Overdue: Getting Creative

OK, as a librarian, one of my pet peeves is overdue books and especially long-term overdue books. At the Pioneer Memorial Public Library we don't have a lot of cash to spend on mailing out overdue notices, but at the same time we also only have a $2,000 per year book-buying budget. That means that even a few missing books or DVDs really means a lot to a small library.

The overdue notices are generated automatically by the library circulation software that we use, but these notices are very impersonal and not particularly friendly. So this month when I sent out overdue notices I decided to try a new tactic. After all, I spent years designing direct mail marketing, aka junk mail, in which there is a whole science to getting the all-important response.

So I decided to approach the overdue notice with a little light-hearted verse in the style of Dr. Seuss. Here is the result:

Dear friends and readers,
Please lend me your ears,
We’re looking for lost books,
From over the years.

They may be in your house,
Or under the bed,
We hope that you liked them,
We hope they were read.

But other folks need them,
These wonderful tomes,
For loaning and learning,
For reading at home.

Please look for the books,
Wherever they are,
We need them back pronto
Are they in your car?

For buying new books
We don’t have lots of cash
So please search your cupboards,
And your own bookshelf stash.

Just drop them off
In our trusty drop box for books
No questions asked,
No dirty looks.

If you have returned
the books in this note
Just give us a call,
We’re sorry we wrote. :-)

I also included a note stating that we are waiving all fines until the end of June. Honestly, we just want our books or DVDs back. In direct mail, a one or two-percent response rate is considered good. But in the small library world, I am hoping for a larger return of long-lost books and DVDs. We shall see how successful my new approach may be.

Creating Ad Revenue Through Amazon Associates and Google Adsense

Sounds like a fascinating topic, right? But, if this can generate more income for your library, why not?

Here's how it works.

1. Create a blog within your library website, or externally on a free blogging site.

2. Within that blog, write regular book or product reviews of items for sale on Amazon and include a link.

3. Register your blog for free with Amazon Associates.

4. Every time someone clicks on a blog link and purchases the item, your library gets a small chunk of that money, as a sort of referral fee.

If you have a large library patron population this is a great way to generate income for your library and promote reading through book reviews. Blog entries also encourage a dialogue with your patrons. How can your library better serve your community?

Amazon Associates makes it fairly easy to set up an account and to start to figure out how to link products from Amazon to your blog or website. They recommend that the products that you choose to promote should be in line with the general theme of your website. So, book reviews make a great fit for any library or bookstore website. It's also a great fit with Amazon, the number one bookseller, and online retailer in the universe. You can read more about the Amazon Associates Program here.

(In my next blog entry, I will review two audiobooks I recently listened to by Janet Evanovich. My reviews will include photographs of the book covers and links to buy the products on Amazon, just to give you a better idea of what I'm talking about.)

The Google Adsense program is also free to join. The only slightly tricky bit is placing a tracker code on your main page's Html, really not that hard. Once you register your library and Google Adsense approves your account, ads will start appearing on your library's blog. At this point, you may want to go into your ad preferences and indicate which kinds of ads you want for your site. Because our library is associated with a K-12 school, I indicated that I didn't want ads for tobacco, alcohol, or ads of an adult nature on the site.

So, for example, the blog you are reading right now probably has ads on either side of the columns. That is part of the Google Adsense program. Site visitors who choose to click on these ads and then purchase something generate income for the site in the way of a referral fee. But whatever you do, DO NOT click for the purpose of generating income for your library. That is considered click fraud and Google takes this Very, Very seriously.

I've had our Google Adsense account active for about a month and have seen zero revenue. I am hoping that when I create linked book reviews with Amazon our library will generate more income from this. With a well-written book review with correct SEO (Search Engine Optimization), I am hoping to attract a wider audience than just Randolph County, West Virginia. This is another great reason why using the Internet to promote your library is a natural and right thing to do. It only makes sense that if libraries are always living in the shadow of budget cuts they invent and expand new ways to generate income.

You can read more about Google Adsense direct from the source here.

