Leda Schubert, Writer and Teacher

Leda Schubert, Children's book author

Rebecca and Eliza,
Could you let us know if you have some of Leda's books in your shops?
Can't wait to meet her!
S

John Scalzi Post All Writers Should Read

John Scalzi has a brilliant (I know I'm overusing that word) post entitled "Why In Fact Publishing Will Not Go Away Anytime Soon: A Deeply Slanted Play in Three Acts".

Peter, in particular, you will appreciate this.

But then, so will everyone else.

Please read.

-Rebecca

Bookselling in Crisis

Hello,

It is I, the non-alarmist, bringing you more alarming news from the front lines of the independent book-selling world. (To read the first "Bookselling in Crisis" post, go here.) Today I am here to report on the recent crisis concerning publishing representatives (hereafter referred to as "reps"). Reps are the biggest connection between booksellers and publishers. They come to our stores, get to know our store size, buying styles, customer demographics, and possible events. They send us advanced copies, and sometimes published copies of favorite books. They help us make author connections and help us with events. They listen to our advice, and our reviews. They celebrate with us when a favorite book wins an award. They help us straighten out ordering issues, remind us of old treasures, introduce us to new favorites, and generally provide a warm and friendly face to put with large (and small) publishers.

In short, my life as a bookseller is enriched by my interaction with my publisher reps.

And sadly, my publisher reps are being hit hard as the book industry struggles to right so many excess wrongs it's incurred over the years.

This is a letter to the publishing industry at large, written by the North Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association:

We are alarmed with what appears to be a trend in the sales division of publishers; the removal of field sales reps to independent bookstores. This draconian move against our bookselling segment will be responsible for the disappearance of book culture.

Field sales reps are a crucial part of our business. Each regional independent booksellers association and Publishers Weekly honors an outstanding field rep each year. We can’t think of another publisher position that gets this recognition. We devote countless hours at conferences refining the sales rep/bookseller relationship. They are that crucial to us.

Restricting field reps to large stores will give publishers a skewed view of what is a very diverse world --independent bookselling. Sales reps take the time to know our stores, what our customers like, and what is on our shelves. They are the industry worker-bees, travelling the region, taking ideas and trends and pollinating other stores. We learn about other stores from them, what others are reading and loving; what is selling; marketing tips; event ideas; what the publisher is doing; and what authors have books coming out in the next season. They make fans for authors out of our frontline booksellers. They cut through the catalogs to make sure we carry what we’ll be able to sell, and their endorsements are why we buy what we might have ignored.

These reasons are why cuts in field sales reps devastate us. Have you really thought about what this stricture will mean to you? Fewer books sales. Without a doubt, we are not ordering as much through telemarketing. We are definitely not focusing on your backlist through tele-sales, and we definitely miss titles from the frontlist. We also don’t buy as much direct, which makes independent bookselling a less profitable business. The vicious cycle is that we buy less because we don’t have sales reps, and then you devalue our business because we aren’t buying as much as we used to.

We understand the corporate need to save money. There are more efficacious and less exclusionary ways to cut your budgets. You know what they are because independent bookstores have been telling you what they are for years. Cut multiple ARC mailings. Do away with promotional gimmicks that go from mailbox to garbage can. Consider publishing fewer titles, fewer hard covers, fewer copies. Take a hard look at celebrity advances.

We exist to sell your books, those unique and hard to place titles, not just the established authors. Field sales reps are the tools we need to do that for you. As much as you would like to think a tele-salesperson is doing the same job, you are sadly mistaken. A field sales rep is far more than a person filling in an order form.

Don’t cut our lifeline to your books.

Sincerely,

The NAIBA Board of Directors

Joe Drabyak, Chester County Book Company, West Chester, PA

Lucy Kogler, Talking Leaves Inc., Buffalo, NY

Betty Bennett, Sparta Books, Sparta, NJ

Harvey Finkel, Clinton Bookshop, Clinton, NJ

Pat Kutz, Lift Bridge Book Shop, Brockport, NY

Mark LaFramboise, Politics & Prose, Washington, DC

Margot Sage-EL, Watchung Booksellers, Montclair, NJ

Jessica Stockton Bagnulo, Greenlight Bookstore, Brooklyn, NY

Susan L. Weis, breathe books, Baltimore, MD

They say it more eloquently than I ever could. Please, help us by supporting your local independent bookstores. Increased sales means a publisher might think twice about cutting a rep for our area. Thank you for taking the time to read about our plight.

- Rebecca

Bray Lands Major Deal at Little, Brown

By Rachel Deahl -- Publishers Weekly, 2/4/2010 1:25:00 PM

Libba Bray. Photo: Cheryl Levine.

