Incorporating Nonfiction into Readers’ Advisory Services

These aspects of narrative nonfiction potentially result in propelling the readers into a social, political, or historical dialogue. Narrative nonfiction is more than straight reportage; it goes beyond objective information as a result of the author’s subjective voice telling a true story. Therefore, it may appeal because it can motivate change, shape outlook, or instigate action. A further appeal of narrative nonfiction may be in its intellectual content: learning about how an object or discovery shaped human history or the achievement of understanding a complex topic that has been expressed in an accessible and pleasurable fashion. This is especially apparent in narrative nonfiction accounts that take an outwardly dull piece of history or a dry math topic and create an exciting page-turner from it. Additional appeal factors that are specific to nonfiction include level of scholarship, depth and documentation of research, and the aesthetics of the physical book, including maps, illustrations, and index. During a nonfiction readers’ advisory interview, the readers’ advisor must keep in mind both the basic fiction appeals in addition to determining the nonfiction appeal elements. Nonfiction appeals are not a finite group of elements and can vary extensively. Establishing the appeal–what hooks the nonfiction reader–is the first step in developing effective nonfiction readers’ advisory.

Tools for Narrative Nonfiction Readers’ Advisory

The next step in developing successful nonfiction readers’ advisory transactions is providing the tools and the resources for readers’ advisors to find relevant nonfiction reading based on reader preferences. This process is in its infancy at this point in time. Some of the common resources that readers’ advisors have been using include bestseller lists and reviews of new and forthcoming nonfiction titles in basic collection-development review sources such as Booklist, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly. Newspaper review sections, particularly the New York Times Book Review, devote an increasing amount of space to nonfiction titles. Burgin and others are fond of Amazon.com as a helpful tool in finding similar nonfiction titles of interest from reader-review suggestions, other books purchased, and the Listmania feature. Barnesandnoble.com offers similar features, and its Bookbrowser.com site presents the option of searching books with related themes and subjects. The following is a selected list of useful Web sites for nonfiction readers’ advisory:

• All Readers. Provides Biography and History read-alikes through searching by subgenre and some appeals elements
• Book Bytes. Recommendations and reviews of many nonfiction titles by librarian and book reviewer Marylaine Block
• Book TV Complements BookTV weekend programming on C-SPAN 2, which covers nonfiction books. This Web site provides an opportunity to watch or listen to the programs and supplies additional information not available on the network.
• CODES Readers’ Advisory Committee. Links to handouts of nonfiction genre classifications, benchmark works, and appeal elements of each genre
• Entertaining Nonfiction. Numerous annotated lists of nonfiction titles from the Pickering (Ont.) Public Library
• Fourth Genre). Explorations in nonfiction; issues include many book reviews and other interesting material on narrative nonfiction
• If You Like … . Popular “If you like …” site that provides read-alikes for Nonfiction and Biography
• If You Like … Nonfiction. Hennepin County (Minn.) Library’s popular site provides extensive, well-annotated lists for “if you liked … nonfiction” on a variety of topics
• Nonfiction that Reads Like Fiction. An excellent collection of nonfiction reading lists compiled by Molly Williams at the Waterboro (Maine) Public Library
• The Reader’s Advisor. Sachem (N.Y.) Public Library provides a great selection of topical nonfiction lists
• The Reader’s Club. Reviews of titles in many nonfiction genres written by library staff at the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.

Other sources of information include publisher’s catalogs–for instance, McGraw-Hill, which publishes approximately six hundred nonfiction books yearly and has a nonfiction backlist of six thousand.³¹ Narrative nonfiction book lists are easily searched on Google by typing in “nonfiction that reads like fiction” or for specific popular titles, read-alike lists can be searched by typing in (for example) “if you liked into thin air.” Fiction_L, www.webrary.org/rs/flmenu.html, composed its first list of “nonfiction that reads like fiction” in 1998 and added an updated list in 2003. An additional resource for readers’ advisors is nonfiction award-winner lists, including the following prizes:

• American Booksellers Association Award
• Audie Award for Nonfiction Audiobook
• Aventis Prize for Science Books
• Lionel Gelber Prize
• Lukas Prize Project
• National Book Critics Circle
• Pulitzer Prize nonfiction
• Samuel Johnson Prize

Reference materials and training resources for working with nonfiction readers are also currently being produced. Last year, Libraries Unlimited published the first readers’ advisory reference book on nonfiction, Nonfiction Reader’s Advisory, a collection of essays from scholars and practitioners. Greenwood just published The Real Story in their Genreflecting Advisory Series that contains five hundred nonfiction titles with read-alikes. ALA Editions has a nonfiction readers’ advisory title under contract, and one can hope that What Do I Read Next? will also publish useful titles. Nonfiction workshops and programs are increasingly seen at major conferences, including programs at the 2004 and 2005 ALA Annual Conferences, and the 2004, 2005, and 2006 Public Library Association conferences. Recent programs have included readers’ advisory for historical fiction and history and a new technique called the reader’s map that blends fiction and nonfiction titles by theme or subject. These workshops and resources greatly assist readers’ advisors in providing adequate services to nonfiction leisure readers.

Here are some tips for promoting nonfiction titles in the public library. Booklists and bookmarks are effective ways to increase circulation of titles. Displays are also popular and the opportunities for nonfiction displays are many; seasonal themes, local exhibit and event tie-ins, and staff recommendations tend to be popular. All these displays could work mixing fiction and nonfiction also. Another avenue for promoting nonfiction reading is book discussion groups, by mixing nonfiction titles into a primarily fiction group, or creating a nonfiction-only group, an option that has the bonus of being a draw to attract men to library programs. Publisher-produced reading guides for nonfiction can often be found online (for example, see www.harpercollins.com/readers.asp and www.readinggroupguides.com/findaguide/biography_memoir.asp for guides of popular biographies and memoirs). Books about organizing discussion groups often address nonfiction book groups. For instance, Good Books Lately devotes sections to nonfiction, to memoir, and to biography.³² A useful source of ideas for marketing nonfiction is Fiction_L, which has archived threads on book groups, resources, booktalking, booklists, and displays for nonfiction titles. Most methods of marketing books are applicable in incorporating narrative nonfiction into library services.

