- Only three percent of newspaper reading occurs online? Ninety-nine percent of my own does, and I heart newspapers.
- Terry with an excellent post on dedications at About Last Night. I've been thanked in several acknowledgments, but have only the one dedication (shared with Christopher, which makes it even nicer) in the ::SOB:: last volume of the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror (until it's resurrected someday?).
- Jo Walton on reading series, and the odd practice of some publishers not labeling series books as such. Again: See it everywhere.
- A few more #amazonfail links: Kat Meyer on the problematic PR (a no comment to NPR = bad), Richard Nash on why it matters, Kelley Eskridge with lessons for managers, NYT story, LA Times. You need only go to twitter and search the hashtag to find scads more.
- Chains takes the third match in the Battle of the (Kids') Books. I'm 3 for 3 on my bracket predictions so far.
- An excerpt of Maud's novel is up at Narrative.
- The Spring 2009 issue of Subterranean is out, and includes my first review for the mag, of Carrie Ryan's The Forest of Hands and Teeth. (I greatly enjoyed it.)
- Just one of the reasons I love my agent.
6 thoughts on “Tuesday Hangovers”
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Hmph. I’ve always liked that Salinger dedication.
I’d completely forgotten it until reminded.
My favorite dedication is Eduardo Galeano’s to his long-time translator Cedric Belfrage at the beginning of The Book of Embraces (my most favorite book of all time):
“Cedric Belfrage died shortly after finishing his translation of my work The Book of Embraces. We had already worked together for many years. Each one of his translations increased our certitude of mutual identification. I would recognize myself in each of his translations and he would feel betrayed and annoyed whenever I didn’t write something the way he would have.
A part of me died with him.
A part of him lives with me.”
You know I love what Jenn says and heaven knows I don’t think any author should try to write something solely because they think it fits some trend somewhere (no more vamp books – PLEASE) but the flip side is that when you write something different (speaks from experience) what you get back are a lot of rejections from pubs saying that the subject matter is too “out there” or unproven, or unknown.
To be blunt, they have been telling my agent there is no guarantee the book will sell and they want that guarantee.
This always makes me wonder what Bram Stoker’s pub said to him when he floated the idea of “Dracula”. (“Bram – no one will read a vampire book! It’s too different!)
Oh, publishing — she is a fickle industry.
I know what you mean, but I think maybe it’s actually two different things? It’s impossible to predict what the market will want in a reliable way, and thus doubly impossible to write to it. And writing to it won’t guarantee a sale either–especially if you’re twisting your voice to try and fit some preconceived idea of what the market wants.
I don’t know much about the nonfiction world, so perhaps things are more defined there. But I also think most beginning writers have no idea how far in advance books are bought. I know she’s not advocating for ignorance of the marketplace. (There’s a clarification a few posts down.)
There’s definitely space for your book out there–it just hasn’t found the right editor yet. And think how jealous all those people who said it was “too different” will be when it sells and is successful. Which it will be!
Oh I agree completely – you don’t ever want to write to what you think the market wants to read and I can totally understand Jenn’s frustration as an agent. (She is probably buried in vamp manuscripts.) It’s just hard to be on the cutting edge of editorial desires (again…whatever that means). Anytime you are the slightest bit off the beaten path it is scary for the powers at be and means everything takes so.much.longer.
I’m frustrated today, can you tell?? 🙂
I certainly would not want to be writing a sexy vampire story right now (for many reasons!). Although zombies are clearly the new vampires… except not sexy. (And I rather like the trend going from deadly creature is hot to deadly creature is… deadly.)