Library Solutions
These solutions demonstrate how Ultimate Library are able to break requirements down into specific sections, and allows for each library implemented to be finely tuned to the customer's wishes; the style of property, location and customer demographics.
The Ultimate Library
These form the core of the collection and operate as the main lending library for the location, possibly in a dedicated reading room, media centre or premium lounge in you property. They contain a hand picked selection of titles from each of our core categories, with a healthy balance of contemporary and classic fiction, stylish illustrated titles and reference books that can answer that burning question our libraries have a great balance of books.
Solutions for Suites
Designed to offer a choice of both beautiful coffee table books to browse through and a hand-picked reading shelf for those moments when you just need something before you drift off, our Reading Shelf really highlights Ultimate Library's ability to choose the absolute best books to read and more importantly those titles which offer a greater sense of place.
The Executive Shelf
Designed with business travelers in mind this offers a selection of the very best business reference titles, the most up-to-date zeitgeist picks from the worlds of economics, politics and the global agenda and a selection of culturally relevant books that give the busy executive a helping hand in a foreign city.
Bespoke Publishing
We are able to quickly produce exclusive published titles ranging from very high-quality 'moleskine-style' notebooks created to include your branding, through abridged versions of popular recent titles and even books created with content and production to your specification.
The Book Exchange
This section of our library package allows for some organic growth of the initial stock. The paperbacks operate on an exchange basis, one-in-one-out and over time will develop into a diverse range which Ultimate Library will top-up in our seasonal refresh to keep the titles fresh and relevant. The Book Exchange is an orderly system for managing those books left behind by previous guests.
Film Libraries
We have found that it is difficult to source a high quality film selection which offers both competitive prices and the best titles from World Cinema, Documentaries, Indie successes and modern Hollywood blockbusters. We are able to offer a comprehensive service which allows you to control exactly what content and precisely the style of film library you feel would work for you. All libraries come complete with film guides and marketing media.
Signature Titles
We have found that the most arresting of all our library implementations has been the Signature Title. Designed to complement your reception or lobby area and possibly for inclusion in your 'King' or 'Presidential' Suite these XXL format titles have enormous visual impact and the ability to attract very high resale numbers. They are also a rare and valuable asset whose value soars over time.
Ancillary services
In addition we offer a range of bespoke services to tailor your book offer to the needs of your customers and make the system of day to day management and re-supply both simple and easy to manage. Each book can be supplied 'shelf ready' with a personalized bookplate and laminated cover; we provide full operations manuals, a library display and merchandising kit, marketing copy for the guest services guide and a host of other services.
Libraries
The core collection
A library collection to educate, inspire and entertain. The total linear bookshelf space at the core of your new library could be anything from 5 to 35 metres. We recommend that this space is filled with a balance of the latest hardcover and some backlist titles drawn from our simple categories which are listed in the extended subject profile attached. We will select mostly 2007/8/9 titles and blend this with both classic fiction and some older titles (in our experience it is better to get a balance across the best of recent publishing seasons and to create a lived-in feeling from day one, ensuring that your customers are instantly at home with your book selection noticing titles they may already know and spotting others that they might have recently seen advertised or reviewed).
While book prices vary enormously from book to book (hardbacks range from £12.99 - £27.50), we aggregate prices to give you a good average price per copy, and although it seems perhaps a little vulgar to price by the metre we find this is the best way to get to a suitable indication of budget without getting too tied down in individual title selection at this stage.
As a guideline, 15 metres shelf space would require roughly 540 hardcover titles from across our key title categories.
Our Illustrated Collection is a selection of illustrated coffee-table books to complement the reading library. The books are selected according to the hotel's location and type of client. They are usually displayed on tables in public spaces and the lobby to create a home-from-home feel. We work with you to identify and select books on your chosen themes but we also have pre-prepared lists under subject headings.
Library operation kit
Each library comes with appropriate sign blocks, bookends, display book holders, stickers and bookplates. This enables you to operate your new facility out-of-the-box.