Readers’ advisory is essentially about suggesting titles that will suit our users’ pleasure-reading needs and tastes. Narrative nonfiction, an innovative and increasingly popular category of adult leisure reading, forces us to broaden our concept of readers’ advisory and presents an exciting challenge to readers’ advisors to expand the scope of our knowledge and services. It is imperative to the vitality of our service that training, tools, and resources for nonfiction readers’ advisory continue to be developed so that readers’ advisors can become familiar with the wide range of appeal factors and titles that allow them to connect nonfiction “story people” with pleasing and satisfying reads.

References

1. Edward Humes, “Literary Nonfiction–Walking the Line,” www.californiaauthors.com (accessed Oct. 27, 2004).
2. Robert Vare, “The State of Narrative Nonfiction Writing,” Nieman Reports 54 (Fall 2000): 18.
3. D. J. Herda, “Writing the Narrative Nonfiction Book,” The Writers Lounge, www.writerslounge.org/0104-writingtips-NarrativeNonfiction.html (accessed Oct. 27, 2004).
4. Joyce G. Saricks, Readers’ Advisory in the Public Library, 3rd ed. (Chicago: ALA, 2005).
5. Bowker Press Release, May 27, 2004, www.bowker.com/press/ 2004_0527_bowker.htm (accessed Oct. 27, 2004).
6. Robert Burgin, “Readers’ Advisory and Nonfiction,” in The Readers’ Advisor’s Companion, eds. Kenneth D. Shearer and Robert Burgin (Englewood, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited, 2001), 213.
7. Fiction_L thread, May 8, 2002 through July 29, 2002, www.webrary.org/maillist/ msg/2002/5/Re.NonfictionRA.html (accessed Oct. 20, 2004).
8. Bill Ott, “Story People,” Booklist 94 (Sept. 1, 1997): 4.
9. Michael Korda, Making the List: A Cultural History of the American Bestseller, 1900-1999 (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2001), 100.
10. Edd Applegate, Literary Journalism: A Biographical Dictionary of Writers and Editors (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1996), preface.
11. Peter Rubie, Telling the Story: How to Write and Sell Narrative Non-fiction (New York: Quill, 2003), 4.
12. Haskel Frankel, “The Author,” Saturday Review 49 (Jan. 22, 1966): 37.
13. Barbara Lounsberry, The Art of Fact: Contemporary Artists of Non-fiction (New York: Greenwood, 1990), xvi.
14. Joyce Saricks, “Not Just Fiction,” Booklist 101 (Sept. 1, 2004): 56.
15. Saricks, Readers’ Advisory in the Public Library ; Vicki Novak, “The Story’s the Thing: Narrative Nonfiction for Recreational Reading,” in Nonfiction Reader’s Advisory (Westport, Conn.: Libraries Unlimited, 2004), 219-22; Rubie, Telling the Story, 20-27.
16. Outagamie Waupaca Library System, “Nonfiction Readers’ Advisory Workshop,” www.owls.lib.wi.us/ce/handouts/2004/NonFictionURLS.pdf (accessed Nov. 24, 2004).
17. Gerald Gross, Editors on Editing: What Writers Need to Know about What Editors Do (New York: Grove, 1993).
18. Lounsberry, The Art of Fact, xiii-xv.
19. Kurt Eichenwald, “Rewriting the Rules of Nonfiction,” www.booksense.com/people/archive/eichenwald.jsp (accessed Oct.
    27, 2004).
20. Sandra Lamb, “Narrative Nonfiction,” Writer 117 (May 2004): 45-46.
21. Rubie, Telling the Story, 16.
22. Dan Wakefield, “The Personal Voice and the Impersonal Eye,” Atlantic 217 (June 1966): 86-90.
23. Christopher Anderson, Style as Argument: Contemporary American Nonfiction (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Pr., 1987), 1.
24. Joyce G. Saricks and Nancy Brown, Readers’ Advisory Service in the Public Library, 2nd ed. (Chicago: ALA, 1997).
25. Nancy Pearl, Now Read This: A Guide to Mainstream Fiction, 1978-1998 (Englewood, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited, 1999); Nancy Pearl, Now Read This II: A Guide to Mainstream Fiction, 1990-2001 (Englewood, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited, 2002).
26. Kenneth D. Shearer, “The Appeal of Nonfiction: A Tale of Many Tastes,” in Nonfiction Readers’ Advisory (Westport, Conn.: Libraries Unlimited, 2004), 69.
27. Tom Wolfe, ed., Th e New Journalism (New York: Harper, 1973), 34.
28. David Carr, “Many Kinds of Crafted Truths: An Introduction to Nonfiction,” in Nonfiction Reader’s Advisory (Westport, Conn.: Libraries Unlimited, 2004), 50.
29. Novak, “The Story’s the Thing.”
30. Rubie, Telling the Story, 2-3.
31. Jim Milliot, “McGraw-Hill Carves Place in Nonfiction,” Publishers Weekly 250 (June 16, 2003): 16.
32. Ellen Moore and Kira Stevens, Good Books Lately: The One-Stop Resource for Book Groups and Other Greedy Readers (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2004).

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