Roy Miller's Blog, page 289
January 28, 2017
LitHub Daily: January 23 – 27, 2017
The Best of the Literary Internet, Every Day
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LitHub Daily: January 27, 2017
Mariah Stovall on falling out of love with punk (and in love with lit). | Literary Hub
The anxieties of a sophomore…
The post LitHub Daily: January 23 – 27, 2017 appeared first on Art of Conversation.
Standing Up to President Trump
There never has been a president whose election has caused as much widespread alarm among so many people in all segments of the publishing industry as Donald Trump.
Many in the industry would acknowledge having something of a liberal bent, but other Republican presidents who have won the White House, while greeted with a certain amount of wariness by the publishing community, were given a grace period so that industry members could see what policy initiatives they would champion. Trump has been given no such leeway, and for good reason. From his speeches during the campaign to his appointments, to his admitted disinterest in reading books, Trump has challenged many of the core principles of publishing.
From almost the start of his run for the presidency, Trump has shown little respect for the First Amendment and free speech issues. He has suggested that people who burn the American flag should go to jail and promised to “open up” libel laws to make it easier to sue news organizations over stories that public figures (such as himself) don’t like.
No principle is more important to book publishing than freedom of speech. To help ensure that authors and publishers will remain unafraid to publish works that they believe in, no matter where the subject matter falls on the political spectrum, will require a strong commitment by individuals, companies, and organizations to protecting free speech.
That is why PW is following the lead of Penguin Random House and Hachette Book Group in offering to pay half its employees’ membership fees to PEN America. In announcing HBG’s PEN effort, CEO Michael Pietsch observed that we are now “in a climate where free speech is especially important,” and in that spirit, PW urges other publishers to back the First Amendment through whatever efforts they deem to be the most effective.
Industry members have certainly shown a willingness to act to protect causes in which they believe. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people from publishing expressed their unhappiness with large parts of Trump’s agenda by participating in women’s marches on January 21. In fact, a number of women helped organize groups to march in both Washington, D.C., and New York City. As has been pointed out by many political commentators, if the momentum of those marches is to continue, there needs to be a way to turn that energy into an ongoing movement. PW is prepared to serve as a vehicle to help organize industry efforts regarding the protection of the First Amendment and other key publishing issues, such as the protection of intellectual property and adequate funding for education and cultural organizations.
Indeed, almost as concerning as Trump’s disregard for the First Amendment is the report in the Hill that plans are being drawn to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Even with very modest budgets by Washington standards (roughly $147 million annually for each agency), the two provide crucial financial support to authors, small presses, and other organizations involved with the arts. PW is eager to lend its voice to all parties looking to rally support to keep these important agencies alive.
In his recent talk at Digital Book World, Macmillan CEO John Sargent observed that President Obama “was on our side” from a cultural standpoint, but that many of his business policies were not. For example, Sargent suggested that the Obama administration seemed to favor tech companies over traditional publishers on a number of issues. He may be right, but publishers and booksellers loved it when Obama and his family visited bookstores, and Obama clearly championed our industry as a vital American institution. At a time when Trump and his highest aides seem all too willing to embrace “alternative facts” and to undermine Americans’ confidence in our most fundamental institutions, book publishing’s mission—to provide Americans with credible, vital information, and to tell the stories that reflect the diversity that is the strength of our nation—is invaluable. At PW, we intend to stand up for that mission. We hope you will too.
A version of this article appeared in the 01/30/2017 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: Standing Up to President Trump
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Guard the hours – The Writer
Unlike more traditional career paths, there’s no clear route to finally breaking through as a fiction writer and getting a novel published. My own route, like most writers’, was circuitous. After receiving my undergraduate degree, I took the types of jobs I thought would help me to become a novelist – working at a publishing house, as a reporter and at an advertising agency. Each helped me in some way, but I eventually realized no job would get my novel written. What I needed was to carve out large blocks of time in my week, every week, for fiction writing.