Libba Bray, hot off her Printz win for Going Bovine, has landed a major book deal at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. Bray's agent-husband, Barry Goldblatt, sold North American rights, in an auction featuring six houses, to a new YA series called The Diviners to LBBYR senior v-p and publisher Megan Tingley, deputy publisher Andrew Smith, and senior editor Alvina Ling. Ling is set to edit the planned four-book series, which will bow in hardcover in fall 2012. The sale also marks a shift for Bray, whose last four novels were published by Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers. Though LBBYR wouldn’t discuss the amount, rumors from other publishers participating in the auction placed the selling price at around $2 million.
In The Diviners, a supernatural fantasy series set in Manhattan during the 1920s, Bray follows a teen heroine she says is reminiscent of two of the era's most famous literary women—Zelda Fitzgerald and Dorothy Parker. Bray, who admitted to having always been fascinated by the Jazz Age, said she's looking forward "to offering readers a wild new ride full of dames and dapper dons, jazz babies and Prohibition-defying parties, conspiracy and prophecy—and all manner of things that go bump in the neon-drenched night.” 
Bray, who found wide critical acclaim with last year's Going Bovine—a dark comedy about a teenager who goes on a trippy (and possibly hallucinatory) cross-country jaunt with a dwarf, after being diagnosed with mad cow disease—released her first standalone novel, A Great and Terrible Beauty, in 2003. That book performed well with readers and reviewers alike and went on to become the first title in Bray's Victorian fantasy series featuring protagonist Gemma Doyle; according to LBBYR, the trilogy has sold more than 1.25 million copies.

Reimagined Fairy Tales - YA article

Hi all,

Here's an article I received today from the Macmillan Kids e-newsletter. Thought you all might find it interesting. It's about reimagining/retelling fairy tales for the YA audience.

Enjoy! - Rebecca

Author Heather Tomlinson Discusses
Fairy Tales for a New Generation

Spoiler alert: Cinderella goes to the ball! Beauty saves the Beast!

Old news, right? And yet, like mushrooms in a fairy ring, fairy tale-influenced novels for teens are popping up all over. What compels authors and readers to revisit stories they already know?

A shared familiarity allows writers to play with their readers' expectations. You remember what happened to Rapunzel? Well, what if the author changes the setting, reverses key details, or combines characters from different tales? Voila! Like magic, old stories are new again.

With such a treasure trove of material to draw from, how's an author to choose? The stories that interest me have elements that annoy or perplex. Questions, I've learned, are the surest clue that a tale could turn into a novel. The story that inspired my first book, The Swan Maiden, is usually told from the male protagonist's point of view. I wondered what the girl in question might say about her own journey. Forthcoming Toads and Diamonds sprang from a pet peeve: Why is the oldest sister in fairy tales always the bad one? Furthermore, why don't stepsisters ever get along? What if a fairy's mismatched gifts turned out to be equally important? How and where would such a scenario be plausible? To answer my own questions, I had to write the book.

How does it end? Now, that would be telling.

New to the genre? Here's a trio of fairy tale-inspired novels to enjoy:

Briar Rose by Jane Yolen
Toads and Diamonds by Heather Tomlinson
The Wager by Donna Jo Napoli

Jacqueline Woodson - What an amazing reader

Jacqueline Woodson was the lunchtime keynote speaker at this year's SCBWI New York conference. She read from several of her works, notably her middle grade book Locomotion and her picture book The Other Side.

Reading is definitely the wrong way to describe what she did. She recited/performed/transformed her readings. Rarely, if ever, did she look at the page. She just spoke to all of us, as though she were channeling the story. She knew her characters' voices and the rhythms of the language so well.

It was a great lesson in how to read your work. And here's what I learned.

1. Practice, practice, practice. She probably read her work out loud many, many times - both when she was writing it and to prepare for her readings.

2. Be confident. If you don't completely believe in what you wrote, no one else will. There was no uncertainty on her part. She did not care what people thought. She became the story.

3. Clarity and voice. She spoke fast, but I heard every word she said. She also changed her speed occasionally, to create space around the words. Not a lot, just enough to help the audience shift with her.

So, I'm not suggesting you memorize your words before you read to an audience. I'm just thinking you have to own your reading, and there's really only one way I can think of to do that well - practice, confidence and voice.

SCBWI - Top Takeaways

Just got back from the SCBWI in NYC. Here are my takeaways.

1. Writers need agents. (That's what all the agents say).

2. Writers need editors. (That's what all the publishers say)

3. Writers need to be nice to agents and editors. (That's code for if you don't do what they say most of the time, you'll not be treated as well as those who do what they're told)

4. There are a lot of writers.

5. Boutique agencies get 30-50 queries a day. Guess how many times they say yes?

6. Some publishers have to look at over 300 submissions a week.

7. Publishers prefer to get submissions from agents they know and trust. (Go back to item #1 and start again)

8. Know the market, study the trends and pray to god your book does not have vampires who live in a dystopian universe. In other words, write for yourself, not the market.

9. Successful writers and creators say it's all about the writing. That's nice.

10. How are you supposed to react when one creator tells you his funny bunny character made half a billion in licencing sales?

11. There are a lot of writers.

12. Everyone says SCBWI is a great place to network. What does that mean? Network with other writers who are very nice but want to get their book published and you can't help them and they can't help you? Network with publishers and agents who keep telling you the work speaks for itself? And how do you talk to them when there are many eager writers waiting to talk to them right after you're done and you can hear them trying to suppress their impatient sighs? I'm a newbie at this show, so forgive my ignorance on how it's done. I'll try better next time.

13. Best piece of advice came from Francesco Sedito, author of Miss Popularity series and VP & Publisher of Grosset & Dunlap. "When you get back from the show, put away all your notes, forget about everything and just get back to writing."

What show?