Better World Books - Creative Book Recycling That Earns Cash For Your Library

In my continued quest to find alternative revenue streams for the Pioneer Memorial Public Library, I have connected with Better World Books. A fellow librarian tipped me off about BWB, so I made contact and set up an account. Here's how it works:

Once you sign an agreement the portal to order shipping supplies is open to your library or school. BWB sends free boxes and shipping labels that make this book recycling program even more attractive. To make sure you are not creating a larger carbon footprint through excessive shipping, BWB asks that you send no less than six to twenty-five boxes of books at a time. When you have filled up your boxes all you have to do is call UPS for a pick-up and the shipping is prepaid by BWB.

Better World Books sells these books on 50 online sites and sends your school or library 15% of the profits. An additional 5% goes to the charity of your choice. While 15% may not seem like a lot, BWB is keeping books out of landfills and creatively recycling these materials by reselling them online. The customer service representative that I spoke to said that they process about half a million books a week! That is a mind-boggling figure.

Founded in 2002 by three friends from the University of Notre Dame To quote from their website, "So far, the company has converted more than 58 million books into over $10.4 million in funding for literacy and education. In the process, we’ve also diverted more than 40,000 tons of books from landfills." That's a financial and environmental coup by any standards.

There are a few rules that you need to adhere to in packing up books for BWB such as:

* no Reader's Digest Condensed books

* no Who's Who books

* no damaged or marked-up books

* no Harlequin Romance novels

* nothing from the Modern Library series.

BWB suggests that these be recycled locally, while some may recommend these books as excellent fire starters. ;-)

I'll report back at a later date as to the profits we have received from Better World Books. Even if it's not a lot, it makes me feel good to know that these books may be reused and reread by people who need them or want them. I think of Better World Books as good reading karma.

The Power of Reading When Powerless

So in case you haven't heard, Superstorm Sandy came through on Monday evening and stuck around for a few days leaving power outages, downed power lines, and lots and lots of very wet snow. It was pretty at first. Then, when I realized the snow wasn't going to stop it got a little scary. Then the lights went out.

Without electricity for four full days I had a lot of time on my hands to consider the hardships of our pioneer ancestors who came to West Virginia to find a little patch of land to call their own. Left without electronic devices of TV or Internet, I began to read.

Someone had recommended the book "Follow the River" by John Alexander Thom. This historical fiction tells the story of Mary Draper Ingles (1732-1815) who was kidnapped by the Shawnee Indians from early western Virginia. Ingles later escapes and travels hundreds of miles to find her way home. I had trouble with the detailed violence in this book and could only make my way through about 50 pages before I abandoned this book to move onto something a little more peaceful. (If you are braver than I and want to check this book out we do have it at the library.)

A book I have been meaning to recommend that I read recently is "The Midwife of Hope River" by Patricia Harman. Set somewhere in West Virginia during The Great Depression, I found this book to be real, warm, and very believable. The titular midwife is Patience Murphy, a new midwife with a checkered past practicing baby birthing in Appalachia. The way Harman has structured the chapters is such that we read the story of a birth and then read the journal entry that Patience records for each new delivery. There is not a lot of conflict in this book, but the various people that Patience encounters along her midwife duties are fascinating and realistic. And yes, Patricia Harman lives in West Virginia and has an extensive background as a midwife.

I moved onto "The Night Circus" by Erin Morgenstern. (Nothing pioneer-like here, it is pure turn-of-the-last-century fantasy.) This book held my attention for two days and 528 pages. It is about a lovely and mysterious circus that opens only at night and without notice. The imagery in this book is amazing. All black and white with punctuations of red. My only complaint is that the conflict set up by the premise is never really fully realized. What is wonderful about The Night Circus is the imagined world of this magical circus that is populated by delicious treats, trained kittens, mysterious circus planners, and an exotic contortionist. Nothing super deep, but a fun ride none the less.

I am so grateful to have had such great books to read while we were without electricity. The power of reading allowed me to escape from the oppressive feeling (especially at night) brought on by the extreme change in our daily routines. And reading about Patience Murphy reminded me that even without electricity I had way more resources available to me than our pioneer ancestors did.

I am hoping that you all weathered the storm fairly well. We measured a full 2-1/2-feet of snow at our place just outside Glenmore near Elkins. There are countless trees down, power lines down, and also folks who are still without electricity. I am truly grateful to the power line workers who came from all over the country to help us out in the wake of this freakish storm.

