Print

Preface: What is the Soon to be Famous Illinois Author Project? Sue Wilsey One of the most widely shared pair of articles via library blogs and Facebook feeds in early 2013 was a two-part series from Forbes contributor David Vin- jamuri. “The Wrong War Over eBooks: Publishers Vs. Libraries” and “Why Public Libraries Matter: And How They Can Do More” essentially made case that public “libraries should cooperate to discover great books” ­the (Vinjamuri, 2012, 2013). So when Vinjamuri was scheduled in the way-too-early-for-a-Sunday- morning slot on June 30 at the 2013 American Library Association con- ference in Chicago for a presentation entitled “The $84 Question: Why Libraries Matter and Can Do More in the Era of E-books, Social Media and Branding,” he drew a standing-room-only audience. Among the attendees were a group of closely networked local library marketers who enthusiasti- cally embraced his challenge to libraries to wield their collective influence to make a self-published author a success. The hope was to create a mea- surable indicator of the power of libraries and librarians to affect books and reading. In a period of just a few months, the ambitious (some would say insane) group coined the title of the Soon to be Famous Illinois Author Project, created a logo design, set up a Facebook page and Web site, and secured a booth and presentation for the October 2013 Illinois Library Association Conference, and the project was under way. The team agreed on certain parameters for the project: author nominations would be accepted only from Illinois libraries, participating authors would be Illinois residents, and accepted works would be adult fiction and must be self-published.