Category Archives: audience

October 05, 2011   Miriam   advice, audience, authors, Miriam, opinion  
6

“If it be not now, yet it will come…”

We all know that the last part of that quote is “the readiness is all.”   Words to live by, no?  So, why is everyone in such a hurry?

Specifically, I’m talking about the hurry to get a half-baked manuscript in front of an agent, the hurry to start the next book when you’re still writing the first one (and, by the way, you have a looming deadline for that first one), the hurry to get a new contract before the current book has been published, the hurry to get all of your writing published at once (something currently made much more possible through electronic means), etc.  We’re all in too much of a hurry.  We cut corners like we cut off other drivers—because we have to get somewhere five minutes ago before someone else beats us there.  We’re so obsessed with being done that we don’t do things well.

Sure, we’re in a hurry to make money and see our names up in lights and there’s nothing wrong with that (see Jim’s recent blog post on the subject of art vs. filthy lucre).  Without those incentives, we’d still be sitting around in caves eating leftover mastodon while wearing unfashionable fur coats.  But the rush to get rich and famous (or even just published) needs to be offset by a nice dose of readiness.  Your manuscript or proposal needs to be ready—edited and re-edited before even submitting to agents, polished for submission once the agent has taken you on, proofread so that most if not all “it’s” and “its” are as they should be.  You need to be ready to take on the unglamorous, thankless part of the process—writing query letters, sifting through rejections, following up patiently and courteously, starting all over again after a promising early read leads nowhere, being a savvy business person who reviews  his/her contracts and asks relevant questions of his/her agent and publisher, laying the groundwork for the platform you’ll need when you have a publisher and a publication date, and, of course, being a denizen of “the waiting place” while the publishing process unfolds with all the alacrity of a snail on downers.

So, yes, it’s a bit of a “hurry up and wait” conundrum.  On the one hand, you need the fire in the belly that gets that germ of an idea out of your head and into print.  On the other hand, making sure your work is ready for public consumption is not a process that should be rushed.  Write well, edit carefully, do your due diligence in getting published (know your audience) and then have patience with the publishing process—learn your lessons before rushing out to get the next one and the next one and the next one out there.

And, of course, readiness is a relative and somewhat intuitive term.  Seems to me that Danielle Steel’s work is ready a lot faster than Cormac McCarthy’s but that’s why there are different categories of fiction.  How about you guys?  How do you know when your work is ready?  And, do you sometimes hurry the process along in a way you know you shouldn’t?

June 22, 2011   Miriam   Amazon, audience, author events, authors, Barnes and Noble, comics, culture, favorites, guilty pleasures, independent bookstores, Miriam, retailers  
14

The price of admission

There was a little used book store around the corner from my apartment complex, when I was growing up in Miami, that was my second home.  Nerdy, latch-key kid that I was, I spent hours browsing the shelves, trying to get the owner to throw in an extra dog-eared paperback in exchange for the stack of Spanish language comic books I was trading, and generally getting high on the smell of old paper and ink.  I still have treasured editions scattered throughout my many bookcases whose provenance was that little shop.

Then, when I first got to New York, I was blown away by places like Shakespeare & Co., Brentano’s, Coliseum Books, Papyrus and that promised land for bibliophiles, The Strand.   A few years later many of my favorite haunts had gone out of business or been taken over by soulless corporate giants (you know who you are) but I never lost my love of browsing aimlessly in book stores.  These days, I still occasionally wander over to the Barnes & Noble on Union Square and spend my lunch hour in the fiction stacks on the fourth floor.

Of course, book stores have also traditionally been a place for authors to do their dog and pony show in support of their work.   Book tours are going the way of the Amazon forests but certain authors are still a huge draw (just try to get anywhere near the third floor at the aforementioned Barnes & Noble when David Sedaris is doing a reading).  Some of these events can make you fall in love with a book or its author, sometimes both.   They’re also the makings of a cheap date for grown-ups and an alternative to a $30 movie outing for young kids.  Except, it seems, no more.

