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For awhile, reading Publishers Lunch everyday was like a constantly updated Who’s Who of small bookstores that were closing their doors due to the economy’s gentle slide downhill. Now that the economy is considered to be officially on the downhill slide, reading Publishers Lunch has become like reading a Who’s Who of library budget cuts.

It bothers me when libraries get cut. Especially with the increasing cost of books, the increasing demand for technology and technology upgrades, increase in staff costs, etc. How will they keep up?

Several years ago, working in a school library it became a sad state of affairs. School budgets were being cut and principals were turning to their libraries to pass on the favour. Librarians were given less resources, more work and less time to do it all. It is a proven fact that a school with a well-funded library has better test scores and higher literacy rates. So, as literacy declined, the government entered combat mode and began allocating funds to schools for a literacy program. (Not libraries.) Meanwhile, their libraries would wallow and flounder. Silly people, read your research! After a few years, the money would run out and the literacy program would shut down. Not exactly a long term solution.

Now the cuts are heading into the public domain. For example, in today’s Publishers Lunch, the news is that the governor of New York is proposing that they cut the library budget by 20%. That is a BIG cut. Particularly since “library usage has skyrocketed over the last year as more people turn to libraries for finding jobs, improving their literacy skills and for free reading materials and programs for their families”. (Michael Borges executive director, NY Library Assoc.) P.S. If you are in Albany, NY, join the Rally against the cuts in the Well of the Legislative Office Building  from 1-2:30 pm on Tuesday, November 18th.

What do all these cuts mean? It means less new books (which means less sales for the new authors as well, plus less exposure as the libraries will buy the big name authors and be less likely to spend their money on an unknown or new author), it means older equipment in libraries, less staff to shelve books, research the good books and order them, less services and programs (inter-library loans, research for patrons, children programing, special features) for the public as well as reduced hours open to the public. These are just a few things off the top of my head. What we don’t know is how this is going to affect literacy in communities. For example, in poorer communities, they may even shut down libraries (there has been talk of that already in some areas). So what does this big budget cut spell for those neighbourhoods?

You can’t cut without consequences. We aren’t just cutting a few jobs, we’re lowering literacy (and making it harder for a new writer to break out). Wow. Do you think the governor would think twice if he knew that?

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I’m going to tell you things that may shock you today. Or at least make you think ‘what the hell?’ Are you ready?

First of all the Giller Prize. A fancy, dancy book award. Turns out Giller Prize books may not even be read by the judges. Uh, huh. You heard me. They end up with more books nominated than the poor judges could read in a year. So what do they do? Well, some of them grab page one, read it, flip through to about middle, read another page, then flip to some spot near the end and read there too. If they like those couple of pages, then it wins. Yup. That’s why some award winners make you wonder.

Bestsellers. Until about two years ago bestseller lists were compiled not actually from how well books sold. There wasn’t even a way to tell which books were selling the best. Newspapers with their bestseller lists would call up local bookstores and ask what they thought was selling the best. Dear lord. I’ve heard that in the past few years things have changed and that the lists may actually be accurate. Still, it kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

And Amazon’s bestselling list (while magical in its formula–and a secret too) is also misleading. You can claim that your book was a book that sold in the Amazon top 100. Okay, yes. Maybe it did for a second. But that means pretty much nothing, according to some. It seems as though the results can be tinkered with and you can make your book launch into the bestselling 100 for a minute or two if you have the right technique. Some argue that you can’t. Basically, from what I hear, nobody’s buying it if you claim amazing stats from your book sales over on Amazon. Unless you are Dan Brown or JK Rowling.

Back to contests. Aspiring writers are told by some to enter contests left, right and center. Go win one. Go place in one. If you do, you’ll get an agent’s attention, plus you will have some credentials to put in your query. Thing is, apparently nobody cares unless you win. Thing is, you have to win more than your local contest. You have to win a major contest. MAJOR contest. Otherwise, the assumption is that you were simply the best in the pile of crap that came in.

Sorry to shatter your perceptions, but well, it had to be done. I hope you’ll forgive me.

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Both literary agents Kristen Nelson and Kate Schafer Testerman are spilling the beans this week on what’s hot out there in the book market. In other words what editors want to see so they can publish it. That would be calls for middle grade and basically creepy, thriller, suspense sort of stuff.

Creepy, thriller…

Yeah, I don’t write that. But if you do, it might just be your year.

(And folks, make sure you buy people new books for Christmas, the publishers are counting on you!)

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My fingers are burning up my keyboard so amazingly fast that there are flames shooting out all over the place.

