Little bits ‘o news about our download collection.
2008 Circulation figures
As of this afternoon we’ve checked out 40,918 download titles.
December 2008 has been our all time busiest month with 3,974 checkouts.
I’m betting we’ll break 4,000 for December and 41,000 before the end of day.
Top 10 Most Popular Downloads of 2008
Title, Author, checkouts
Deepest Water by Kate Wilhelm, 103
Absolute Certainty by Rose Connors 94
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer 89
Death Qualified by Kate Wilhelm 79
City of Masks by Daniel Hecht 74
All Audio Spanish Step 1 by Living Language 72
7th Heaven by James Patterson 68
The Appeal by John Grisham 65
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen 65
How To Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less by Nicholas Boothman 63
2008 Collection summary
People are always asking about the makeup of the collection. Here’s a little summary of what the collection looks like as we enter 2009.
Purchased Titles in Collection (counting each format of a title only once): 4907
OverDrive MP3 Audiobook: 955
OverDrive Music: 622
OverDrive Video: 160
OverDrive WMA Audiobook: 3169
Purchased Copies in Collection (counting each copy of each format of a title): 7101
OverDrive MP3 Audiobook: 1723
OverDrive Music: 955
OverDrive Video: 205
OverDrive WMA Audiobook: 4217
OCR Titles in Collection: 17
OverDrive Music: 17
Checkouts: 40924
OverDrive MP3 Audiobook: 2714
OverDrive Music: 1377
OverDrive Video: 3553
OverDrive WMA Audiobook: 33280
Holds: 18082
OverDrive MP3 Audiobook: 2021
OverDrive Music: 159
OverDrive Video: 225
OverDrive WMA Audiobook: 15677
Holds are managed automatically
Just as we do with other materials we maintain a 5 to 1 holds to copy ratio for downloadable material. A report runs each night that checks the holds ratios for the collection adding titles when necessary. The wonderful thing about digital materials are that they are instantly available, as soon as the additional copies are added keeping wait times to a minimum.
AudioFile released its list of the best of the year. congrats to Seattle author Garth Stein for the audio nod to his “The Art of Racing in the Rain” – Stein recently visited Sno-Isle Libraries for the day long Reader’s Advisory workshop and gave a fascinating and humorous talk about his marketing efforts in pushing this title. i am pleased to see that, not surprisingly, “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” was included, gripping narration that kept my attention despite 18(!) cds which is certainly a feat.
any title that we don’t currently own or have on order will be forthcoming since all of our 2008 audio budgets are spent.
our posting have been light and will be in the next week. some of that is a reflection of diminished publishing news during the holiday season, but is also due to vacation days plus those pesky snow days (who knew i would be so thrilled to see rain again – don’t quote me on that!). we plan on resuming our duties in the new year and hope that the holidays treat you well. see you in 2009.
Ho, Ho, Ho ! Jean Shepherd best known for A Christmas Story which will run for 24 hours on TBS starting at 5pm PST tomorrow night, also loved a good prank. Shepherd was more than a little fed up with bestseller lists and so as a broadcaster for WOR in New York in the 50s he directed his audience to go out to bookstores and request an imaginary book titled, I Libertine. At the time, bestseller lists weren’t just based on sales, but also on customer requests.
Listeners went out and asked for the book. Bookstores started to request the book from distributors. There were also great stories of people claiming to have read the book when it did not even exist. These were not the listeners of the radio program trying to perpetrate the hoax but people trying to avoid appearing unread.
Ballantine books in conjunction with Shepherd and SF writer Theodore Sturgeon created a real book to complete the hoax. Here is the record for the book on Amazon.
The folks at eHarlequin are offering a free ebook every day until January 2nd.
Today’s title is
Come Toy With Me
“Rugged Dino Angelis, navy captain and special ops agent, has the family Sight. But even that couldn’t have prepared him for his hungry reaction to Cat McGuire–toy-store owner, smuggling ring suspect…and his new charge.
Only, Dino can’t believe the sexy woman under his protection is a crook. Not when she can plant a kiss hot enough to melt all his good intentions…
For Cat, Christmas is always a hectic season. But this year she’s agreed to a fake engagement, too, just to keep the family peace. It wouldn’t be so bad, if only Cat could keep her hands off her new fiancé. After all, he’s strong, he’s sexy…he’s the perfect boy toy. Or he is–until Cat discovers she’s just another one of his assignments….”
Today’s my Dad’s birthday so….
Nah, that’s not gonna work, I guess I’ll just go with the Home Depot gift card again this year.
James Frey, yes that James Frey, is going to pen the 3rd book of the Bible. apparently, Jesus will live in modern day New York City and live with a prostitute. after getting publicly humiliated by Oprah in front of millions, Frey clearly does not fear controversy – perhaps he now can’t live without it?
for those that have listened to or read “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle,” it should come as no surprise that a prequel is in the works. in a deal with Ecco Press, a division of HarperCollins, author David Wroblewski has signed to a second book detailing the lives of Edgar’s dad and uncle.
the inclusion of the family’s back story in “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle,” particularly in the first 3rd of the book, was one of my criticisms of it – though background is important to understanding what ultimately happened, i wanted the story to focus more on Edgar and the dogs and felt the set-up bogged the novel down as far as pacing. it will be interesting to see how the prequel is handled.
“It used to be that newspapers competed largely with each other for classifieds and advertising revenue. But now the industry faces a crowded marketplace that includes a big gorilla: the Internet.
Experts say the problem is that newspapers haven’t figured out how to make a lot of money off online content.
“Newspapers are making money off the Internet; they’re just not making it in a way that they make it in the kind of margins that they make from a print newspaper,” says Mark Fitzgerald, an editor at large with Editor & Publisher magazine. “For every customer that they have [for the] print newspaper, they’re making about a dollar. For every customer they have on the Internet, they make about 10 to 15 cents.”
The newspapers of Detroit are in trouble and they’re taking measures to survive. The Freep also known as the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News are scaling back their printing operations, increasing their web presence, and reducing home delivery to three days a week, Thursday, Friday and Sunday. With the recent bankruptcy filing of the Chicago Tribune, newspapers are clearly in trouble and the path that the Freep, and the News are taking the lead on may be one that other newspapers may choose to follow.
AudioFile released its list of the 
