Blogger: Janet Kobobel Grant
Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.
For the year that our agency’s blog has existed, Friday’s post was Kathleen Y’Barbo’s domain, as she wrote about marketing and publicity insights in her role as Books and Such’s publicist. Toward the end of 2009, Kathleen and I agreed that her job as our agency’s publicist had intruded on her main job: novelist (she is one of our clients). So we decided that it made sense for Kathleen to step down from being publicist to concentrate on writing good books rather than press releases. I’m thankful for the contributions she’s made to our clients’ careers and for the helpful info she’s offered in her blog posts.
Among the new year’s changes, we’ll be opening up the forum on Fridays to hear more from each of you. Each Friday, we’ll ask a question that hopefully will stimulate discussion among all of us.
This Friday, I’d like to hear what your wishes are for publishing. I realized, as I wrote my blog posts this week, that I’ve started the year out with a bang, challenging the publishing industry, writers and myself to think outside the lines we’ve so neatly drawn in an attempt to organize and make sense of an industry that doesn’t always make sense.Nothing like taking on a big task the first week of a new year!
Now it’s your turn. If you could wish one thing for the publishing industry, what would it be? Dream about it with us.
A wider range of voices. There’s a lot of shouting from the extremes (either end). I’d like to see more writers who may NOT be in full agreement with the extremes writing from the heart and in equally engaging ways….and for the industry to see their value and take a risk in including them.
My wish is that the publishing industry treat celebrity “writers” like everyone else. A book shouldn’t be published just because it is associated with a big name. Too much marketing money goes to the actor or politician or athlete because of her or his name only. High-quality literature is tossed out the window for the opportunity to make a quick buck. I know publishing is a business and they have to make money, but let’s mix some integrity with the drive for profit.
For more of my not-so-subtle thoughts on this topic, try this blog entry: http://blog.donnamariebooks.com/2008/09/21/celebrity-childrens-authors.aspx
My wish is on your wish list, Janet: that the stress level that everyone in publishing from the top on down seems to be working under would be lessened. It’s hard to see friends, both writers and editors, enduring such stress to do something they love. The stress level seems to have only worsened over the past decade. But nothing is impossible for God. He can overhaul the industry so that more healthy patterns emerge. He can do (and does!) the same for individuals. Maybe, with all these changes lately, that’s exactly what is happening. Guess we’ll have to wait and pray and see. I want to choose to wait with a hopeful heart.
I blogged about niche novels, and this is what I’d like to see. Where is the cooperation between the printers and the publishers to reduce the costs for smaller print runs? We all know it’s cheaper to produce the greater numbers than the smaller ones, but who does that benefit when a niche book is left out of the game?
The ability to produce the perhaps atypical novels in CBA which greatly appeal to a smaller but steady number of readers opens the door for less typical/commercial novels (i.e. my favorites: contemporary sagas; literary stories, the horror genre, and so on).
I desire to see more variety in style, voice, genres, lengths of books, etc. JMO
Never short on opinions ;), in keeping with your Pub Wish #2 I think the in-house marketing team needs to step up and find ways to use the novel’s and the author’s strengths to sell the book. This overselling by the authors on every other Facebook post, etc., drives me crazy. I find it embarrassing. Surely there are better ways to market novels that don’t feel like solicitation phone calls.
A couple of years ago, a few days after a pretty good quake had shaken everyone in LA up, I was at an SCBWI conference there. After introducing all the speakers and workshop leaders, the moderator said something like, “If a quake took down this hotel now, it wipe out children’s publishing completely.”
That was not too much of an exaggeration, and it struck me that our children are being shaped by a mere handful of people. There are maybe three-hundred people deciding what gets published for children in our country. If most of those editors and agents that are keeping the gates for children’s books hold to liberal or ungodly social/religious/political views, the books they put out are going to shape our children and our society in a way I don’t care for.
I read recently that publishing companies used to be run by millionaires’ sons. They didn’t care about making money. They wanted to publish books that were important. Books that they considered essential.
As the publishers have sold out to big corporations, bottom line has become the thing that dictates which books are important. Editors still want to acquire books that reflect their sensibilities, sure. Fortunately for them, in a depraved generation, the books that the more liberal editors like are also the books that sell well.
So my wish for publishing is that some rich men would once again start companies to publish good books without regard to saleability. Rich men build hospitals to save sick children from disease. Are diseased minds and souls any less important than diseased bodies? We Christians know that in light of eternity, our souls are far more important. So where are the rich Christian men willing to look at publishing as an important mission?
The Mormons have been having great success with their children’s books. They aren’t preachy and I’m not saying we should be preachy. I’m just saying it would be great if more publishers would publish from a Christian worldview without regard to sales and without having their hands tied by bookstores who won’t order unless the books are watered down so as to be acceptable to fundamentalist Christian consumers. ECPA houses have, so far, not been widely successful in this, and children who love to read are left reading books with anti-Christian thought, new age religious beliefs, and sexually sinful ideas presented as wholesome.
So that’s my wish and my prayer. Not that a quake would come and wipe out our liberal-minded brethren in the children’s publishing industry but that men with cash would catch the vision and enter the arena of public thought by publishing books that offer another point of view to our reading children. Let’s have all sides presented so our children can make informed decisions.
Hey, a girl can dream, can’t she?
That more shelf space and publishing slots would open up and pave the way for more new authors to break in.
Cheryl
Thanks for those of you who have shared your wishes thus far. It’s dreamy (and heady) to think about them coming true, isn’t it?
Sally, of course the genesis of the Christian (evangelical) arm of publishing began with men who had a sense of mission. Even though they didn’t have much money and most publishing houses began in garages,those publishers still owned by a family have held strongly to the sense of mission. That’s heartening stuff.
I wish publishers would spend more of their publicity time and money on new authors instead of those who already sell well. After all, if authors are well known, people will buy their books anyway, and if a lot of publicity goes to new ones, they’ll become well known. Of course publishers pay more to the ones who are already successful, so they have to be sure those books will sell well, but in the long run they’d probably make it up if they did more to help books by new authors sell better.
I wish that the publishing industry would discover the wonders of ME.
Now that that’s taken care of…
I recognize that the “industry” is not a faceless machine, but a conglomeration of people, pedaling as fast as they can. So I appreciate the people. What makes it hard for them, and for us authors, is the economic swamp we’re slogging through.
So I wish a stronger economic environment.
I wish the publishing version of iTunes would hurry up and get here (whoever, whatever it may be).
I wish renewed vision and passion for publishers and authors alike. We have a mission, and God, in his providence, opens and shuts doors in his own [exceedingly slow] time. While we wait, I wish for confidence in his perfect plan.
I wish biblical integrity and depth.
I wish a growing focus on the grace of God and not so much on the duties of us.
I wish fun, edge-of-your seat writing.
I wish for crossover books that draw millions of people who grope in darkness to the light of Jesus.
I wish I would quit rambling.
I wish Christian books were the norm instead of the exception…the majority instead of the minority!
Sorry for leaving so many long rants on your blog. You keep asking questions that get me all hot and bothered. 🙂
I wish authors would take their writing more seriously–of course if you are on here, you do take it very seriously. I think the new technology has caused “authors” to want their books too fast. In the past, rejections made you work harder and improve your craft. Unfortunately, since publishers are publishing less, authors are forced to look for new avenues. But that tends to take away the hard knocks and learning curve. I think it’s a two way street–publsihers need to do more authors, but authors need to work hard to earn it.
Lee and Low Books is an independent children’s book publisher specializing in diversity. They take pride in nurturing many minority authors and illustrators who are new to the world of children’s book publishing.
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