensuring they counted as consumer sales but obscuring the libraries’ full impact on those sales.

To get a better understanding of the different ways public libraries produce and host author visits—as well as literary festivals, book clubs, and other experiential events that directly connect readers to books and authors—we’ve launched a new survey: Library Events & Book Sales Survey | 2019.

This survey asks U.S. public librarians for their insights into the various book-related events they produce for their communities, how they market them, which partners they work with, and how they measure and report on the impact of these events.

If you’re a public librarian in the U.S. involved with events programming, please take 10-15 minutes to complete the survey today.

Thank you in advance for your time; we look forward to sharing our findings in early 2020.