The categories that we like to draw from and organise our selections into are:
Sense of Place
- Travel writing (regional travellers' tales), Regional history
- Local writers, Fiction set in the area; that captures spirit of place
- Regional culture, Spirituality
- Regional niche subjects - the Beach, the Sea, Diving, Cities, Hotels
- Anthropology, nature (animals)
Adventure
- Books to stretch the mind (health, wellbeing)
- Books on creativity, Philosophy, Psychology
- Spirituality
- Traveller's tales
Style
- Film and Media, Music
- Art, Architecture
- Style, Sense and Self (inc fashion and design)
- Singular Obsessions & Indulgences (Chocolate, honey, perfume, shoes)
- Food & Wine
- Literature (inc poetry & Major Literary Prize-winners)
Perspective
- Biography (Lives & Letters)
- World history, Military history, Social History
- Everyman classics
- Ecology, Climate Change and Conservation
- Science & Nature, the Sky at Night
- Reference
Escape
- Crime, Thrillers & Good Escapist Novels
- The best of Recent, Contemporary Fiction, Reading Group staples
- Upmarket Rom-com, Sex & Shopping
Purpose
- Business (Global Business Agenda, Business Skills) (FT Prize Winners)
- Politics
- World Agenda / Current Affairs (Globalisation, Energy, BRICS)
Please find below some of the bespoke and sample lists that we have created either to highlight a particular subject area, a region or to offer an insight on a more general topic.
- The Ultimate Spa Collection (PDF, 296kb)
- New & Notable Environmental Titles (including the best 'eco' DVD documentaries) (PDF, 544kb)
- The Best Current European Language Titles (PDF, 548kb)
- Ultimate Library Sample 'Bedside Shelf' (PDF, 564kb)
- A Greater Sense of Thailand (PDF, 1.5MB)
- A Greater Sense of India (PDF, 656kb)
- A Greater Sense of Arabia (PDF, 460kb)
For a more extensive list please see our book-map or visit www.readwhatwhere.com, our sister site offering bespoke booklists for regional reading which give you a greater sense of place.
Executive shelf
The Executive Shelf is designed to supply a hand-picked reading and reference library that anticipates guest needs and addresses your Executive Floor ethos of 'relax and work at your own pace'. We have selected books that set the business agenda (but you never got around to reading); books to stretch the mind and develop fresh perspectives, books to solve tomorrow's problems today. Books that inform, educate and give a Sense of Place to make your visit memorable. Executive Shelf is delivered on a simple out-of-the-box, contract-based service.
Book Selection
We have categorised the books under three simple business shelves and one more general heading:
Shelf Awareness - The latest business books that are defining the business agenda and - eg Blink, Malcolm Gladwell, The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman, Freakonomics, Stephen Levitt, Capstone's Ultimate Business Library. And all the business classics such as In Search of Excellence, Who Moved My Cheese?.
Shelf Improvement - fresh, inspiring ideas for recharging the mind and body - books that address a holistic personal & business agenda including health, work life balance, career management, relationships - the Infinite Ideas list of books of instantly applicable brilliant ideas.
Shelf Essentials - practical books that inform with fast facts, ideas, tools and tips that can be employed for instant results. Includes business plans, Economist statistics, managing meetings.
Sense of Place - travel writing, books on the region, novels set locally that capture the spirit of the place. The large format illustrated titles will bring the city alive instantly.
Where possible all editions are hardcover and current, meeting your aspiration for 'luxurious, contemporary, refined'. Our intention is that the Executive Shelf becomes a statement of intent and selling point for the Executive Floor. See below for an example title list.
Sample Opening Collection Stocklist
The titles below have a total estimated shelf length of 2 metres.
Suite solutions
A new service for upgrading residence amenities with books to educate, entertain and inspire and create a new retail opportunity
Features of the amenity
- The right illustrated books make a real statement of quality and intent
- Accessible - easy to browse, and no language barriers
- Gives added information on the city and specific aspects of local colour (for example art galleries, the historical and architectural background, local style and design).
