Multnomah County Library has helped publish local authors for nearly a decade. Do you want to be next?

Published 9:11 am Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Portland-area authors have been finding a home for their works at the Multnomah County Library for nearly a decade.

Since 2015, the Library Writers Project has presented the opportunity for local authors to self-published their books and have them added to the library’s e-book collection — a handful have been printed by Ooligan Press.

“We really wanted to invest in local authors though, so that’s sort of the beginning of it. It was a way to lift up local authors,” Kady Ferris, electronic content librarian at Multnomah County Library, said.

Authors are directed to self-published a book, if it’s not already, submit it to the library for a panel to review and then a handful are added to the library’s e-book collection on the Libby app and OverDrive website, with the chance to be printed by Ooligan Press.

How it started

Ferris started at the library in 2014, a year before the project was born.

As the buyer for the library’s e-book and digital audiobook collection, she remembers the start of being able to purchase self-published books through their e-book vendors.

Ferris said books like “The Martian” were self-published and later picked up by big publishers and became huge hits, which made it seem like “there were a lot of diamonds in the rough.”

Deciphering between what books were good — for both librarians and patrons — was difficult due to the lack of infrastructure.

The self-publishing website Smashwords began selling its e-books to libraries in 2015, which Ferris said allowed them to add information.

But still, the challenge of knowing what books were good persisted.

“We had this idea to put a call out to just local authors who are self-published,” Ferris said.

It was different than the standard process for picking books to add to the collection, allowing self-published authors eyes on giving their book the chance to be added to their local library.

“The library’s role is like a tastemaker, you know, we make book recommendations every single day and we want to be able to say like, ‘Oh these are the good ones. There’s a lot out there, these are the ones that are worth the time,’” Ferris said.

Figuring out the process was dependent on communication. Authors were asked to publish on an existing, free site and fill out a form explaining their book.

Library staff and volunteer readers then judge and offer expertise on which books might appeal to patrons. At the start, there were 25 staff volunteers, allowing each submission to be read by two people.

“That way you can sort of try and account for some individual tastes. and if there’s a wildly different experience of a book, then we’d have to bring in a third person,” Ferris said.

The first year, she said they didn’t know what they were getting into and received 150 submissions, which was way more than anticipated.

Authors who were, in essence, unknown, were having their books checked out by hundreds of readers.

Given the timing, people were still seeking out print books in the 2010s. Ferris said they sought out publishers to partner, and had the first book, “The Gifts We Keep,” by Katie Grindeland, printed in 2019.

It had been checked out nearly 1,000 times in the year it hit the collection as an e-book.

This year, Multnomah County Library is coming up on its fifth printed title with Ooligan Press, called “The Blue Line Letters” by Steven Christiansen. This is the first teen title being published, which tells a story set in Portland in which a boy has a summer job and recounts his journey riding the TriMet Blue Line.

How to apply

A little bit of everything is welcomed to the Library Writers Project.

While they stray away from things like manuals or handbooks, things trying to claim fact because its difficult to verify credentials and fact check, they welcome most works.

What is popular are genre fiction, including mysteries, science fiction, fantasy and romance.

This year, Ferris said they got about 60 submissions in October 2024 and the books were added by December 2024.

Books are judged on numerical scales such as technical score, artistic score and how likely they are to recommend it to someone. Ooligan Press has its own set of standards for which books might get selected for print.

A new round of submissions is opened once a year in the fall.

Here’s how the process works, according to the Multnomah County Library website:

• Publish your e-book on one of the following self-publishing sites:
• Draft2Digital or Kobo Writing Life.
• Fill out a submission form telling them about your work.
• The library will purchase a review copy of each submission and library staff members will review them.
• After library staff review submissions, they will add the best ones to the library’s e-book collection on the Libby app and OverDrive website, together visited by over 9,000 MCL patrons every single day.

For a full set of instructions, visit multcolib.org/library-writers-project.

What were the most recently added books?

Here is a list of the newest additions from The Library Writers Project:

• “Nobody Knows the Spanish I Speak” by Mark Saunders.
• “The World Is a Sniff” by Mindy Hardwick.
• “The Tricycle” by Sara Harkness Bovitz.
• “My Favorite Mother-In-Law” by Mark Niemann-Ross.
• “True Blue Kangaroo” by Curtis C. Chen.
• “Robbie & Weeble-Wobble” by Dennis Venhuis.
• “Hotel D” by Nika Stone.
• “Riva Beside Me” by Carla Perry.
• “Ghost Cat of Ocean Cove” by Mollie Hunt.
• “Sushi Scandal” by T. Thorn Coyle.
• “The Unusual Mayor Marheart” by Tammie Painter.
• “Poisoned by the Book” by Ellen Jacobson.
• “Seduction in Blood” by Kim Allred.
• “Queer Windows” by Cay Fletcher.
• “Sculpting the Mist” by June Underwood.
• “Journey” by C.C. Naughton.
• “What an Earl Wants” by Shirley Karr.
• “Promise the Sky” by Katrina Spillman.
• “The Skald” by Gregory Amato.
• “Outrider” by Mark James Montgomery.
• “Reluctant Hero” by Vanessa Maclellan.
• “The Girl with the Uninvited Ghost” by Cynthia Varady.
• “Skeptical Augury” by Evan Nichols.
• “Taking Refuge” by David Barbur.
• “All the Way Gone” by David Kerns.

“The Gifts We Keep” by Katie Grindeland, “Iditarod Nights” by Cindy Hiday, “Finding the Vein” by Jennifer Hanlon Wilde and “Court of Venom” by Kristin Burchell were printed by Ooligan Press.