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This weekend, the National Book Critics Circle announced the finalists for its books wards for publishing 2011 and—not to bury the lede—including Dubravka Ugresic’s Karaoke Culture as one of the five finalists in the Criticism category.
This is the first major book award that one of titles has been nominated for (not counting the BTBA), and we’re extremely psyched. I’ve been on and on and on about this book for the past year, which makes this news just that much sweeter. To celebrate this honor, we’re selling copies of Karaoke Culture through our website for the special price of $9.99.
OR, if you’d rather become an Open Letter supporter and receive all of our fantastic books, you can buy a subscription and we’ll throw in a copy of Karaoke Culture for free.
Going back to the NBCCs, I have to say, the Criticism category is the very definition of LOADED. Check out this list of finalists:
- David Bellos, Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything (Faber & Faber)
- Geoff Dyer, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition: Selected Essays and Reviews (Graywolf)
- Jonathan Lethem, The Ecstasy of Influence (Doubleday)
- Dubravka Ugresic, Karaoke Culture (Open Letter) (Translated by David Williams, Ellen Elias-Bursac, and Celia Hawkesworth)
- Ellen Willis, Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music (University of Minnesota Press)
Bellos, Lethem, Ugresic, AND Dyer?!?!? Damn. That’s all I can say.
By contrast, the other categories—all of which contain a few truly excellent books—seem tame. You can read the full press release and list of all finalists by clicking here. And here are my picks for which titles should win in the various categories:
Fiction:
- Teju Cole, Open City (Random House)
Nonfiction:
- James Gleick, The Information (Pantheon)
Autobiography:
- Deb Olin Unferth, Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War (Henry Holt)
Biography:
- Mary Gabriel, Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of the Revolution (Little, Brown)
Poetry:
- Forrest Gander, Core Samples from the World (New Directions)
Congrats to everyone, and special congrats to Dubravka Ugresic, David Williams, Ellen Elias-Bursac, and Celia Hawkesworth!
As some of you know I am currently in the process of co-writing a book for Candlewick about the true stories that lurk behind your favorite children’s books and their creators. My two co-authors (Jules Danielson from Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast and Peter Sieruta from Collecting Children’s Books) and I have been doing painstaking research over the year, determining what tales are true, which ones are false, and which ones are true but we can’t use them until certain parties quit this sweet green earth for the choir invisible.
In the course of my most recent research I decided I wanted to get at the truth behind a story that has circulated amongst the children’s literary enthusiasts for a number of years but that I’ve never seen recorded for posterity. Mainly: Did the editor of School Library Journal really threaten to hit the editor of Horn Book Magazine over the head with a chair?
Short Answer: Yes.
Long Answer: Yes, but she had a sense of humor about it.
You see, if you’re ever able to get your grubby little paws on Robert Bator’s Signposts to Criticism of Children’s Literature (and full credit to Peter for discovering it in the first place) you can see the epistolary exchange between two editorial heavyweights, Lillian N. Gerhardt (the chair-er) and Ethel Heins (the chair-ee). Essentially what it boils down to is that Lillian wrote an editorial in SLJ about how children’s books have failed to become part of the mainstream of American literature. Heins wrote her own editorial disagreeing, and it just sort of got more and more heated from there until Gerhardt ended up finishing off one piece with, “On second thought, I may fly up to Boston and hit you over the head with a chair after all.” This, I should note, after mentioning earlier that when she was a child it was her preferred method of convincing her Kindergarten playmates that she was correct. She notes that it did often get her in trouble.
Those were the days, eh? When strong personalities could invoke World Wide Wrestling Federation techniques (nowadays it’s referred to as the Steel Chair) in the heat of their passion about books.
Let’s stop a moment, though, and see whether or not Gerhardt’s argument bears any significant merit today. Essentially she was arguing that children’s books (and she was lumping YA in there since this was 1974 and all) are influenced by adult literature but it never goes the other way around. Moreover, when children’s books do adapt to some cool adult technique (episodic novels, first-person narration, unresolved plots, etc.) it’s 20 years after adult literature has already blazed a path. “The Mainstreamers would be hard pressed to name one, let alone two, children’s books that ever turned around writing for adults.”
