The Writing Center

Margo Rabb’s essay in last weekend’s NYT Book Review opens with good news and bad news: the good news being Random House made an offer on her book within twenty-four hours, the bad news being Random House wanted to publish it as a Young Adult (YA) book.

Rabb writes, “My literary novel about death and grief, which I’d worked on for eight years, was a young adult book?” At MacDowell, a fellow writer said, “That’s such a shame.” Rabb quotes children’s author Mark Haddon (who also wrote the adult book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) on people’s reactions to his work as an author of children’s books: “as if I painted watercolors of cats or performed as a clown at parties.”

While in the UK, such crossover books are often sold in both sections of the bookstore, American publishing hasn’t quite gotten there. But while it may seem initially disappointing for an author to find his or her book envisioned as YA instead of adult, it’s becoming increasingly common to find familiar authors in the YA section (among them, Sherman Alexie, A.M. Homes, James Patterson, and many others). It can be a tough call, when a book is somewhere in between. Curtis Sittenfeld’s novel Prep, before being published as an adult book, was initially rejected by 14 editors who thought it was YA. Sittenfeld said, “You write the book you want to write, and then publishing has its way with it.”

And authors would do well to be flexible about the marketing of their books. Alexie’s first Y.A. novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, won the National Book Award for young people’s literature last year, at which point he said, “I obviously should’ve been writing Y.A. all along.”

This Publishers Weekly article highlights some of the recent success stories for self-published authors — the seven-figure deals that many self-published authors dream about. A shift is clearly taking place in which publishers are beginning to look at self-published books a lot more seriously; Dutton editor Ben Sevier tells PW, “It proves that great books are slipping through the cracks.”

Yet this doesn’t necessarily mean that self-publishing leads straight to the big money at the big houses. Those books that get the attention of the big publishers are already selling on their own; they’re already getting press and blurbs.

Agent David Fugate of LaunchBooks in San Diego, who negotiated a deal for a self-published book that had already sold 20,000 copies before being acquired, emphasizes they editors aren’t likely going to be interested without significant sales, in the range of 3,000 to 4,000 copies.

Self-publishing works best for someone with a platform. In fact, one recently signed Viking author (who got attention after a talk she gave at the TED conference) would likely have gotten editors’ and agents’ attention without her book. Editor Clare Ferraro said, “If Jill hadn’t had a book, I would have been no less interested in her.”

So if you want to self-publish, know your challenges and your limits — but also know where the best-case scenario could take you.

I just read this story about an interesting twist on Twitter — Quillpill, which though still in private beta is available by invitation at Techcrunch. It apparently is a new way for all would-be-novelists-if-I-only-had-the-time to write their novels…you simply write it 140 characters at a time, from your cell phone, whenever and wherever.

It sounds like lots of fun, except for two things: while it’s free now, a paid subscription is planned; plus the fact that while I appreciate the 140-character limit for the sake of concision, I wouldn’t necessarily want the world to see my first drafts of much of anything, even if it’s only 140 characters long.

But it’ll be interesting to see where this goes … Quillpill founders were inspired by the popularity of mobile publishing in Japan, where books written on cell phones have sold hundreds of thousands of copies — and some have gone on to become bestsellers in print.

Many of you may remember last year’s debate over David Sedaris’s work — fact or fiction? — an all-too-familiar debate these days for memoirists. Being a stickler for 100% truth in nonfiction (and feeling like the only one on the planet), I got a kick out of New York Magazine’s blurb on the subject, which notes that Barnes & Noble lists Sedaris’s new collection on its FICTION bestseller list (also noting that having sold more than twenty thousand copies of the book in its first week, Sedaris probably isn’t complaining).

Sedaris has recently labeled his work “97%” true, which to me isn’t nonfiction — but at least he’s admitting that he embellishes and invents. Which most of his readers already know (and likely don’t mind).

I just discovered Word Spy, a web site “devoted to lexpionage, the sleuthing of new words and phrases.” Words featured here are new terms that have been legitimized a bit through multiple appearances in newspapers, magazines, books, Web sites, and other recorded sources.

Some of the words and terms are hardly new — the publishing section lists such familiar terms as “backstory” and “chick lit” — but others in this section were a nice surprise, like “me-moir” (a memoir that is exceptionally self-centered) and “shnovel” (a self-help book disguised as a novel).

Overall, it’s lots of fun, and it’s a great way to fill up a few moments of “microboredom” (boredom caused by having nothing to do over a short period of time). Enjoy.

The Village Voice asks, “Why be the hundredth person on the beach getting sand in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth or smudging Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion with SPF 45? Put some idiosyncrasy into your life, folks!” And it follows with a list of literary luminaries and their favorite obscure books for a suggested summer reading list.

Since beach weather is most definitely upon us, check out the list — and enjoy.

Rachel Donadio’s column in the New York Times Book Review highlights some interesting numbers. She cites the NEA’s recent report finding that more than half of Americans haven’t read a book in the past year. She mentions that 400,000 books were published or distributed in 2007 (up from 300,000 the year before). And she notes that the blog tracker Technorati estimates that 175,000 new blogs are created daily. All of which adds up to some interesting math: it seems that more people are writing than reading these days.

Donadio pokes fun at the many self-published books that arrive at the NYT Book Review each week — but despite the lack of interest from reviewers and most booksellers, self-publishing and print-on-demand companies such as iUniverse and Xlibris are growing. And these opportunities open up publishing for those who write as a hobby rather than a career (for lifestyle writers, money that might otherwise be spent on golf trips or country club dues can be spent on design and printing).

But when looking at the math, most significant here is the decline in American readers as the number of writers grows. While I’m the first to agree that everyone has a story to tell, I wonder how well any writer can tell a story if he or she is not also an avid reader.

New Pages is looking for Literary Magazine Reviewers — so if you like to read them, feel inspired to talk about them, and (best of all) want to get them free, click here for more information from New Pages.

Congratulations to Tori Malcangio, whose story “Coveting Stucco” appears in the latest issue of ZYZZYVA, just now off the presses. If you can’t find a copy locally, visit the ZYZZYVA web site to order one.

Congrats, Tori!

This weekend I discovered FreeRice.com, which has proven itself to be yet another wonderful way to escape the blank page. It’s a fun little word game (rather like the SATs, only without the pressure) in which you guess the correct meaning of a word, and the program will adjust to make subsequent words harder or easier, depending on how you do. It’s good news all around: Free Rice will help you improve your vocabulary (if you’re ignoring your writing, you may as well be doing something that will enhance it) and, best of all, will donate rice through the UN World Food Program for every word you get right (okay, so there’s a little pressure). But you can play as long as you like, learning new words and helping combat world hunger. I’m hooked.