This training was very instructive. I particularly liked two
elements of it: the resources we explored all along and the review of the appeal
factors.
Publisher weekly
and Early Word are my two favorites
resources discovered during this training. I still receive their weekly emails
about recent and upcoming publications. They summarize the bigger news in the
industry in a single page, and it usually only takes few minutes to be informed
about new books and trends. If something catches my attention, I can simply go
on their website to learn more about it. But there are other resources as well.
Those resources are the ones I don’t follow regularly, but I am now aware of
their existence and I can refer to them when needed. I am thinking about The New York Best Seller List, NPR Book,
Indie Next Best Seller List and the different websites specialized in
particular genre (Mystery, Romance, Science-fiction, Fantasy and Urban). The
first three are useful when customers ask about new and popular books they
might be interested in. As for the resources about genres, they are helpful to
offer customer information beyond the simple book cover. Finally, websites like
Goodreads and Novelist are full of information valuable for reader advisory. I
find the public comments to be great on Goodreads.
They are an easy way to find what readers think of a specific title. Novelist is very good for the read-alike
option. I particularly like the Novelist search engine based on the appeal
factors.
Appeal factors is precisely the other main expertise I
gained from this training. I have heard about the appeal factors before this
training, but I cannot say I knew them well. It was very helpful to not only study
them, but also to use them during the weekly exercises. Now I can spread my
conversation with patrons with words like pacing, tone, setting and
characterization. Appeal factors give me tools to describe books in ways patron
can understand easily. In fact, my favorite approach to use them is called the
doorway method by Nancy Pearl. There are four doorways: story, setting, character
and language. They are the major appeal factors known by customers and the easier
to use in order to describe a book. I also liked how Be More Bookish made us use
them, in a brief and short paragraph. I already wrote book reviews before for
school, but it was in an academic setting. At work, people want to have the big
picture in less than two minutes. This training made us practice those real
life situations.
Overall, Be More Bookish was an excellent training. Like any
online classes or workshops, I think one or two in-person meetings would have
been a good addition to the training. One meeting around the third week and one
around the sixth week for example. I think those meeting would have encourage group
discussions and comments. Nothing is better than meeting somebody in person to
break the ice.