Why did libraries need to rebrand?

Think you're selling a book? Wrong. You're selling belonging.

A few months ago I took my 6 and 4 year old daughters to a stage play of Pilim B’Chol HaTzvaim (Elephants of All Colours, it’s an Israeli children’s book adaptation, I also hadn’t heard of it before).

I took them to see this show at the library.

Libraries have pulled off an excellent rebrand and there is a lot for authors to learn from it.

The original library pitch was simple: we have the books you need. It was a transactional promise, come in, borrow, return, repeat.

And then bookstores multiplied and the internet made information free. That pitch stopped being enough. A library that only offered access to books was competing with a device in everyone’s pocket. So libraries changed the pitch entirely. They didn’t get better at lending books.

They got better at making people feel like they belonged.

Walk into a library now and the catalog is almost beside the point. There are children’s story hours, retiree programming, quiet working space, and community events like Pilim B’Chol HaTzvaim.

A library now sells identity before it sells inventory.

The psychology of a “third place” is behind the rebrand. A third place is somewhere that isn’t home and isn’t work, where people gather because the space reflects who they are. Do we go to book clubs because it’s the most efficient way to read books or get recommendations? Of course not. We join book clubs because of the wine, the people and, inherently, because it connects with who we are, or who we want to be. Identity is stickier than utility.

This is the exact rebrand available to authors, but most are still marketing like it’s the old library: here’s the plot, here’s the premise, here’s why you need it. Like my post, buy my book. That’s transactional value, and it competes with every other book making the same pitch.

A few ways to actually apply this to your author marketing efforts:

• Build a third place around your work. An Instagram page, a column for Zibby Media, a podcast - anything that gives readers a reason to show up as a group instead of consuming alone.

• Programming over promotion. Libraries don’t advertise “borrow this book”. They host. Authors can do the same: live Q&As, behind-the-scenes process content, discussion questions built by the community itself.

• Let readers self-label. Give your community a name or a shared identity marker. I am a proud historical fiction geek. If you give me a place to wear that proudly, I’m there with bells on.

Libraries didn’t respond to a crowded market by getting louder about the books they can lend you. They rebranded by becoming a place that offered belonging and identity. When I was shunned by the publishing industry as an Israeli author, my exact words to my husband were: if I am too Jewish or too Israeli for them, then I am going to find my people and be as Jewish and Israeli as I can possibly be.