- Focused on art and culture particularly relevant to the city -all designed to deliver a better feel for the city and it's history.
- Developed to follow themes tied into the hotel's design & history
- We suggest 3-5 books which could include a highly illustrated guidebook
- Books available for local browsing in suites and for sale in the gift shops
Benefits to the reader
- Brings the City alive in a tactile and inspiring way
- Focused - it highlights specific features and puts key aspects of local culture in context and hopefully, this will lead you to appreciate/enjoy the experience more.
- Great for short visits when visitors only have time to see a handful of things but can experience the wider city from the comfort of their suite
- Books make a thoughtful and lasting souvenir of a city - a great substitute for poorly executed photographs too.
- "A room without books is like a body without a soul" - Cicero
Execution
Ultimate Library will advise on book selection. Initial copies of books for all suites will be supplied processed (stickered and if necessary, laminated). The new amenity will come with a short introductory guidelines to its features and to integrate it into current room maintenance practices. Further retail stock will be supplied for the boutique on a sale or return basis.
Payback
We have illustrated here a simple financial payback model. This is based on a property with 20 suites in which we have placed 3 books each with a retail cost of £29.99, and we have assumed a modest rate of sale of one book per suite per week. This ignores the reality that guests from other rooms will also have access to the boutique to buy.
However perhaps the bigger payback comes from the fact that you are able to deliver a better guest experience through the introduction of a high quality product that is effectively free after the first 2 months of ownership.
Larger residences / suites
We recommend that for your largest residences/suites/villas you have 2/3 illustrated books placed in them. Typical themes might include a book on regional style, your own Spa title and a book on The (local) Natural Environment. We laminate these covers in advance to protect them. These titles can also be made available for sale through your boutique or gift shop (see Ancilliary services for more details).
Small personal villa libraries of 3-5 books can be themed to your choice. These might include titles from leading series (Penguin Celebrations), regional authors, books set in hotels or a mix. We have many local interest and category themed lists already and can quickly and easily provide you with a bespoke personal library perfectly suited to each of your properties.
Signature residence / suite
If you have a separate contained multi-room complex (aka a presidential suite) we would recommend including roughly 5 illustrated books and a small tailored library shelf. The reading shelf would be a special selection designed to be dipped into overnight (fast facts, Economist statistics, short stories written in hotels).
Room books
Some customers ask us to find one atmospheric title for each room (similar to the Gideon bible but much more relevant). This might be themed - an eco-classic, Inconvenient Truth, a spa book - or a regional classic - Robinson Crusoe for islands, Across the Empty Quarter in Arabia, etc.
Bespoke publishing
Espresso Books Imprint
Our Espresso Books imprint specialises in sourcing and producing bespoke editions. We suggest using these short books to address Personal Wellbeing, Sense of Place and Innovation. The areas for deploying books are as VIP gifts for long stayers, loyal customers and suppliers (travel agents) and at key holiday times of the year like Christmas or New Year; As turndown gifts for premium customers. And in rooms as high quality reading material (perhaps instead of magazines which tend to evaporate too quickly). The latter can also be sold through the mini-bar system or made available via your boutique.
Customer solutions
Recently we worked with Penguin books to produce an espresso books version of Tom Hodgkinson's bestselling title How To Be Idle. It was reformatted, slightly abridged and published as a pillow gift for guests with great success.
We can also produce completely custom-published books from to your specfications, designed around your content and created from the start in partnership with you. For an example of what we can do please see this case study. (doc, 132kb)
We are also able to place your logo (or logos) on the spine or the front of any title that you'd like. This is ideal for a gift book or a guide book that you'd like to include in your guest welcome pack.
Each category can be tailored to meet your target price-point and costs vary enormously according to the level of customization, extent and volume. Please ask for more details or visit espressobooks.co.uk for further details.