I did an MFA, which helped me justify devoting most of my time to writing and gave me the opportunity to study with some incredible novelists while allowing me the freedom to work out what I wanted my writing to be. After graduating, I wrote fiction for 20 hours a week on top of my demanding day job. If I got to the last day of the week and I hadn’t hit my 20 hours, I’d pour a cup of coffee and stay up, writing into the night until I’d reached my goal. At one point, I found I’d written for 20 hours a week for at least two years straight, including weeks when I’d been on vacation. (I remember being on a camping trip in California one summer and wandering off to write on my laptop.)
I heard Zadie Smith recently say in an interview that she has an old-fashioned flip phone instead of an iPhone to avoid distraction. I too avoided having a smart phone for years while I was finishing my novel. But I also didn’t have a television, WiFi or any kind of entertainment system beyond shelves full of books and a radio. I even deleted the web browsers from my laptop so that I wouldn’t be able to surf the Internet, even when I was tempted by an open WiFi signal.
When I finally thought my manuscript was good enough, I found an agent. After more editing, it was sent out; a week later, I had a book deal. When I got the call that my book had sold, I was sitting in my office in New York. It was like being on an airplane that had seemed like it would never touch down on Earth, but here, finally, the wheels were hitting the runway.
Seeing my novel appear in bookstores has been magical. It was incredibly satisfying to go through the same processes that so many writers before me have gone through – working with talented editors, looking at jacket designs, liaising with publicists all over the world, doing interviews, reading reviews and now finally meeting people who have read and enjoyed my novel.
In this process, there will be times when you must make difficult decisions about your book and your career. Should you get a full-time job and write on the side or work part-time (if you’re able) to leave more time for your manuscript? There may be no clear answer. All you can do is take a leap of faith and do what you think is best. In many cases, you won’t know whether you took the best route until the dust has settled, and you can view it with the clarity of hindsight.
But at the end of the day, all the advice in the world will not actually get your book written. All you can do is carve out time in your week to write, preserve that time for writing only, and keep going for as many years as it takes.
Gabriel Packard is the author of the novel The Painted Ocean, which was published in 2016 by Corsair/Little Brown and Hachette.
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January 27, 2017
The Most-Anticipated Children’s and YA Books of Spring 2017
Drawn from PW's Spring Children's Announcements Issue, here are our editors’ selections for 15 children’s and young adult books that can’t arrive soon enough. Be sure to check out our picks for the most anticipated adult books for spring, as well.
Picture Books
Mighty, Mighty Construction Site by Sherri Duskey Rinker, illus. by Tom Lichtenheld (Chronicle, Feb.) - Like its vehicular heroes, Rinker and Lichtenheld’s picture book, Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site is a powerhouse, having carved out spots on bestseller lists and bedtime to-read piles since 2011. Now, the construction crew brings their can-do attitude to a daytime sequel—and they have reinforcements on the job.
Olivia the Spy by Ian Falconer (Atheneum/Dlouhy, Apr.) - It’s been five years since Olivia’s last picture book appearance, in Olivia and the Fairy Princesses; this installment finds her perfecting the art of domestic subterfuge, eavesdropping on conversations while cannily disguised as lamps and picture frames. Falconer’s fans will be eager to see how this one-of-a-kind pig copes when it looks like her behavior could earn her a one-way ticket to lockup.
Princess Cora and the Crocodile by Laura Amy Schlitz, illus. by Brian Floca (Candlewick, Mar.) - What do you get when a Newbery Medalist (Schlitz, for Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!) and a Caldecott Medalist (Floca, for Locomotive) collaborate on an early reader–esque story? An uproarious account of a princess who is being stifled by royal duties and expectations, and the mischievous crocodile who helps her gain some much-needed time and space to herself.
Triangle by Mac Barnett, illus. by Jon Klassen (Candlewick, Mar.) - Two of Barnett and Klassen’s previous books—Extra Yarn and Sam and Dave Dig a Hole—took home Caldecott Honors. While it’s way too soon to be thinking about next year’s ALA awards, it’s not at all too soon to look forward to this first book in a planned series, in which a shifty-eyed triangle sets out to play a “sneaky trick” on his friend, Square.
We’re All Wonders by R.J. Palacio (Knopf, Mar.) - Palacio’s 2012 middle grade novel Wonder has sold more than a million copies and spawned a whole lot of conversation, as well as the “Choose Kind” antibullying movement and a feature film, out in April, starring Julie Roberts, Owen Wilson, and Jacob Tremblay as Auggie Pullman. Before the film arrives, though, Palacio takes Wonder’s message to a younger audience in this picture book spinoff.
