Today I had the pleasure to attend Book Expo America (BEA), the largest book conference in America. Geared toward publishing professionals, booksellers and educators, BEA is probably the only opportunity you’ll have to see the number of men come anywhere close to the number of women in publishing. (Seriously. There were men there. And they like BOOKS.)
Though this wasn’t my first time around the BEA dance floor, I am reminded about a few things every year. Here are the highlights (and lessons relearned) today!
1.) Pounding the Javits Center hurts. A lot. Today’s heels means tomorrow will be spent in flip flops. As in other years though, I am sure that by the time Thursday comes around, everybody will be in sneakers and jeans, and they will be much more selective about the amount of swag they want to carry.
2.) About swag. It’s heavy. Free ARCs (advanced reader copies) freaking rock! At the next pub party, you get to talk about all the books you’ve read that the general public won’t even get to touch, let alone finish reading, for another two to six months. But they are still made of paper (at this point), and so by the third day, you become a little more picky about what swag you want to carry out with you. Book with a three page sex scene between woman and monkey, yes. (It’s literary fiction, it actually looks quite good!) Book that’s being handed out at self-publishing booth, perhaps not. (Lesson here — less free books handed out on Tuesday, so if you are a self-published author at BEA, go then. Less competition for bag space, and generally more excitement for the free.)
3.) Industry panels. Today’s panels were all about social media. Authors, aspiring authors, publishers — it comes down to Nike’s infamous slogan — just do it. (It was perhaps said more eloquently than that. But another thing I’ve learned about panels is that brevity is key. Especially when chances are, your topic is going to overlap with another panel your audience sat through just an hour or two before.)
4.) It’s still kind of odd to approach your favorite authors for signings. At BEA, authors are like celebrities, but more accessible and with a slightly more awkward following. In fact, last year, my colleague and I said to Jonathan Lethem as he signed our books, “we are extremely awkward.” That, of course, made things even more awkward.
5.) It’s becoming increasingly difficult to remember who you’ve met in real life, and who you recognize from their Twitter handle. Is that an editor I’ve met before at a lunch? Or someone who happens to tweet very frequently in my feed? Oh wait, I must know them from Twitter because I’ve seen pictures of their cats! And speaking of Twitter, now as the speaker you can see in real time if your audience thinks your panel sucks. Talk about pressure!
6.) Book parties. Book nerds know how to party. We really do. Last year, I managed to rip a hole in my shirt at a tweet-up. A tweet-up! So far, my shirts remain intact. But BEA is young. There are still two more days of swag collecting, Twitter stalking and pub partying.
I’m exhausted! But it’s true guys — BEA is like Christmas in May. (If you habitually go to happy hours during Christmas.)
J. D. Salinger became one of our most-beloved literary hermits. And Steig Larsson is holding strong on The New York Times Bestseller List six years after his death. Though I cannot mathematically prove that hibernation/extreme unavailability makes you an instant bestseller, it does seem that it doesn’t hurt to be either A.) extremely accessible a la Maureen Johnson or B.) extremely inaccessible, like Jane Austen. (She might not have been a hermit in her day, but if she had a dollar for every time she was referenced today…)
So for those aspiring writers that would prefer to be extremely inaccessible, as opposed to the alternative, here are ten easy steps to hide from today’s world: Read more »
Jennifer Schuessler’s essay in the New York Times on the disappearance of actual work from literary fiction made me wonder if anybody is really, truly interested in the day-to-day minutiae in a corporate world where most of it could be summarized as “read emails” and “responded to emails.”
For example, Moby-Dick’s ridiculous number of chapters devoted to whale anatomy could actually be more interesting than reading in detail about the number of times I read an email, talked to our accounting department, responded to first email, and read the next email.
I do think the Espresso book machine, the end of the return system, and embracing e-books and interactive derivatives could solve a lot of the bottom-line issues in publishing. I personally can’t think of a single other industry that knowingly pulps nearly half of their product!
But Moriah Jovan’s post on the perfect bookstore makes it sound as if all of publishing’s problems are instantly solved with print-on-demand. There is a lot to consider though in the adoption of POD technology.
Laura Miller’s piece in Salon last week touched upon our continued interest in reinventing Jane Austen into what most pleases ourselves. Given the ridiculous success of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and multiple vampire books*, there’s been much talk about whether Jane Austen herself would be rolling in her grave, or perhaps amused to see her stories with “ultra violent zombie mayhem.”
I can’t help but wonder though, if we’ve unconsciously brought Jane Austen full-circle. Though Austen never wrote about zombies, her juvenilia is full of scandal — carriage chases, divorce, murder and other mayhem, without always punishing the offending character. (Though this may not sound very scandalous to us, but in Victorian England this was extremely shocking, and to protect her reputation, Austen’s juvenilia was not published by the family until over 100 years later.)
But much like the spirit behind Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Austen’s humor is tongue-in-cheek, and at 14 she’s already noticed the inordinate number of women who faint in the novels of her time. In Love and Freindship[sic], written when Austen was still a teenager, she writes, Read more »
Baseball players are known to have strange pre-game rituals. Rob Murphy wore women’s underwear under his jock strap while pitching (honestly, can you think of anything less comfortable than a jock-strap-and-thong wedgie?), while Kevin Millar used to sprinkle his bats with doe pee when he was with the Florida Marlins. But as the phrase, “I’m going to write, so I’m taking the candle” left my mouth, I started wondering about the odd rituals of writers. Read more »
While I agree that it’s time to bring some sexiness back to the library system, I don’t know that a new typeface would be my first thought. So I brought in some help from the ultimate authority in sexiness to construct a new library anthem.
To me, nowhere is the juxtaposition of the high and low in art more apparent than in children’s illustration. Though one might look at a Jackson Pollock and think (but perhaps not say), “I can splatter paint on a canvas!,” one hears people browsing the picture book section and declaring, “I could draw this!”
But after over three years of reading the query box, I can assure you, ninety-eight percent of the people that scoff at the artwork, cannot just “splatter paint.” I’ve seen everything from four-fingered Santa Clauses, to illustrations of children without necks. And though we advise aspiring children’s writers not to illustrate their own stories unless they think their artwork can truly measure up to the illustrations that are already on the bookshelves, sometimes it’s clear that this advice is ignored at best, and followed at worst. Read more »
Remember that amazingly awesome computer game Oregon Trail?
Maybe it’s because I’ve been up too long, but to me it seems like the path to publication is a lot like the Oregon Trail:
You Load Your Wagon
How many oxen do you need? How many shotgun pellets?
When writing, the oxen are the projects you’re working on, and the shotgun pellets are your knowledge base. You can kill more buffalo (or squirrels/rabbits if you are in a non-grassy area) with more bullets. As a writer, you will be better supplied if you read widely, try writing in multiple genres to discover your best voice, and research individual publishers and agents to discover their needs.
And like publishing, sometimes it just takes that one ox to get you through to the next part of the game.
Remember that amazingly awesome computer game Oregon Trail?