West Virginia: A History by John Alexander Williams

OK, back to some history of West Virginia today.

I am almost finished reading a most excellent book "West Virginia: A History" by John Alexander Williams. This history book is well written and fascinating for a number of reasons.

Williams discusses the colonial nature of West Virginia that has abided since its earliest days as the western frontier of old Virginia. Colonialism is the idea of land, property, and businesses being owned by absentee landlords who take the money out of state. Many in old Virginia grabbed up as much western Virginia land as they could. Even George Washington claimed the best bottom land for himself.

Williams makes much mention of the idea that West Virginia was predicted to be one of the wealthiest states in the colonies because of its rich natural resources and natural beauty. But in reality, this was not to be. West Virginia remains one of the poorest states in the US.

"That such a country so full of the varied treasures of the forest and the mine...should lack inhabitants, or the hum of industry, or the show of wealth is an absurdity in the present and an impossibility in the future." This quote from J. H. Diss Debar shows how wrong he and many others were about the Mountain State.

The challenge of West Virginia geography has made road building here very expensive. The Department of Highways estimates that it takes $1 million dollars per mile of road to create new highways here. The great ridges of the Allegheny Mountains have always served as a natural barrier to business and wealth in WV.

Then there is the idea of the company store. In coal mining and log camp days, workers were indentured servants who had no choice but to spend their pay scrip at the company store. Prices were outrageously inflated and the workers had to pay rent on shacks and shanties owned by the company.

There are suggestions in this book that West Virginia continues to be impoverished by generations of West Virginians waiting for an employer to give them better wages and benefits. Entrepreneurialism is lacking here, and perhaps in the country overall. Instead of relying on a company or wealthy out-of-state patron, West Virginia needs to build its own capital and wealth at home.

West Virginia has also been victimized by wealthy companies that use our labor and export the wealth back to their own home states. During and after prohibition, entrepreneurial moonshiners were shut down by the government. Even today one of the complaints of the wind turbine industry is that our natural resources are being used to create electricity that is being exported to other states.

Reading this book, for me, was very enlightening. As a flatlander and transplant from Maryland, our culture and history is much different from that of West Virginia. "West Virginia: A History" is a must-read for anyone who wants to have a better understanding of where WV came from and where it might go in the future. I also have to say that the writing of Williams is fabulously rich and woven with wonderfully long paragraphs of elucidation. I found myself re-reading whole sentences that I thought were well-crafted and insightful. Consider this wonderful piece about the late, great Senator Byrd:

"Byrd's critics, especially those in the metropolitan Washington area, denounce him as a 'prince of pork' and note the frequency with which his name is chiseled onto the buildings that his largesse makes possible. But it is just as reasonable --given West Virginia's long history of exploitation by non-resident energy corporations and its failure to gain much from the federal defense and aerospace budgets of the Cold War years--to regard Byrd's efforts as reparations, not pork barrel."

Source: Williams, "West Virginia: A History." First published in 1976 by W. W. Norton, this is now reprinted by West Virginia University Press in Morgantown, WV.

Stop Scamming Libraries

Update: July 25, 2017: African American Publications is now Scholars In Print. If you get an unsolicited box of books do not open the box and do not accept it. Just send it back to the Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania address.

It all started in 2009.

The previous Pioneer Memorial Public Library director received a phone call asking if we would accept a donation of a box of books from African American Publications. Since we are a small library with a tiny budget for buying books, we accepted what seemed to be a generous offer.

That's when the phonecalls started. Since 2009, the library has received almost weekly phonecalls demanding over $450 in payment for books that were eventually returned at the library's expense.

And it seems that when AAP heard there was a new library director the phonecalls have begun again as have letters from a fraudulent debt collection company named "R. R. Beach Associates."

So here's what I have done to make sure that African American Publications and R.R. Beach Associates never, ever get to play this con under these existing names.

I contacted the Attorney General of Pennsylvania to file a formal complaint against AAP, as this is where they are allegedly located. Then I contacted the Attorney General of West Virginia since this is where AAP is playing their con game.