Middle Grade
Amina’s Voice by Hena Khan (Salaam Reads, Mar.) - Khan’s graceful novel, about a contemporary Muslim sixth grader confronting questions of identity and difference, is the launch title for Salaam Reads, a new children’s imprint from Simon & Schuster focusing on Muslim characters and stories. (For readers whose tastes run more toward fantasy, the second Salaam Reads title, The Gauntlet by Karuna Riazi, arrives later in March.)
Fish Girl by Donna Jo Napoli and David Wiesner, illus. by Wiesner (Clarion, Mar.) - A captive mermaid who lives and performs in a boardwalk aquarium makes her first friend and begins to question the benevolence of the man who keeps her there in this unsettling and memorable graphic novel from two acclaimed talents.
Flying Lessons & Other Stories, edited by Ellen Oh (Crown, Jan.) - This collection of 10 short stories is the first anthology from We Need Diverse Books, which advocates for better and more diverse representation in books. Edited by WNDB cofounder Oh, the book includes entries from Kwame Alexander, Matt de la Peña, Grace Lin, Jacqueline Woodson, and others.
The Lotterys Plus One by Emma Donoghue, illus. by Caroline Hadilaksono (Scholastic/Levine, Mar.) - Room author Donoghue makes her children’s book debut with the “wonderfully offbeat” story (per PW’s starred review) of a very blended Canadian family that includes four coparents (consisting of a lesbian couple and a gay one) and their many homeschooled children, both adopted and biological.
The Warden’s Daughter by Jerry Spinelli (Knopf, Jan.) - Spinelli takes readers back to Two Mills, Pa. (the setting of Maniac Magee) in a story set during the 1950s that revolves around Cammie, the 12-year-old daughter of the town’s prison, who is desperately eager for a mother figure in her life; hers died in a traffic accident years earlier, protecting an infant Cammie.
Young Adult
The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco (Sourcebooks Fire, Mar.) - Thanks to her previous books, The Girl from the Well and The Suffering, Chupeco has made a name for herself among devotees of YA horror. Her third novel tilts more toward fantasy, but it’s still plenty eerie, featuring a young woman trying to make sense of her unseemly gift of raising the dead.
Gem & Dixie by Sara Zarr (HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray, Apr.) - In her first solo novel since 2013’s The Lucy Variations, acclaimed author Zarr returns with the story of two Seattle sisters whose home life has long been unstable: there’s never any food around, and their mother is far from reliable. Now their long-absent father has suddenly reentered the picture, a turn of events that results in an unexpected trip for the sisters.
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray, Feb.) - Acquired in a 13-house auction, Thomas’s debut novel is inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, and centers around Starr Carter, who finds herself at the center of an explosive news story when she’s a witness to the killing of a childhood friend by a police officer.
Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor (Little, Brown, Mar.) - Now that her Daughter of Smoke and Bone series has concluded, Taylor returns with a new, richly written tale of humans battling powerful creatures. First in a two-book series, this new story shifts attention between Lazlo Strange, a librarian obsessed with a mythical city known only as Weep, and Sarai, a powerful blue-skinned “godspawn” in hiding following a devastating war.
The Whole Thing Together by Ann Brashares (Delacorte, Apr.) - Best known for the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series, Brashares is back with her first YA title in three years. While The Here and Now delved into science fiction, this book is strictly contemporary as it explores the complicated lives of two teenagers whose families share a tangled history—as well as a house in the Hamptons.
The post The Most-Anticipated Children’s and YA Books of Spring 2017 appeared first on Art of Conversation.
An Important Status Update on Government Funding for the Arts
This afternoon—Jan. 27, 2017—President and CEO of Americans for the Arts, Robert L. Lynch, sent out a letter expressing concerns over the potential end of federal funding that supports the arts. As a leading advocate for writers, we acknowledge that such cuts in funding could affect writers on many levels. While we continue to explore what this means to the greater writing community, we feel it is important to share the following letter with our readers, whom it may affect.
