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Now that the Book Bloggers Appreciation Week long-list nominees have been announced, I want to thank the organizers of this event and the cast of nominators for placing Beth Kephart Books into consideration for best Published Author Blog alongside the blogs of Maggie Stiefvater, Veronica Roth, and Beth Revis. I am honored to share this platform with them.  I also celebrate those who have been nominated in categories ranging from Best Audiobook Blog and Classics Book Blog to Kidlit Book Blog, Historical Fiction Book Blog, Literary Fiction Book Blog, and Young Adult Book Blog, among others. I encourage you all to take a look at the lists and to visit those blogs to which you have not already traveled.

Those bright lights who organize this event do it for no other reason than to celebrate those who are passionate about reading and books.  Where, I ask you, would we be without them?

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I think of the time (and money) that book bloggers pour into their craft—all that reading, posting, commenting, all that mailing and sorting, all those events—and I ask myself: How did this come to be? And, Where would I be without book bloggers?

For truly: Where would I be? I am a writer of literary books—no commercial giant, no Personality, not the glam gal on the limo tour. I care—enormously—about the books that I write. I want them to find their right readerly homes. I know that, without readers, I do not have a writing future. But I have little control over the fate of my books. They are released into the world, and I wait.

It’s the angels with wings who move in after that—angels, by which I mean book bloggers. Those souls whom I have never met, who live in places I have never seen, who take an interest. On the release date of Nothing but Ghosts, this past June, I woke to a virtual book launch party that had been engineered by no other than My Friend Amy and Presenting Lenore. I had not seen it coming. I could not believe my eyes. I told everyone—for weeks afterward—that something extraordinary had happened. “They threw me a party,” I kept telling friends. “They believed in this book, and in me.” They had thrown open the doors to their own community, and invited me in, to stay. I have met extraordinary bloggers in the aftermath of that party. I have found, within myself, a deeper faith in the kinds of books that I try to write—literary books that cross genre borders, that will live or die solely on the recommendations of readers, readers who also happen to be book bloggers.

I am getting teary-eyed writing this. I am thinking about all those book bloggers who have come into my life since I myself started blogging two years ago—the stories they’ve told me about themselves, the books they’ve insisted that I read, the love that they have given, so freely, to me. I would be not be who I am without these souls. That’s a fact, firm and unyielding.

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Those of you who have been following Book Blogger Appreciation Week know just how much effort its creator and myriad (tireless) support persons have put into announcing, promoting, supporting, and delivering the 2009 BBAW Awards Shortlists, which have been announced today (because these good souls never rest, not even on Labor Day). More than 1,000 blogs have been sorted through, screened, and considered. Now that the shortlists are up, it's up to the rest of us to go visit those blogs that may be new to us, and to vote for the winners.

I've been quite lucky this year and have been shortlisted—along with Neil Gaiman's Journal, Maureen Johnson Blog, Meg's Diary, and Scobberlotch—in the Best Published Author Blog category. Whomever thought to include me, whomever judged my work, I embrace you with a very large thank you. I don't believe my name has ever before been in the same sentence with these fine writers, and it's a privilege.

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