FYI: We won’t get into the whole is-Catcher-In-the-Rye-for-teens-or-adults debate since that’s an entirely different post right there.
When Heins responded to Gerhardt she pointed out that it was always the goal of folks like Anne Carroll Moore and Bertha Mahony Miller to tie in children’s books to the general literature at large. After all, they were making a case for tending them in the first place. But Heins concluded that the adult novel in the 20th century was relatively weak, hence authors like Isaac Bashevis Singer making their way over to the children’s side of things.
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By:
Christine Onorati,
on 12/15/2007
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By:
Jenny Turner,
on 5/31/2007
Blog:
Quake: Shakin' up Young Readers
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Marvelous Marketing Maneuvers for Mild-Mannered Authors:
So you want to be Nora Roberts (Pt. 4)
© Karen L. Syed
4. MySpace. You're never too old or too normal for MySpace. I am constantly hearing that MySpace is for teenagers and perverts. Who cares.
Let's start with the teens. These are the audience we need to be targeting for building a long-term reader/author relationship. They are the consumers of the future, and in many cases, they are the consumers of the now. Some teens I know have more cash on hand than I have had for decades. Few of them have bills to pay. Their money is theirs to spend. So why, as an author wouldn't you want to find a way to bring them into your reader base and nurture them? If you hook them young, you stand a considerably better chance of keeping them as you grow your career.
The declining numbers of teens graduating with well below acceptable reading skills are staggering. Most teens are not taking advantage of the opportunities to escape to exciting places and to be entertained while learning. Okay, so you write adult fiction. What's stopping you from using your adult fiction to educate the parents on how important it is to get their kids enjoying the written word? But I digress.
MySpace is not just about the teens. Sure, they are there, find something to put on your space to get them interested in you as an author. Read a young adult book each month and post your review in a "Teen Section" on your MySpace. The parents will thank you and then they might actually buy your books for themselves. You are also serving another purpose by encouraging families to read together. Not sure what to read? Ask teens for their tips on what to read. MySpace is a place to hook the kids and the parents into a world that has endless potential.
Now let's talk about the perverts. Someone recently said to me, I don't want to put my romance on MySpace because there are children in my book and I don't want the perverts getting any ideas. Again, who cares! You are not the moral police. You cannot stop anyone with less than pure motives from getting their hands on your books. The same perverts on MySpace are shopping in bookstores. You simply cannot worry about it. You will go insane. The bottom line is that you want EVERYONE to buy your book. What they do with it after they pay for it is not your problem or business. Bottom line is, most perverts have jobs and money to spend on books.
Enough preaching. How can MySpace really work for you? Anyone know how many people are on MySpace? A LOT! Did I mention it is FREE. You don't have to pay for it. You go in, set up an account, and promote to your hearts content. If someone is not interested, they will ignore your posts or delete you from their friend list. Big deal. There are plenty more to replace them.
What do you put on MySpace?
--Your cover
--You bio
--Your book blurb
--Your first chapter (or an excerpt)
--Links to you other web sites
--BUY NOW BUTTONS (this is a MUST)
If you take one hour to set up your MySpace and then you spend 15 minutes every other day increasing your friend base, you are reaching thousands of people. You can post bulletins within MySpace that go to all kinds of people, and that is marketing. Review announcements, events, new releases, awards, or all manner of things. You can even run contests. Speaking of events, MySpace has a calendar section where you can list your events and people you don't even know can see them and maybe want to meet you.
Use the Blog section in MySpace to post your articles, news, discussion ideas, and book reviews. This is also a great networking tool. Don't worry about whether anyone is reading it, someone is and maybe they'll tell a friend, who will tell a friend, and you might sell a book!
You don't have to spend a lot of time on MySpace. Put it up, change it once a month or when something happens, and let it do the work for you. But keep in mind, the more you do put into the more you stand to gain.
It's all about FREE and if you set it up and you aren’t careful, you might actually SELL SOME BOOKS!