Dear Americans for the Arts Members and Friends,
I am writing to you today about the status of federal funding for the arts in the new Administration and U.S. Congress and about what you should do right now and over the coming months.
Last week on Thursday, January 19, I sent our Americans for the Arts members, stakeholders, and constituents at the local, state, and national levels an alert calling attention to an article in The Hill newspaper which reported that two Trump transition team advisors are recommending elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and privatization of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I was asked to respond to this troubling news and gave interviews in the following publications: Washington Post, Variety, The Hill, and Paste Magazine among others.
Also last Thursday, Nina Ozlu Tunceli, executive director of our affiliated grassroots advocacy organization Americans for the Arts Action Fund, sent an action alert outlining four quick action steps to its members. The Arts Action Fund website www.ArtsActionFund.org will continue to have the most up-to-date information about ongoing advocacy efforts and actions to take regarding federal funding for the arts. The Arts Action Fund is also working with state arts advocacy groups on a coordinated campaign that will be released next week.
Today, I sent a letter to President Trump asking him to preserve federal funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. But I would like the next letter that I send to the President to be accompanied by a petition signed by 100,000 Arts Action Fund members which can be found here. Over the coming weeks, I expect that there will be a number of opinion articles and targeted attacks regarding public funding for the arts. To help further explain what is—or isn’t—happening right now, Americans for the Arts has prepared a few FAQs from questions the staff have already fielded. We also need to organize and galvanize our forces. Please sign the petition and get at least five of your friends to do the same so we can raise our collective and individual voices with precision and in a unified manner.
I believe our collective job in the arts community is to tell our story and make our case again and again at the federal, state, and local levels. Below are the action steps I hope you will take as soon as possible:
Take two minutes to contact your two Senators and your House representatives now.
Join the Arts Action Fund (for free) so we can get alerts to you as quickly as possible and you can respond to decision-makers fast.
Work to get other colleagues to join the Arts Action Fund. We ask that you pledge to reach out to at least five board, staff, members, or audience members. Two national partners, the Association of Writers & Writing Programs and Blick Art Supply, brought in 42,000 members and 37,000 customers respectively to become arts advocates for our cause.
Register to attend National Arts Advocacy Day on March 20–21 in Washington, DC where you can add your voice in person.
Inform us of any specific actions impacting the arts in your community as a result of the President’s new executive order on sanctuary cities. Please send an e-mail to Ruby Harper at rharper@artsusa.org.
This is what you can do now, but we will circle back to you at several points along the timeline below to customize and target messages as the process unfolds.
We’ve created a Rapid Response Team here and put together a general timeline of what to expect:
The White House will issue dozens of sweeping executive orders and form new policy positions within the first 90 days.
Americans for the Arts and the Arts Action Fund will release a coordinated petition, grassroots advocacy, social media, and advertising campaign in early February.
The President will address a joint session of Congress on February 28, 2017, and will likely present the Administration’s FY 2018 budget around this time.
Americans for the Arts is set to present National Arts Advocacy Day on Capitol Hill on March 21, 2017.
The U.S. House of Representatives and specifically the House Appropriations Subcommittees will set initial FY 2018 funding levels for every federal agency in the Spring (March–May) of this year.
The federal government’s current FY 2017 Continuing Resolution Appropriations expires April 28, 2017, and we need to keep a watchful eye on continuation of federal funding for the arts through the entire fiscal year ending September 30, 2017.
The U.S. Senate and Senate Appropriation Subcommittees will finalize their positions by July 4.
A final conference committee agreement between the House and the Senate will be reached by leaders from these committees by September/October.
At the national level, Americans for the Arts will continue to coordinate with national, state, and local arts groups on advocacy efforts through:
Ongoing strategizing with our national arts service organization colleagues, especially the 85 national partners of National Arts Advocacy Day, on direct lobbying.
Ongoing strategizing with our local arts, state arts, and arts education advocacy colleagues, including the 50+ members of our State Arts Action Network, on grassroots lobbying.
Expanding and re-targeting our national advertising strategy.
Continuing press and interview pursuits such as the interviews from over this past weekend.
