Ask librarians for the right process

Some libraries publish no author or suggestion policy, and some situations (a subject librarian at a university, a youth services librarian for a school-visit tie-in, a branch with a local author shelf) call for a direct note. The outreach that works is short, specific, and asks a question rather than making a pitch: here is the book, here is why it might fit your collection, here is how it can be ordered, and how would you prefer to receive information about titles like this?

Find the right person first. Collection development, acquisitions, or the subject or age-group librarian is usually named on the library's staff page; the director is almost never the right recipient. Write three or four sentences. Attach the library information sheet. Do not attach the book, do not send a box of copies unasked, and do not follow up more than once. If they answer with a process, follow it. If they do not answer, let it go; a second polite note after a month is the limit.

On any path this is the author's or publicist's work. Publishers reach libraries through wholesalers, trade reviews, and library marketing programs; individual outreach is not something they do for one title. A traditionally published author can mention the publisher and that trade reviews are pending or published. A hybrid or self-published author should lead with the ordering channel, because that is the first question a librarian will have.

The tone matters more than the wording. Librarians receive a lot of author mail, and the notes they remember kindly are the ones that respected their time and their process.

Keep one thing in proportion: writing to a library is a real step and worth doing, but a selection librarian's own account is that the thing which makes a book visible to many collection teams at once is a review in the journals they already read, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Choice for a book that reads as academic.