Pt. 5 Coming Soon!
By:
Jenny Turner,
on 5/13/2007
Blog:
Quake: Shakin' up Young Readers
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Marvelous Marketing Maneuvers for Mild-Mannered Authors:
So you want to be Nora Roberts (Pt. 3)
© Karen L. Syed
3. The Buddy System! You remember, in elementary school when you went on field trips you always had to pick a buddy to do everything with. You were not to go anywhere, including the bathroom, without your buddy. Think of marketing as a field trip for writers. A giant adventure that could get a little scary and if you aren't careful YOU COULD GET LOST!
What is the biggest obstacle writers have with marketing? Okay, you can pick two, I know you will. Time and money. I know, I've been there. Consider this. You are on your own and you have to do a postcard mailing. You have a budget for 500 post cards, you have to decide where to send them. Now, let's say you live in Chicago. But you've already done a mailing in Chicago and sold very few books. Well, if you are paying attention you know that you need to do several more mailings to the same people to get them to pay attention. And, no, it is NOT a waste of money. Do the research, it takes multiple points of marketing to make an impression. So what do you do? Consider why they didn't buy the first time.
Too busy to pay attention
Too tired to pay attention
No immediate recognition of your name or title.
No point of credible reference.
There could be any number of reasons. Now, how do you overcome those obstacles? And sales is all about overcoming obstacles. Let's see, you could do another mailing. What will this accomplish?
You might catch them at a better time.
They might have just woken from a nap and be full of energy.
They remember seeing something with your name on it a month ago.
You have added a buddy and a little bit of a credible reference.
How does this buddy system work, you ask? Well, I'll tell you. You find another author who lives in another state. Not a neighbor. Your secondary goal here is to increase your target audience. So if you live in Chicago, find a buddy in San Francisco. You pool your budgets, design a post card that promotes both your books (with a catchy tag line tying them together), and each of you mail out half to your individual mailing lists.
This offers a repeat of the original information and some new and exciting additions (your buddy). You double your chances of getting their attention and increasing your national exposure. Don't be one of those authors who is satisfied with selling books to the 147 people closest to them. You want to reach the masses. The bigger your market, the bigger your potential for sales, and what do sales mean? ROYALTIES and NEW CONTRACTS! Don't be satisfied with reaching whoever you can, make a concentrated effort to reach everyone. Oh, I just had a wonderful thought. What if you had two buddies? You in Chicago, one in San Francisco, and another in…Tampa! Wow! You could triple your market and cut your costs in thirds.
Oh wait, you're worried about diluting your chances by offering two other books. Hmm, let's think about this one. You started with no possibility of selling in San Francisco or Tampa because you had no connection, but now you have a connection to someone there and you actually have a chance at selling books in that market. No chance vs. any chance. Sounds like another no-brainer to me.
So, before you click to another screen, consider selling 3 books vs. selling 0 books at a third of the cost. The best part about the buddy system is you get to save money and increase your marketing potential. And there are no limits to the number of buddies you can have. You simply have to get off your duff, do the networking, and SELL THOSE BOOKS!
Pt. 4 Coming Soon!
The current huge wave of paranormal romance books in adult SFF is surely at least in part a response to the success of Twilight! But do we count subject matter, or are you speaking more about style? Are you focusing on influence or, as your last question indicates, “appreciation”?
Um, what was the question exactly? Because if you’re asking if the adult fiction crowd still considers children’s books somehow inferior in the sense of being easier to write, cutesy, or even twee, I would say the prejudice is still there. Though I suppose maybe some YA titles are being exempted from that attitude, which is why the phrase “crossover appeal” is the new marketing rallying cry for teen fiction.
As for the chair-er’s point about children’s lit being removed from the mainstream of American literature, I think most of the population is more familiar with children’s lit, at least in broad strokes, today than they were when she wrote that. The Harry Potter phenomenon helped, and so do movies of books like Holes. Plus a lot of parents seem to educate themselves a bit more about what their kids are reading or might like to read in our nice new century, where in days gone by it was often “drop them off at the library, duty done.”
