What Can We Do To Promote Anglo-Welsh Literature in The US?
Promoting Wales in the USA
This is something of a crusade for us. We already do a lot of course. We regularly feature reviews of books and interviews with Welsh authors and promote them on this site and on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere. We feature competitions with books by Welsh authors as prizes .And this year we raised money ( with your help ) to bring authors to Portland for the Wordstock literary festival. Next year we hope to bring over a number of Welsh writers for our West Coast Eisteddfod in L.A.
BUT everything is so much easier if it's 'crowd sourced'. We have two ideas that we would like to invite your observations on. Also we are open to completely new ideas and suggestions as to how best to proceed.
1. In Portland you cannot donate books to the library in order to have them appear on the public shelves. if you do this they sell them in their used book stores. You can, however, 'suggest a title' on the library website. If enough people do so , and the book is relatively easy to procure, they will buy a copy for the main library or in some cases several copies for their satellite branches as well. What is the situation in other cities/states? Can we perhaps form a library 'hit squad' on the site and suggest perhaps, one title a month to our local libraries? This could result in dozens or even hundreds of extra sales for Welsh authors and publishers.
2. We have added the 'Books WeRead' app to the site. It can be found at the 'Book Club' tab on the main navbar menu. The 'Books weRead' community is not as large as 'Goodreads' or "Library Thing' but it is growing in size daily and curently has around 3 million members. We urge all members to think about joining and participating in this community. It can be accessed and enjoyed ( largely ) without leaving AmeriCymru. Indeed if you are signed into the site and you visit the 'Book Club' tab you are automatically signed in to 'Books WeRead and you can check out what your friends on AC are reading ( if they have entered any selections ). There are a number of ways that we can raise the profile of Welsh authors and titles on this site:- ratings, reviews, discussions, adding author details etc etc. Does anybody have any particular suggestions as to what we might do here?
Lastly ( but not least ) please let us know if you have any other ideas for promoting Anglo Welsh literature in the USA. We are all ears
updated by @ceri-shaw: 11/11/15 10:37:37PM