Strategizing with, and involving, key pro-arts leaders from business, government, and the arts who connect well with the new Administration.
Identifying incoming White House staff liaisons to the arts sector.
Just yesterday, President Trump signed an Executive Order that could potentially deny certain cities, such as sanctuary cities, billions of dollars in federal grants, including NEA funds, if they do not follow new immigration enforcement protocols. Americans for the Arts is already developing strategies about a number of issues related to federal arts funding, and we are proactively investigating new opportunities for arts funding in the coming months; an example is legislation regarding expanding our nation’s infrastructure.
Finally, we are seeing that the current efforts to eliminate the NEA seem to be based on old Heritage Foundation arguments formulated more than two decades ago. Even though these arguments are dated, that does not mean they won’t have weight with new legislative listeners. The argument to eliminate or slash federal arts funding comes up every year, and your collective efforts have stopped that from happening in the past. But in the current political environment, it is critical that all of us redouble our efforts.
I think it is good to know what claims might be put forth so that we are all prepared with locally based strategies and answers. To help with this, our team is preparing rebuttals to each of these potential arguments which will be posted on the Americans for the Arts and Action Fund websites and forwarded to Arts Action Fund members. This information can help you make a case for federal funding with your congressional representatives.
Americans for the Arts is committed to working with you to ensure that all Americans have access to the arts and that we protect and cultivate funding for the arts on the local, state, and federal level.
Thank you for your hard work.
Robert L. Lynch
President and CEO
Americans for the Arts
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LitHub Daily: January 27, 2017
The Best of the Literary Internet, Every Day
TODAY: In 1922, journalist and author Nellie Bly dies.
Mariah Stovall on falling out of love with punk (and in love with lit). | Literary Hub
The anxieties of a sophomore novelist: Jane Chang and Shilpi Somaya Gowda in conversation. | Literary Hub
The anxieties of a debut novelist: Porochista Khakpour on life, debt, and selling her first novel. | Literary Hub
Joseph Kertes on returning home to the ghosts of his Hungarian childhood. | Literary Hub
Art, activism, and Audre Lord: making New York City great. | Literary Hub
“The drama of Wideman’s personal history can seem almost mythical, refracting so many aspects of the larger black experience in America, an experience defined less by its consistencies, perhaps, than by its many contradictions—the stunning and ongoing plurality of victories and defeats.” A profile of John Edgar Wideman. | The New York Times Magazine
Alexandra Kleeman on what’s visible and what’s invisible in America, the texture of the internet and of social media, and Duck Dynasty. | | Bookanista
“I realised that it is the central force of a poem, that it wants every word to bear an intense meaning.” An interview with Ishion Hutchinson. | Catch News
On the life and work of Mark Baumer, “someone for whom activism was both a life style and a form of self-expression.” | The New Yorker
“Nineteen Eighty-Four does not pastiche a world ravaged by capitalism and ruled by celebrities—the kind of world that could lead to the election of someone like Trump.” Why Nineteen Eighty-Four does not map onto our current historical moment (alternatively: why it does). | New Republic, The New York Times
Beyond the mind: 10 poems from four Russian Futurist poetry books are now available online. | Hyperallergic
On the “visceral pleasure” and storied history of book hoarding. | The Guardian
Also on Lit Hub: Finally, college sophomores can say “Orwellian” and be right · Further evidence of a barely literate president · From Abby Fabiaschi’s new novel, I Liked My Life.
The post LitHub Daily: January 27, 2017 appeared first on Art of Conversation.
Science Fiction, Minus the Fiction
You must have heard it before: Arthur C. Clark’s third law, that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” or that our lives today would sound like science fiction to anyone a century ago. As part of my TEDx Ideas Worth Spreading talks, I ask, “Have you ever thought to yourself, What if technology actually was science fiction at some point in the past?”
The current Star Wars: The Force Awakens is getting a surge in headline news because of the increased popularity of science, which is propelling humanity forward. In a similar vein, I point out in my TEDx talks that Aladdin, Arabian Nights, and Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves have been adding to the world’s imagination for centuries.