The book exchange
Many hotels operate an informal book swap system with guests. Indeed in some hotels this is the only source of books. But in our experience this collection quickly dumbs down to a selection that would not disgrace a street market stall. We believe there is a better way to manage this and turn a headache into a valuable guest amenity with an important role within the library.
The Book Exchange is a dedicated space in the library to house books left behind by former guests and for current guests to exchange their old books. With its own signage and simple explanation of the way the system operates the Book Exchange is a source of books to read on the next leg of the holiday or the flight home. We recommend that the collection is seeded with a selection of budget-priced paperbacks to add depth and quality to the selection; that once seeded guests will begin to add their orphan titles.
It is however important to prune this collection of the most worn titles to avoid the area becoming run down.
The benefits of this approach are reduced shrinkage from the main library; an affordable, yet high quality amenity for guests, which will grow and evolve over time with a light touch from the library champion.
Ultimate Library will supply you with a book exchange starter pack consisting of 50-100 of the best modern and classic paperback titles along with regionally specific fiction at budget prices, marketing copy for your guest directory and signage that will clearly explain how the book exchange operates.
The Ultimate Film library
Our Ultimate film library has been created with your guests' requirements 
very much in mind. It is a broad and exciting range of the very best that cinema has to offer, incorporating a mix of contemporary and classic films, world cinema and documentaries designed to appeal to the discerning traveller irrespective of his or her age. Individual modules have been compiled to compliment the standard fare your guest might have experienced on the plane across. It is, ultimately, a suggested list and you may wish to tailor it with your own selections under the suggested headings. The question of regional DVD compatibility is best solved through the selection of non-region specific hardware, although we are able to cater for this.
Not just replicating the standard in-flight film selections, we have creative and well thought out selections to offer your guests. Working with critics and other experts we tailor special film collections for your library. As part of your film collection we supply marketing copy for your guest directory, we also provide an Empire Film Guide packed with critical reviews and other details for reference
Sample Film Collections
- Cinema Paradiso - Our selection of the very best and most enthralling modern world cinema titles, covering arthouse, classic and more mainstream films.
- Foreign Oscar Winners - The last 40 years of Oscar winning foreign language films, from Il Postino to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
- Documentaries - An up to the minute list of engrossing documentaries from all around the world. From the enduring classic titles to the most up-to-date in depth studies.
- Bespoke Country Collection - Bali - A bespoke list of the very best films and documentaries about Bali and the surrounding area.
As with the book selection we would recommend that a small budget of about 15% of original purchase total is set aside for refreshing the offer on a seasonal basis.
Three things to think about:
Do we have the right equipment? - We suggest installing multi-region DVD players as this gives you the greatest range of titles to choose from.
Do we need a broadcast license? - You do not need a broadcast license with a DVD library from which guests can borrow titles for their own enjoyment.
What language are the films in? - Most modern films come in English and have at least three different subtitle languages. We can of course tailor your selection to guarantee that the languages provided closely match your guest profile.
Why not sign up to our film newsletter? Offering regularly updated bespoke film lists and themed title collections.
Signature titles
If you have the space and want to make a really big statement, you might consider having one giant XXL edition 'signature title' such as the Giant Earth from the Air or Leni Reifenstahl limited editions. We've found that of all our titles placed in hotels these not only create the biggest impact but also generate the most frequent enquiries for purchase.
Although a big investment, these limited editions almost always soar in value (Peter Beard, The Collectors Edition installed in a London location has climbed in value from £1,500 to over £6,000 within 18 months). But the real payback comes through strong customer engagement and interaction. "Almost all our guests stop and browse our XXL edition of Earth From the Air. It is also a good talking point to build rapport between staff and guests" (Head of Guest Relations Westin Dubai).
XXL editions cover a wide range of subjects, for a small sample selection please see below.
