Collection development part 3: Let's spend the money!

So, you're completely in tune with your community, you've read all the resources, you're ready to BUY THE BOOKS!! Almost.

Unless you have a ridiculously specific collection development policy (and I hope you don't because it's a major pain - get that changed, ok?) you'll need to have some general guidelines of your own, written or unwritten, and a rough idea of how you will spend your budget.

You'll be using a lot of data that I'll be talking about in the fourth and final part of this series, but the first thing to do is do a rough divide of your budget, which is probably in a lump sum. Looking at your circulation, collection size, and gaps and replacements, how will you divide up your money? I've gone back and forth over how I divide things up, but I generally do it in thirds. One third for children's (board books, picture books, tub books, early readers), one third for juvenile (fiction, nonfiction, and beginning chapters), and one third for everything else, including Young Adult, Spanish, holiday, professional titles, and series nonfiction (and occasionally fiction in the case of Capstone). I buy directly from Capstone and Lerner, and occasionally from other nonfiction publishers like Bearport, Jump!, Creative, and Blastoff.

What format will you be buying your collections in? There are board books, paperbacks, hardcover, reinforced, library binding, and prebound. If I purchase Baker and Taylor's prebound titles (Paw Prints) they will replace them for free if they are damaged or fall apart. If titles are available in paperback, you can request a prebound version although it takes several months at least. In my experience, there isn't a universal standard for bindings, so it will depend on the publisher. Because of the length of time it takes for them to arrive, I usually do a big order of prebound replacements/requests at the beginning of the year. For example, Capstone's library bindings will last forever and their paperbacks are also very sturdy. National Geographic's library bindings are as crap as their hardcovers, so you might as well buy the cheaper ones. Scholastic's paperbacks, vary from series to series (I am not kidding - Press Start falls apart when you breathe on them, but not Owl Diaries, although they get the same amount of use).

• Board books - I use to not buy anything with flaps/moving parts, but now that I've built a strong backlist of basics, I will buy the more ephemeral titles. Will you be purchasing media tie-ins and holiday books or do they belong in another section?
• Tub books - I always buy these in paperback and under $5 as that is their replacement cost. I generally buy two copies of especially popular ones, which also gives me a small additional discount.
• Picture books - I always buy hardcover or reinforced and purchase prebound titles only for replacements of classics and exceptionally popular titles (Pete the Cat, Eric Carle, etc.)
• Early readers - I stick to hardcover here generally, but if it's a very popular series and the prebound version isn't much more expensive than the hardcover I'll get prebound. Generally the interiors get stained and icky through much use before the bindings go. I almost never purchase library bound sets for early readers, it doesn't make sense for my budget to spend $20 on one book when I can get at least two for that in a regular binding. I do purchase the little paperbacks like BOB books - Baker and Taylor offers them in a prebound binding, but I don't use those since it's $30 and I feel that's extreme for our patrons. I buy the sets and put them in cd cases, which does add $10 to the replacement cost, but it's rare for people to lose the whole thing.
• Beginning chapters - most of these I purchase in paperback, but sometimes I'll buy hardcover, especially for graphic novels or if something hasn't yet been released in paperback and I need it now. A few very popular series with crappy bindings get purchased in prebound.
• Juvenile popular fiction (JPOP) - this includes everything from My Little Pony to Disney picture books to Minecraft, to 39 Clues and Girls Survive. It's a huge mish-mash of bindings, based on my experience with what bindings will fall apart, if they'll still be popular when the bindings disintegrate, and what's available and cost-effective.
• Juvenile fiction - I buy a mix of paperback and hardcover. Graphic novel series are either purchased in prebind to start with (especially Dog man - the prebinds fall apart regularly and I can get them replaced for free) or as the books age and disintegrate and I can see they're still popular I'll replace them in prebound. I spent a huge chunk this year replacing Shannon Messenger in prebound for example.
• Juvenile nonfiction - paperback vs. hardcover vs. library binding really depends on the subject area here. Things that won't be outdated too fast and will see a lot of use like animals I will buy in library binding. Things that outdate super fast like sports teams and bios, I'll get in paperback. (Also, I feel strongly that sports figures who MOVE TEAMS AFTER MANY YEARS dang well ought to make donations to all the libraries in their state to update their collections. Hmph.)
• I almost never buy young adult items in prebound. The only exception is back-up copies of classics like The Book Thief, Hunger Games, etc. and things that will otherwise fall apart - Chi's Sweet Home and Zelda.

You'll also need to apply your data (what is circulating) and your community knowledge (what are people asking for that you don't have, what trends are coming and going) as you make purchase decisions. I always remember that best-seller lists, awards, etc. are chosen by groups of people in other places - they're not necessarily going to be popular in my area. Also, as a librarian, I'm more hooked into book trends. The vast majority of my patrons aren't going to know (or care) who won the Newbery or other more obscure awards, they just want the latest thing they saw on Booktok or Amazon, a book they remember from their childhood, or their child's current nonfiction obsession.