Pondering the correlation between sci-fi culture and the advancement of science, I challenged almost everyone I know during my time at Singularity University (part university, part think tank, and part business incubator, in Silicon Valley) to give me a single example of a technology that we have today that had not existed in sci-fi at least 20 years prior to its existence in the real world. To my astonishment, I was able to find a sci-fi reference for every single claim that was passed on to me.
This discovery led me to a deeper question: what is the actual relationship between sci-fi and scientific development? From my research, it was clear that there is a strong correlation between the number of patents per capita in any country and the amount of locally produced sci-fi consumed per capita (basically how much sci-fi from the local culture every individual is exposed to per year). In simpler terms, countries with a stronger sci-fi culture have a stronger scientific development trend and vice versa.
Proving causality was harder. When asking if sci-fi consumption drives scientific development, or if scientific development drives Sci-Fi consumption, the data could not prove it either way. Was the fact that we are having scientific advancements getting people interested in consuming sci-fi? Or was the exposure to sci-fi driving passionate geeks to find ways to make it happen?
My hunch was that sci-fi was directly driving the scientific development of the nation. To prove this point, I decided to start a 20-year experiment, in which I chose a part of the world where sci-fi was not mainstream (meaning that there is no strong local sci-fi culture and products) and where the patents per capita were minimal. The first location I researched was in my part of the world, the Arab world.
Although the Arabs have a very strong and old heritage of fantasy, the culture no longer has significant output of sci-fi content. Yet the Arab world was buzzing with scientific advancements while Europe was still in the dark ages. Eureka! I found a perfect location where both sci-fi and patent registration per capita are near zero, and I live there (in Saudi Arabia) and have a good grasp on the culture.
Yatakhayaloon, my publishing house (the name translates to they are imagining), was established in the United Arab Emirates to contribute to the advancement of science in the Arab world by promoting and nurturing a strong sci-fi culture. At first it was supposed to be a content generation and management house, but when HWJN (our first novel) was written by Ibraheem Abbas, no publisher in the region would touch it, claiming that it wouldn’t sell, which forced us to become our own publisher.
Two years later, we have sold 120,000 copies of that first novel. The success was overwhelming, not only for us but for the entire sci-fi culture in the region. The year we published HWJN, 2013, only one other mainstream Arabic sci-fi novel was published. In 2015, there were at least 17 Arabian Sci-Fi novels published.
We hope these sci-fi novels will inspire more sci-fi cultures to develop around the world and bring us more Star Wars–like global phenomena. May the force be with you, and may sci-fi continue to advance scientific development.
Yasser Bahjatt is a TEDx speaker, an author, and the CEO and founder of Yatakhayaloon. He was born and raised in Michigan and currently lives in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
A version of this article appeared in the 01/18/2016 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: Star Wars Is More Than a Movie
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GIVEAWAY: Win The Elements of Academic Style
“Writing is not the memorialization of ideas. Writing distills, crafts, and pressure-tests ideas—it creates ideas,” writes Eric Hayot in The Elements of Academic Style.
“You cannot know what your ideas are, mean, or do until you set them down in sentences, whether on paper or on screen. It is also why the essay or the book you write will not be, if you are open and generous and unafraid, the essay or book you started with. To understand that process as a good thing and to develop a writing practice that helps you inhabit it: those are the two projects of this book,” he continues.
Hayot’s book attempts to focus specifically on academic style at the sentence level; on a larger scale, he looks at the “psychological and working structures” needed to write as well as the genre of academic writing as a whole.
To enter to win a copy, fill out the form below. Readers have until 11:59 p.m. EST on February 2nd to win.
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Publishers Respond to Losing Some ‘New York Times’ Bestseller Lists
Publishers reacted with a mixture of dismay, confusion and surprise at news the New York Times has eliminated a number of its print and online bestseller lists, effective February 5.
Although it is still unclear exactly which lists have been dropped, the NYT has confirmed that the bestseller lists for graphic novels and manga, as well as the lists for mass market paperbacks, middle-grade e-books, teen e-books have been eliminated.
The NYT said the cuts were part of an overall plan to evaluate and revamp its book publishing coverage and, in a statement, emphasized it planned “to cover all of these genres of books in our news coverage (in print and online).”