Check out this  Gawker piece about the new trend of book stores charging admission to author events.  I actually understand and support independents in their efforts to get people in the door.  These are trying times for book sellers and if they are to keep their doors open in the face of the online juggernauts (you know who you are, cough, Amazon) they are going to have to figure out a way to make money.  But it does make me sad.   How many times did I walk out of a book store with a title I had no intention of buying when I went in after stumbling upon an author reading from his/her book?  I wonder if the days of the accidental book buyer are numbered as a result of these new pay-for-play tactics.

What do you all think about this new development?

March 22, 2011   John   audience, children's books, feedback, John, middle grade, opinion, YA  
29

Whatever Happened to Middle-Grade Fiction?

I had lunch with an editor yesterday, and toward the end we got to talking about the sorry state of middle-grade fiction. Both of us have been around the block long enough to remember when Harry Potter and A Series of Unfortunate Events launched, and at the time it seemed like we were entering a new golden age of middle-grade. Indeed, a number of notable MG authors and series appeared in the wake of Harry and the Baudelaires—Percy Jackson, Mysterious Benedict Society, Eragon, Cornelia Funke, Kat DiCamillo, to name a few.

But then, of course, Edward and Bella showed up, and almost overnight the party went from PG to PG-13 (if not R).

Now, children’s book authors have traditionally worked across genres and age-ranges, Judy Blume being the prime example. And it’s understandable that writers would gravitate toward YA when YA seems to be the biggest thing on the planet. But what confounds me is that how writers are focusing on YA to the exclusion of middle-grade, rather than complementing it as they did in the past—think about Judy writing Are You There God at the same time as Tiger Eyes. Hence, what passes for MG these days are either non-traditional formats like Wimpy Kid, or mass-market school stories that recall the days of Goosebumps and the Babysitters Club.

So to all you YA writers out there—how about some middle-grade? I see so many creative concepts and storylines in YA that would easily translate into middle-grade, especially in fantasy and sci-fi. The audience is there—really, I can’t think of any traditional series that commands the MG market right now—and from my informal survey of editors, it seems like they’re hungry for it, too.  All we need are the writers…

Or am I missing something here? Are there other reasons for the dearth of middle-grade? Have any of you tried MG and met resistance? I’d love to know!

October 15, 2010   DG&B   audience, international literature, Lauren  
1

Germany loves us!

By Lauren

I was heartened to read this recent piece on Deutsche Welle (via Publishers Lunch Automat) about Germany’s love affair with American fiction. It’s been my experience as rights director that Germany is the one market we can really count on to buy the books we have rights to in a wide variety of categories—the one market where we don’t tend to hear, “Well, we know it’s big everywhere, but here we just don’t buy American (fill in the blank).” It helps of course that it’s among the largest book markets in the world. It’s a nice counterpoint to a discussion we had here a while back about how American literary fiction is often too insular for everyone else to get excited about. Those interested in the ways in which books cross borders should give it a read!

October 05, 2010   DG&B   advice, audience, John, writing  
4

Who’s your audience?

by John

There was a fantastic op-ed piece by Michael Cunningham in this past Sunday’s New York Times, a must-read for anyone who wants to write. While ostensibly a piece about translation, Cunningham brilliantly articulates how writing is not an act of solo invention, and how it’s crucial not only for writers to recognize that they’re writing for an audience, but to identify specifically who that audience is as well. It’s a secret that successful genre writers know instinctively, but I’ve never seen it so neatly laid out for the general reader.

And I was particularly struck by how Cunningham improved his art through learning to write for an audience of one, namely Helen the hostess at a restaurant bar where he used to work. On first glance, it seems to go against common sense—I always assumed that even if you’re writing for a specific audience, like mystery fans or teen readers, you want to create something with broad enough appeal for all members of that audience. But then again, as Cunningham suggests, targeting a specific reader like Helen might actually create a more intimate conversation between author and reader and, hence, result in a better piece of work.

Obviously, there’s no right or wrong answer here, but again, kudos to Cunningham for framing the issue in such an elegant and accessible piece. No wonder this guy won a Pulitzer!

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