Libraries and Self Published Authors: Part 4-- Resources

As I proclaimed in my 2016 Reading Resolutions, this year I am going to make an effort to be more informed about self published authors. From that post:

Not only will I make sure I read a few self published titles in a variety of genres, but I will also be blogging about self published books and specifically how we can and should handle them in libraries.

You can read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, and Part 3 here.

Today I am back with resources on the current state of self publishing to help me [and those of you who are interested] in my resolution to be more informed on this topic.

• Publisher’s Weekly has this Self-Publishing Preview 2016 which also has a 2015 recap.
• Here is a link to BookLife the PW site dedicated to the world of self-publishing. It includes reviews, tips, and author profiles. It is a great place for libraries to discover self published authors and for the authors to promote themselves.
• Library Journal also has their own self publishing website-- Self-e. This one is more targeted to libraries than the PW site, but the PW site has more reviews. Use them in tandem.
• Use this link to pull up all of the article in Library Journal tagged “Self Publishing and Libraries.”
• Use this link to pull up the articles in American Libraries tagged “self-publishing,” including this article from last February about how libraries can be self-publishing leaders in their communities. This is an area I will be focusing on later in the year.

Join me as I look into how these traditional resources have handled this new publishing platform. I am going to make visiting BookLife and Self-e a regular part of my week until I feel more comfortable navigating this arena. 

I’ll be back soon with more posts on this topic. Including taking a look at this issue from the author’s point of view because the more research I do here the more I realize that how they are organizing to try to break into libraries is a vital part of the equation.