Peter Beard
A stunning journey into the world of Peter Beard
"This extravagant and magnificent book is a work of art in itself." (L'EXPRESS, Paris)
Photographer, collector, diarist, and writer of books Peter Beard has fashioned his life into a work of art; the illustrated diaries he kept from a young age evolved into a serious career as an artist and earned him a central position in the international art world. He was painted by Francis Bacon, painted on by Salvador Dali, and made diaries with Andy Warhol; he toured with Truman Capote and the Rolling Stones, created books with Jacqueline Onassis and Mick Jagger - all of whom are brought to life, literally and figuratively, in his work. As a fashion photographer, he took Vogue stars like Veruschka to Africa and brought new ones - most notably Iman - back to the U.S. with him.
His love affair with natural history and wildlife, which informs most of his work, began when he was a teenager. He had read the books of Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) and after spending time in Kenya and befriending the author, bought a piece of land near hers. It was the early 1960s and the big game hunters led safaris, with all the colonial elements Beard had read about in Out of Africa characterizing the open life and landscape, but the times were changing. Beard witnessed the dawn of Kenya's population explosion, which challenged finite resources and stressed animal populations - including the starving elephants of Tsavo, dying by the tens of thousands in a wasteland of eaten trees. So he documented what he saw - with diaries, photographs, and collages. He went against the wind in publishing unique and sometimes shocking books of these works. The corpses were laid bare; the facts were carefully written down, sometimes in type, often by hand, occasionally with blood.
Walton Ford: Pancha Tantra
Walton's world
The beautifully savage beasts and birds of Walton Ford
Walton Ford's life-sized watercolors of animals could be mistaken for 19th-century natural-science illustrations or British colonial paintings. Except they're not. Something strange and usually sinister is happening in each of Ford's works, whether it's a turkey crushing a small parrot with its claw, a collection of monkeys wreaking havoc on a formally set dinner table, or a buffalo surrounded by a pack of bloodied white wolves… in the middle of a proper French garden. Executed with the deft skill of a natural-history artist, Ford's works vibrate with an intensity of uncanny familiarity; they are both reassuring in style and disturbing in content. With titles like Au Revoir Zaire, Dirty Dick Burton's Aide de Camp, and Space Monkey, his paintings not only blur the lines between human and animal history, but also open the doors to a world of real-life fantasy, dreams, and nightmares.
For this hand-crafted, limited-edition volume, Ford's paintings have been color-separated and reproduced in Pan4C, the finest reproduction technique available today, providing unequalled intensity and color range. The book includes 12 horizontal and 4 vertical foldouts, along with dozens of details, which present the work at a scale that practically allows the viewer to enter the ancient and peopled landscapes, feel the brush of a bird's feathers against flesh, and experience the hot breath of a wild cat about to go for the jugular.
Collected together for the first ever in-depth exploration of Walton Ford's œuvre, Ford's bestiary takes its name from one of the texts he frequently cites in his work: The Pancha Tantra, the ancient Indian book of animal folktales collected from the 3rd to 5th centuries B.C. that is considered to be the precursor to Aesop's Fables. Stories derived from many of the texts that served as the germinal seed for these paintings fill the book's appendix; and an original essay by New Yorker staff writer Bill Buford substantiates the notion that this contemporary artist is more than just one to watch, but one who will stand the test of time. Available in an Art and a Collector's Edition, Walton Ford: Pancha Tantra is limited to a total of 1,600 copies, signed by the artist and presented in a custom clamshell box.
Collector's Edition
(No. 101-1,600)
- Limited to 1,500 individually numbered copies, each signed by Walton Ford
- Printed on archival-quality paper
- Finished in book cloth with a leather spine and corners with gold embossing
- Packaged in a clamshell box covered in Luxor book cloth
Both editions feature a complete professional biography as well as an appendix with substantial excerpts from the textual sources for the paintings, from Vietnamese folktales and the letters of Benjamin Franklin to the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini and John James Audubon's Ornithological Biography.
About the artist:
Walton Ford, born 1960 in Larchmont, NY, graduated in filmmaking from RISD, but switched to large-scale watercolor painting. His work has been widely exhibited, including shows at the Whitney and Brooklyn museums. He lives and works in Massachusetts.