Nevertheless, many publishers were blindsided by the changes, which were not announced or discussed in advance. Many publishers discovered the lists would be dropped only when they received the New York Times Advanced BSL edition for Feb. 5, which only noted that “there will be revisions to multiple categories in the publication."
Steven Zacharius,CEO of Kensington Publishing, which publishes hundreds of mass market titles each year, called the decision “enormously troubling.” Zacharius said dropping the mass market list “effects sales, and not having this list will hurt authors tremendously.” Other large trade book publishers found the cuts perplexing and were particularly dismayed because they were not informed in advance.
The elimination of the graphic novel and manga lists, in particular, was met with outrage and expressions of frustration from the comics and graphic novel community.
The NYT launched the graphic novel and manga bestseller lists in 2009, explaining to PW at the time, that its internal research, “led us to conclude that these three graphic categories [hardcover, softcover and manga] are a natural place to start.”
Many comics professionals point to the launch of the graphic books list as an important turning point for the comics medium. Many complained that cutting the list at this time was particularly baffling—graphic novel print sales rose 11% in 2016, according to BookScan, one of the strongest gains in the adult fiction segment.
“I’m pretty shocked,” said Terry Nantier, publisher of both the adult graphic novel publisher NBM and PaperCutz, a children’s and YA graphic novel house. “This category continues to grow, there’s continued mounting interest in it, how come?”
Kevin Hamric, senior director sales, marketing at Viz Media, which publishes manga, said he was "dismayed with this decision especially in light of the fact that the graphic novel/manga/comics category has been one of only a very few book categories that have shown growth in the past 2-3 years. Our fans, readers, authors, and licensors look forward to seeing the bestseller list each week.”
“Comics need to be measured against themselves, not the larger whole of books,” explained Charles Kochman, editorial director of Abrams ComicArts, the graphic novel imprint of Abrams. “No more than you would judge the sales of a celebrity memoir or a cook book, for example, against all other nonfiction titles.”
Although all the comics publishers were troubled by the decision to cut the lists, some publishers criticized their accuracy and were not especially worried that their elimination would hurt the category.
Ted Jones, CEO of IDW Publishing, one of the largest independent comics and graphic novel publishers in the country, said he was disappointed to see the list go, but: “We liked being able to say something was a NYT best-seller but I don't know that it ever really impacted sales.”
Kurt Hassler, publishing director of Yen Press, a graphic novel and manga joint venture with the Hachette Book Group, said the Times' methodology for compiling the lists was, “somewhat cryptic and never necessarily directly reflected what we saw in terms of actual, ground-level bestsellers through other channels and metrics of reporting. I can’t say it will have a negative impact on our actual sales as a consequence.”
Some comics publishers question whether the New York Times book editors understand the category, complaining that the Times sometimes appears to erroneously describe the graphic novel format as a “genre.”
Drawn & Quarterly publisher Peggy Burns, said, “We always had small qualms the Times treated the medium like a genre.” Nevertheless, she said, those qualms would disappear when a novel by D&Q, a small Canadian literary comics publisher with a long list of acclaimed comics artists, would appear on the New York Times lists.
“When D&Q made the list, as we have with several titles a year for the past few years, it felt like the Times supported the underdogs.”
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128 V̶e̶r̶y̶ ̶G̶o̶o̶d̶ Excellent Alternatives to the Word “Very”
It’s easy to fall in a writing rut of using the same ol’ modifiers. This list makes it easy to break out, with a few (128, to be exact) suggestions for mixing it up.
This infographic is courtesy of Luke Palder of ProofreadingServices. Visit them online at proofreadingservices.com.
Baihley Grandison is the assistant editor of Writer’s Digest and a freelance writer. Follow her on Twitter @baihleyg, where she mostly tweets about writing (Team Oxford Comma!), food (HUMMUS FOR PRESIDENT, PEOPLE), and Random Conversations With Her Mother.
The post 128 V̶e̶r̶y̶ ̶G̶o̶o̶d̶ Excellent Alternatives to the Word “Very” appeared first on WritersDigest.com.
The post 128 V̶e̶r̶y̶ ̶G̶o̶o̶d̶ Excellent Alternatives to the Word “Very” appeared first on Art of Conversation.
