Week Seven

Raise your hand if you've been personally victimized by James Patterson.

I started my library career as a shelver, and was often frustrated by the shelf space that bestselling authors took up. But, during my time in my library's cataloging department, author mills were the absolute worst to me. I was the main fiction cataloger, so the handling and distribution of these items was often my responsibility. Being in a large system, this meant that we could have an order of somewhere between 80 to 140 copies of a book, and they all had to go somewhere.

Sometimes, we would get a book in a week or two ahead of time- great! Lots of time to process it and get all the copies linked into the system. Uh-oh- those 80 copies are going to take up LOTS of shelf space until it's time for them to go out... bummer. On the flipside, we would occasionally get a book, due out on a Tuesday, at 4:00 pm on Monday, prompting the entire department to drop whatever they might be doing and rush to help link all the copies, trap holds, and get the books in the right boxes, and still punch out on time. Author mills inevitably would put a huge strain on library staff in one way or another.

When I began working in other areas of the library and emerged from the cataloging bubble, I began to notice where these books ended up. Initially, the demand for the books was huge. We couldn't keep them on the shelf. Either there was another hold to fill, or it would be on display for no more than an hour before being checked out. Gradually, after a month or so, we could keep a few copies on display. A few were never returned, or returned damaged and in need of withdrawal. But eventually, you'd find twenty copies on the shelf, waiting to be weeded later on. The majority of author mill books are, in my observation, decently sized novels. When purchased new, all were hard cover. They still were taking up a LOT of space that could be used for other materials.

These books are the most popular, initially - they typically make headlines, topping the NYT Best Sellers for weeks at a time. Yet, when looked at for a longer term, they are an annoyance for staff on many levels. In this scenario, I think e-copies would be a huge benefit to save shelf space to have a bigger variety in a fiction collection, if patrons are willing to read in a new way.