Okay, maybe not. But I did write 4,228 words in about 3 hours this afternoon. That’s pretty fast. My word count for NaNoWriMo is now 13,052. Wahoo! And the story is officially over the starting hump and all the fun action gets to happen now. Either the story is going to roll out before me like some grand red carpet, or the earth in front of me is going to crumble and fall away like some video game. One or the other. I’m kind of hoping for the red carpet, but seeing as I don’t know what the next big key in the story is going to be–you know, the one the story sits on–it really could go either way.

Oh, and it seems to be taking more of an urban fantasy feel than a chick lit feel. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not seeing as urban fantasy is pretty much the next genre bubble that is about to pop. If it hasn’t already. At least there are no vampires. (Nothing against the undead or those who write about them.)

So there you have it, a NaNoWriMo update.

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Today, I officially began writing my story for NaNoWriMo. I must say, I am a writing machine. In the span of two hours, I went from 0 words to 2888. And they even make sense. Plus, I think I even have progression working in my favour this time. However, I’m not sure if I introduce a story hook in a compelling way and soon enough in the first scene. I did spend some time tinkering with that. But this is, of course, a rough draft and as Chris Baty, Program Director over at NaNoWriMo said in his pep talk email of November 1st:

“The books we write in November won’t start out like the novels we buy in bookstores. Because the novels we buy in bookstores didn’t start out like bookstore-novels either. Nope. They started out as way-less beautiful, way-more exciting things called first drafts. These are the dinged-up cousins to final drafts, and they’re packed with crazy energy and laughable tangents and embarrassing instances where a main character’s name shifts six times over the course of a single chapter.”

I agree wholeheartedly. And that is why, I am not so worried about whether my story starts off with the biggest bang that it could. Part of the reason why is that I don’t know the whole story yet which means that I don’t know what’s going to be the best way for it to begin. In fact, I’m pretty certain that I’ll be changing the beginning in at least one or two or eight ways before the story is considered ‘ready’.

If I can keep things going, I will be done my 50,000 words in a span of 34 hours (nonconsecetive). Does that sound right? Seems a bit…fast. Then again, I have tossed down over 80,000 words in a month, so 50,000 shouldn’t surprise me.

I pinched this timely photo from Inner Geek.

Now if that NaNoWriMo website wasn’t so amazingly slow that I could actually check in on my NaNo buddies and upload my word count…

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I’ve promised myself to write a new story for NaNoWriMo this month. I even have a story idea that has been flouncing around in the back of my head for at least 6-8 months. No worries, right?

Well maybe if the genre I write in wasn’t dead. Seriously. I had a published author tell me the story of how her chick lit novel didn’t sell, despite editor interest, last year. I’ve heard agents proclaim that the genre is dead. Can’t sell a thing. Not so good for the unpublished writer of chick lit, is it?

But I have faith. I really enjoy writing chick lit and it is the genre for which I get the majority of my ideas. There has got to be a way. In the meantime, what is a gal to do when she’s promised herself to write a NaNoWriMo story but the story idea is <eeek> chick lit.

I suppose it means suck it up and write it! Write what you love–that’s always the advice they give out, isn’t it?

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I have to say, I love the Internet and the opportunities it has afforded me lately. It’s sweet!

Today I discovered that I could become a book reviewer for the publisher Thomas Nelson. What that means is that if you have a blog, you can sign up to be a reviewer. Once you’ve signed up, you can choose one of their upcoming books from a small list of your interests. They then ship it to you. You read it, review it (200 words or more) and post it on your blog as well as on Amazon. How sweet is that?

Pretty sweet!

So, for my debut review, I will be covering Lynne Spears’ (with Lorilee Craker) new book Through the Storm: A Real Story of Fame, and Family in a Tabloid World.

Now, it will be some time before I get the book and read it. But the review will be right here on my blog. And although I am not a fan of Britney Spears nor have I really followed her story, I must admit that my curiosity has been tweaked by how things have turned out for this family. This book, for me, is an insider’s view on what really happened and I’m sure Lynne is about to dish (at least a little bit): “I’m not terribly exciting, truth be told. But my family has had an exceptional journey—really, a wild ride—and people think they know us from what they read. But they really don’t know us at all.” Exactly! That’s why I’m so curious about her book! And of course, I am also curious due to the whole car crash factor. So stay posted! And if you have your own blog, come build your library, it is a fantastic deal for the publisher and for you!

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For me, the end of October means Halloween. It also means that my husband’s birthday is right around the corner and now, that NaNoWriMo is too!

On the subject of Halloween, I still have a gorgeous lion costume I was planning to take to a consignment shop. But like last year, it’ll languish in the closet for at least another 365 days. Sometime between now and the dawn of Halloween, I’ve got to find a 6′3″ Elvis costume. Hmmm…

However, I am getting off easy this year. I don’t have to dress up. I even missed the volunteer sign up for my daughter’s kindergarten class party. I tell ya, that sign up was full before it was even tacked to the wall. Yikes!