In addition, I contacted the Attorney General of Delaware, where the fake debt collection company is allegedly located. For good measure, I contacted the Federal Trade Commission.

But wait, there's more. I researched the domain host of African American Publications as GoDaddy.com, and sent them an email letting them know that the domain they host is primarily engaged in illegal activities.

I am especially disgusted with AAP because I feel they are preying on institutions large and small and leveraging guilt to extort payment. Also, by keeping the money amount under $500, some libraries may break down and pay just to make the phonecalls cease. The under $500 may also relieve them of larger charges if and when they are formally charged with crimes.

It did not take a lot of time to fill out forms and send them in. Now I am waiting for the phonecalls to stop.

I am hoping that by posting this that other small institutions and libraries may learn from my cautionary tale. The bottom line is that during a weak economy even the crooks and the con artists step up their game. But the other side of that is that we all have legal recourse available to us. I hope that if you or someone you know of has been the victim of fraud, conning, or other consumer abuse that you will go out of your way to report them to the proper authorities.

Update: 2/11/15 - Received a phone call from a Dr. Derrick Jones from African American Publications in Philadelphia. This is the same scam company and "Dr. Jones" got an earful from me. I am amazed this scam is still going on.

Selling Books Online

You never realize how much stuff you own until you move. When I first moved to West Virginia in 1999 I noticed that I had a LOT of books and CDs. In order to create some more room in my house and to get some extra cash, I started reselling books online.

Pretty soon, my hobby became somewhat profitable but it took lots of time and error to get it right. Most books have no resale value and the trick is to look for the books that do retain value even with age. In general, when I look for books to resell I look for nonfiction and I look for books of some age. Books from academic publishers can also be a safe bet because of their small press runs. Books about trains, planes, fishing, and automobiles also may have resale value.

I started going through books at Pioneer Memorial Public Library in the past few weeks and set up an account on Amazon.com. When I list the book for sale I have to find a record that is very similar or that has the same book cover. I am careful to examine the book and make sure it is not written in or damaged. Many books have the name of the previous owner on the inside and that is OK. Books that have underlining or highlighting in them automatically lose resale value.

When I sell a book on Amazon, I am careful to ship it as quickly as possible via Library Rate using the United States Postal Service. (If you are a private seller not affiliated with a library, send your books or CDs via Media Mail. It is the cheapest way to ship.) I also like to ship my books out in a protected bubble mailer so the book is not damaged in transit. I include a copy of the order slip with the book as a receipt for the customer. I also like to write a quick Thank You on the order slip.

OK, so what books generally have no resale value? Best sellers like Danielle Steele, James Patterson, or Stephen King have no resale value unless they are signed first editions. There are millions of these books printed making their resale value nil. Most textbooks have no resale value unless they are within the current year or two. College textbooks are notorious for publishing new editions every year so they can keep their content current and the need for the new (& pricey) book continues to keep them selling books. The reality is that most books that are bought new lose much of their value as soon as they are purchased and leave the store.

So how do I select books to resell at the library? I go through donations from patrons to see if our library owns the book. If we already own it, then I scan Amazon to see if the book has resale value. If it does, I will list it quickly. Today I ran into a bit of a quandary when I found a book that had resale value. The book is "Heading Out to Wonderful" by Robert Goolrick and was published in 2012. I could sell it online and make about $10 or I could add it to our collection. Considering that the book is new, has great reviews, and takes place in Virginia, I will add it to our collection. Though the book bottom feeder in me winces at not making $10, this book is more valuable to our collection and to our patrons.

Amazon is not the only place to resell books, DVDs, and CDs online. I have also sold via Half.com. While you will retain more profit from items sold on Half.com, you sell more items on Amazon because it is the biggest place where people shop online.

So within the first month of setting up an Amazon shop for Pioneer Memorial Library, we sold about 11 books and made a couple of hundred dollars. It's not a lot of money, but when you have a small, nonprofit library every penny counts.

The bottom line is that selling books is kind of like a treasure hunt. You have to go through a lot of books sometimes to find one or two that have resale value but if you have patience and keep at it, you might just find that you too enjoy being a book reseller.