Week Six Prompt Response

   Director,
   You asked about ideas to promote horror books. We should start with a social media campaign just after Labor Day, hinting through posts on our accounts through Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram that something mysterious is coming to the library for Halloween. We'll also have in-library signage about the program that won't give the idea away. Then in October after we've decorated for the season, we'll have online and in-library quizzes our patrons can take to find out what type of horror or scary books they like to read or would like to explore. Their results on the RA-style quizzes will give them hints and clues about a location in the library they'd have to go find. Those locations will have a display of similar books, movies, audiobooks, and comics to their quiz results.
   This will not be limited to adult material; the children's and teen areas will also have displays and quizzes to be found that will contain age-appropriate materials to "scare" them. Patrons will be able to follow a physical clue list or use our library app to scan QR codes pointing them to the next clue on their way through the library. There will only be a few clues so as not to make it too difficult or lengthy.
   We'll set up the displays to be only noticeable as a patron turns a corner, for example, so the display is a bit of a scare (we'll warn them at the beginning to expect it and along the way as they get closer, of course, since we don't want heart attacks). Next to the checkout machines, we'll have a "photo booth" with various frames that say something along the lines of, "My scary book/movie/audiobook/comic match is . . ." and then have patrons be able to have their pictures taken with them holding the book, movie, audiobook, or comic they've chosen. These pictures we'll post to our social media accounts to further drive interest throughout October with the appropriate hashtags.

This is something that could be done with any genre, of course, excepting the "scaring" part of the display, but we can start with horror and scary books since Halloween is coming up in a few months.