What Readers Are Most Anticipating: Start with Goodreads and End With Your Library's List

The Fall Frenzy is almost upon us. I know we have had most of these books on order for quite a while, but  having these books and being ready for the ones readers are most excited about are two different things.

Goodreads has crowd-sourced the books that are generating the most early buzz on their site. Click here to get right to the post or read the intro here or click through with the link I provide at the end of this post. Also please scroll to the bottom of the full post for more picks in each of the genres.

But before we get to their most anticipated, what about your patrons? What are they most excited about? This Goodreads list is a great place to start asking them. First, get this up on all of you digital platforms and ask for comments from your patrons as to what books they are most excited about this Fall. Both titles from the list and those that are missing (in their opinion)

Next, follow my conversation starter to display advice and ask all your patrons to share their most anticipated books. You can make this the question that you put out at every service desk and into every book on the hold shelf for the rest of August. Again click here for more on how to do this.

Not only will this help you identify which Fall books your patrons are most excited about (so that you can prepare "while you wait lists" or even add more copies) but also, it will help you understand in general what books they are looking for. You might have great readalikes for these upcoming titles on the shelves that you can prepare to make into displays right now. You can use this info as a resource for your future ordering. Maybe you will give a new or midlist author a shot knowing that it will appeal to other books your patrons enjoy. You can also use this information to pull out any backlist titles by authors your patrons identify as being most excited about and make a display that is titled, "Books by This Fall's Most Anticipated Authors." Get those backlist titles out of the stacks and give them their moment in the spotlight. Many readers don't ever think to read previous books by an author who they like. Showing them that you have those books, titles they wouldn't remember to check out without you, makes your service that more valuable to them.

Now back to Goodreads. Use this post to get you started.

Bookworms, rejoice! The autumn reading season is just over the horizon. Crisp evenings. Knit sweaters. Autumnal vibes. As such, we have compiled our annual preview of the season’s most highly anticipated new books, as determined by Goodreads members.
 
The books are selected by tracking Goodreads members' early reviews and the titles that your fellow readers are adding to their Want to Read shelves. We’ve sorted the list into the usual genres, but as always, some books resist easy classification. Which is a good thing! We did our best. Everything below is slated to be published in the U.S. between now and the end of December.
 
Prepare your frontal lobes, because there are a lot of interesting books on the way. Lily King is back on shelves in September with Heart the Lover, concerning a passionate love triangle among English majors—the most lovable of all undergraduates. Author Oyinkan Braithwaite writes of strange magic in her Nigerian family with the heartfelt and humorous Cursed Daughters. And Ian McEwan imagines life in the year 2119 with the literary speculation of What We Can Know.  
 
Over on the mystery-thriller shelves, look for new books from Richard Osman and Stacy Willingham, plus John Grisham’s first stab (heh) at the traditional whodunit. SFF fans can look forward to alchemists in L.A., time travel in Virginia, and The Great Gatsby in 2075. For Halloween reading, we’ve got new books from Isabel Cañas and Mona Awad, plus a haunted house story for the Information Age.
 
Also in the mix for this fall: new romance novels from Ali Hazelwood and Ana Huang; new romantasy hybrids from Rebecca Ross and Jasmine Mas; and a promising batch of YA books concerning, oh, Gothic horror, Ojibwe mysteries, small-town hockey—stuff like that.
 
Finally, the nonfiction stacks are particularly intriguing this year. Look for memoirs from authors Arundhati Roy and Elizabeth Gilbert, plus some incredible real-life stories about World War II spies, online entropy, and replaceable body parts. Not in the same book. But still.

Happy reading! Feel free to add any interesting leads to your digital shelf using the Want to Read button. 

Click here to see the lists.