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Marketing to Libraries: Reviews as a Selection Tool

Tips for authors, small publishers, and others who wish to reach the library market.

ALA Reviews

Booklist/Booklist Online reviews adult books (fiction and nonfiction), books for youth (children and young adults), and reference books and also newly released videos, DVDs, audiobooks, spoken word audios, and children's music CDs.

Booklist is a book-review magazine that has been published by the American Library Association since 1905, and is widely viewed as offering the most reliable reviews to help libraries decide what to buy and to help library patrons and students decide what to read, view, or listen to. It comprises two print magazines, an extensive website and database, e-newsletters, webinars, and other resources that support librarians in collection development and readers' advisory.

Booklist Online is the web version of the Booklist print magazine. The full Booklist Online database contains more than 170,000 reviews and thousands of features dating back to 1992 and 8,000 new reviews and related features every year.

A quarterly supplement to Booklist free to Booklist subscribers, Book Links magazine helps teachers, youth librarians, school library media specialists, reading specialists, curriculum coordinators, and others connect children with high-quality literature-based resources.

 

Choice, a publication of the Association of College & Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association, primarily review books and electronic resources appropriate for libraries that serve students at the undergraduate level, including community colleges. Choice also selectively reviews graduate level materials when they have value for advanced undergraduates or honor students. Strictly professional works are excluded, as are foreign-language materials and most reprints and undergraduate textbooks.
 
Since its founding as a monthly collection of recommended titles more than 50 years ago, Choice has become the go-to source for librarians seeking worthwhile new titles for their collection. The publication offers approximately 600 reviews every month, identifying the best new books and digital content in academia. With more than 2,400 institutions served worldwide, Choice is the premier review journal of new academic titles.

 

Additional Review Publications

Librarians selecting materials for their collections scan many sources, including local publications and newspapers and consumer publications.  This list, arranged alphabetically, includes the major general sites and publications, with special aspects, such as "indie friendliness" indicated.