In past years, waaaay back when I dressed up as Pippy Longstocking.

That was a fun costume. I stuck coat hangers in my braids to make them stick up and dyed my coverall shorts blue. I even sprayed my blonde hair red. I really went to town on that costume. However, finding stripy leggings to complete the costume was difficult. So difficult, that I ended up sacrificing a pair of white longjohns and painting them, in all infinite wisdom, with the metal paint I had on hand from doctoring up my car.

Sorry, the editor won’t let me turn Mikey the right side up.

Let me tell you, it takes a long time for metal paint to dry on waffle long johns. In fact, they still weren’t dry when I went out to the bar. No worries, right? Well…the paint fumes might have been a problem if I had been a smoker and it only took a few days for the paint that had soaked through the fabric to wash off.

Have you ever dressed up as a literary character? Go over to Matt’s blog and vote if you have (or haven’t). And have a safe and happy Halloween everyone!

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There’s been lots of hubbub lately about the economy. If you get the daily emails from Publishers Lunch you’ll have noticed that it isn’t that unusual to read a report of another bookstore going down. Occasionally, like the other day, you have a publisher declare bankruptcy.

If you are like me, you shrug your shoulders and move on. It happens.

However, as Kristen Nelson, literary agent and owner of Nelson Literary Agency, comments in her blog (Pub Rants), publisher bankruptcy can spell uh-oh for a writer. After reading her blog post and then the links provided in her comments section (Writer’s Block and In the (Red)), I became a bit concerned. You see, although writers often have a clause in their publishing contracts stating that their rights will revert back to them if something happens to the publisher, it isn’t always that simple. A judge who is overseeing the bankruptcy proceedings can declare that paragraph void and claim the income on a particular work as part of the pile of assets needed to pay off the guaranteed creditors. Yikes. Authors, as far as I know, are not considered to be guaranteed creditors. Meaning, they get the shaft.

It doesn’t seem right to me, but it is definitely worth thinking about if you are about to sign a contract with a publisher–even if the economy isn’t in the you-know-what.

Tags: career building // 6 Comments »

Once upon a time, not too long ago, people in Canadian bookstores were getting into fisty cuffs over book prices. You see the Canadian dollar began to soar to heights previously unknown. The problem is that in Canada books are marked with American prices and Canadian prices. The American price is always much lower than the Canadian price. (For example, a $3 difference for the average paperback.) It seemed as though Canadians got a bit tired of getting stiffed with unreasonable prices. And so they began throwing books back at Canadian booksellers when they wouldn’t give them the American price (in Canada). It seemed as though some folks forgot that just because the Canadian dollar was currently higher than the American dollar, it did not mean that we all got to pretend we were suddenly Americans in American bookstores and should be getting American prices. Nobody thought about the fact that these books had likely been purchased while the Canadian dollar was low and that there are usually increased costs in deliverying a book to Canada, both accounting for a higher list price. Plus, there is also the small fact that the Canadian dollar would not remain on the top of the heap forever. Eventually some books began to reflect the high Canadian dollar in regards to price and some booksellers honoured the American price from time to time. Yet, in the back of our minds, we knew it wasn’t something we could enjoy forever.

And now the time has come. The Canadian dollar, according to Publishers Lunch, has declined to its lowest point in three years. So what does that mean for booksellers and book buyers in Canada? Well, book prices are going to go back up, right?

“The plunge has been so quick that it leaves little time to react heading into the holiday season. Harper Canada ceo David Kent says that “there is a mad scramble to reprice US imported books; the difficulty is that there has been a yo-yo effect on the exchange rate” making it hard to set a new price level.” (Publishers Lunch, October 22nd, 2008.)

“If the Canadian dollar does not rebound soon more systemic repricing will be necessary though for now most executives have a wait-and-see approach. Davidar says “we’re being cautious about taking any new pricing decisions until we have a better sense of where the dollar will be in a few months’ time.” Practically speaking, broad repricing takes time. “It takes us from four to six months to change the prices on front-list titles; backlist would depend on when titles come up for reprint.” Hanson says “we are being careful about jumping too quickly. We don’t anticipate any changes through this holiday season.”" (Publishers Lunch, October 22, 2008.) That means lower prices still in effect! Yippeee!

“As Random House Canada president Brad Martin points out, consumers should be the winners in holiday buying.” [Yes!] ”"Books are even a greater value now then they were a month ago. This is a message that the entire industry in Canada should get behind as we move into the fall gift giving season.” With publishers’ margins taking a big hit, even more rides on those holiday sales. “We will have to sell more books to make up that shortfall,” Martin adds.”

So what is the moral of this story? Go buy some books! Forget about other gift ideas, books are where it’s at. To save the publishers, buy everyone on your Christmas list a book this year. I think I will.

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