It’s funny how life is cumulative.
For instance, my career, prior to my present career as a librarian, was as a Graphic Designer. It was my job to create images, along with a copywriter with a clever tag line, to move product. I did it everyday and loved every moment of it, and no, I am not going into why I changed my career, at least not now, that’s another topic. What my point is here is that I still am doing basically the same thing, in a different realm: the library
When someone asks me what’s a good book to read, I can launch into what I have read, what is popular, what the latest book the book club is reading, I consult Novelist (no, sorry I wasn’t able to skim our entire fiction, and non fiction collection in order to give first hand reader-advisory) but all I need to do is walk past the Oprah reading selections and my job is done.
If I were to tell you that Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina was not on the shelf for months after I stuck it on Oprah’s display, you would never believe me. You can’t make this stuff up. 836 pages. Circle of life: I’m still in the marketing business.
A couple of good books that I found interesting, and dealt with just this phenomena of popularity and trends are:
Malcom Gladwell’s The Tipping Point and Chip Heath’s Made to Stick.
But when it comes to getting a book to move off the shelf, or at least to get someone to notice it, Oprah says it all with just a little book mark sticking out of the top.
Grafedie in the Library 