Week 6 Prompt - Promoting Romance | The Shelf Help Section

Prior to taking this course, I had never read a romance novel. The biggest reason for this is that the genre as a whole is very intimidating to me. There are as many different types of romance novels as there are other genres in the library - historical romance, romantic suspense, contemporary romance, gentle romance, hot and steamy romance/erotica, paranormal romance, and on and on. Using the concept of integrated readers' advisory can help librarians recommend appropriate types of romance novels to readers new and experienced alike.

My idea for promoting the romance genre in the library is basically to compare romance books to movies and TV. For example --

"If you like Grey's Anatomy, try ________,"
"If you like 50 Shades of Grey, try these books..."
"If you like Outlander, try these..."

and so on and so forth.

I found some really neat ideas on Pinterest that I would present to my boss to show how I would construct a display for the library. Why reinvent the wheel, right?

This one is my favorite, even though it's geared more towards teens and children.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/2040762307919359/

It would be fun to combine the theater style booth option with this one --

Pinned here partly for the great idea of a huge array of individual "If You Like" bookmarks, partly for the thought-provoking post it illustrates. Designer Librarian blogs about using readers advisory in academic libraries to close the college reading gap. I want to combine & adapt these ideas for use in the public library. (photo: Reader's Advisory Bookmarks by anthonylibrarian, via Flickr):

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/403142604114912812/

Instead of having the bookmarks on the wall, I would put them in the booth.

Budget could be problematic, as well as finding appropriate supplies to make a cool theater style booth (or simply, lack of craft skills). If I met with too much resistance, I would pitch a display like the one below --

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/286119382554398733/

Instead of moods, I would have movie posters/covers and TV show pics.

One other idea that I found on Pinterest that I feel am in love with is the book truck/book mobile. A local bookstore here (Parnassus Books) has their own rolling bookstore and it is quite magical to visit. This is definitely a pipe dream for most (if not all) libraries, but it would be so cool to do up a bookmobile with romance books. It could be the Romance-mobile. You could also change the genre based on the season, a Horror-mobile, Mystery-mobile (and if you don't call it the Mystery Machine that's a real missed opportunity), etc. Instead of ringing customers, you could just check out the books. Oh what fun! This is not at all a possibility, but I wanted to keep it here in my blog so that I don't forget about it. It's fun to daydream, right?