But really, the most important aspect of this post is editors threatening to bash other editors with chairs. Thanks for the story; now I want your book!
Two footnotes, Betsy: Children’s books and the National Book Award have a complicated history; they’ve been ignored, allowed, disallowed, and allowed since the early 70s. LNG was talking about their disallowance in 1974. And her statement about the National Book Critic’s Circle referred to an anthology the organization was compiling, not a prize.
To the larger point: while the growth of YA for older readers (and the crossover appeal of Rowling and Pullman and the like) has lead to a *commercial* blend of adults and children’s books and reading, Lillian and Ethel were fighting about literary fiction and whether or not “serious” books for children had an impact on (or equivalence with) “serious” books for adults. I think Lillian was right then that they did not; I think she’s still essentially right even though now fewer people care about literary fiction than used to. But let’s give Ethel credit, too: she and her husband (and fellow Horn Book editor) Paul played a great part in making grownups take children’s books more seriously than they did, and Ethel was right to call out Lillian for assuming adult critics ignored children’s books for a reason more lofty than prejudice.
I love that Roger spoke up about this, because Horn Book Magazine takes children’s book seriously as literature.
“Mainstream”? Well, there are still places where books are reviewed that ignore children’s books. I tend to ignore such places, myself.
I know that the rise of book bloggers doesn’t necessarily say a single thing about “serious criticism,” but I do love that online there’s a solid community that takes children’s books seriously and does discuss them as literature. Since this has happened, I know that I have much less of a feeling that my interest in children’s books is a quirky interest that few adults share.
Good point on the anthology, Roger. I’m glad it lead to my discovery of the current rules, but it’s a huge distinction that I should have been clearer about. Reading through the letters, I go back and forth on the two points of view. They’re such odd letters to read since Lillian and Ethel often seem to be talking about two entirely different things. I also can’t help but wonder if Lillian had to restrain herself from responding to Ethel’s last editorial, since in a sense it gave Ms. Heins the last word.
If, as you say, “serious” books are discussed less in our current age, might that not give YA and children’s books the potential to influence the whole of “serious” literary fiction? And yet, as you and Lillian say, they have not. Or am I missing something larger here?
Bets, I don’t get why they would. It’s not like children’s and YA books are MORE serious than adult books. What’s interesting to me is that the era when LNG and ELH were sparring brought us some truly literary (read: difficult) books for kids that would not, I think, be published today. Books like Garner’s Stone Book or Konigsburg’s (George). Excepting some writers at the upper end of YA (M.T. Anderson, Adam Rapp come to mind), children’s literature is in a stylistically conservative time (he said, wildly generalizing).
I do see an appreciation for YA and children’s books, but largely for their economic successes rather than their quality or “seriousness”. I feel like there have been so many authors crossing over from adult to ya/children’s lately because the belief is that these books are less difficult to produce and more profitable. But I know this is an prejudice of mine, as a former bookseller who dreaded opening boxes of the latest adult author’s YA or children’s title that was guaranteed to be a smash before it even hit the floor, at least according to the book jacket.
So I do think mainstream media is aware of YA and children’s lit moreso now than ever, but whether it is being viewed as “serious” literature or whether or not juvenile literature is influencing adult literature, I can’t really say. We might need a year or so yet to see if an illustrated style like Wimpy Kid or even (fingers crossed) “Hugo Cabret” could take hold in the adult world.
A thought I had– is adult literary fiction actually all that influential or groundbreaking either? I don’t know how much it can claim that distinction anyway, let alone say that children’s lit is even less so. Anybody who wants to can claim some titles that are really influential, and put down titles on the other side for being nothing new after all, and the people on the other side can turn around and ask what the FIRST side has actually done that’s truly groundbreaking or influential lately.
I think young people’s lit has an edge with books that combine words and pictures, though, flat-out.
Also, there’s the unmeasurable influence of ALL THE BOOKS those authors of adult literary fiction read IN THEIR FORMATIVE YEARS, most of which were most likely, hmm, children’s literature….