Over 175 people joined us at Book Expo 2019 in New York for our session, Learn How Public Libraries Impact Title/Author Discovery and Book Sales: Data-Driven Insights from the Panorama Project. It was an engaged audience of booksellers, vendors, publishers and librarians and we received positive reviews afterward.

Bill Kelly (Adult Programming Manager, Cuyahoga County Public Library) provided an update on the breadth of U.S. public libraries and how CCPL drives sales at its author events. In 2018 over 11,000 books were sold at 93 events—by the library and its independent bookselling partner, Mac’s Backs.

Alexis Petric-Black (Senior Publisher Relations Manager, Rakuten OverDrive) introduced Panorama Picks, our new program that reveals unmet demand for books and sales opportunities for booksellers. The program provides a series of regional lists of titles compiled from the wait lists for ebooks at local libraries. The initial lists are available now. Updated lists will be published on a quarterly basis. Click here to learn more and sign-up to be notified when new lists are published.

Book Expo panel members Cliff Guren, Bill Kelly, Alexis Petric-Black and Skip Dye

Skip Dye (VP of Library Marketing and Digital Sales and VP of Sales Operations, Penguin Random House) closed the session with insights on how PRH works with libraries to launch new authors and titles. With the longhand belief that library patrons are key influencers, PRH actively markets to library readers, in the library, in the library’s online platforms, and on a variety of social media sites. Skip is also a big believer in the power of print promotion in libraries: he noted that he’s often surprised how long the posters they distribute to libraries stay on the walls!

Click here to view and download the session slides.