Club Book FY2015

Club Book brings dozens of bestselling and award-winning authors each year to libraries throughout the seven-county Twin Cities metropolitan area. Since its inception in 2010, the program has hosted over 120 events in 20 communities. Club Book is a program of the Metropolitan Library Service Agency (MELSA) and, as of January 2014, is coordinated by Library Strategies, the consulting group of The Friends of the St. Paul Public Library.
Club Book’s tenth season (February-April 2015) – anchored by bestselling authors like Garth Stein, Jon Ronson, and Anthony Marra – was well received. It began in Stillwater on February 12 with a talk by New York Times bestselling novelist Peter Heller, and ended on April 27 in Edina with a Club Book talk featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and social activist Sonia Nazario. The season’s line-up garnered over 30 favorable media features both from regional outlets (e.g. Star Tribune, Pioneer Press) and numerous local ones. Additionally, Club Book’s events enjoyed mentions on many prominent Twin Cities area community and literary calendars (both print and digital), including those maintained by City Pages, Lavender Magazine, Minnesota Reads, and Vita.mn. Club Book maintained strong partnerships with official media sponsors Minnesota Public Radio and MinnPost over the term January-April 2015. At steeply discounted rates, MPR agreed to run a number of on-air ads specific to Club Book: on KNOW 91.1 (News), KSJN 99.5 (Classical), and KCMP 89.3 (The Current). Moreover, free of any additional cost to the program, MPR upgraded a number of slots originally slated for KSJN 99.5 and KCMP 89.3 to “rush hour” air time on KNOW 91.1. As part of this same discounted package, MPR also provided promotional interstitials on its news website, mprnews.org. Media partner MinnPost also provided discounts, together with thorough promotions coverage. From January 1 to May 5, 2015, a full 16.5 percent of clubbook.org website traffic came via MinnPost referral (the second highest percentile of any referral resource) – a strong indicator of MinnPost’s growing reach and continued value to the Club Book program. Podcasts: Author lectures (and associated audience ‘question and answer’ sessions) are recorded and made available for download and streaming on iTunes and the program’s website, clubbook.org. Club Book talks are now archived and available indefinitely to all interested parties. As of May 6, 2015, our 27 podcast episodes (the most recent third of which are the Winter/Spring season) generated 5,286 total downloads and 3,886 unique downloads. Note: These figures are conservative. The unique downloads number does not include repeat listens on the same iTunes account, and neither figure includes listeners who streamed content directly from clubbook.org. On average, each episode has generated 196 total downloads and 144 unique downloads. Statistics to date suggest that these mean figures will continue to rise even once episodes lose some of their currency. Website: Over the past season, Club Book’s online footprint increased in other ways, as well. Website traffic is both high and steady – with 39,138 page views to the site’s credit since its January 2014 launch. Over the course of the most recent season, a total of 3,406 unique users came to clubbook.org, over 3,406 sessions. Social Media: We enjoyed organic growth on social media. On Twitter, our following more than doubled over the course of the season, from 72 to 188 total followers. On Facebook, we gained 84 new ‘Likes’ over the same period, representing net growth of approximately 11 percent.