For Writers

Lessons from Becoming a Bookseller

By on April 27, 2015   /   For Parents, For Writers, Indie Spotlight, Publishing & Promotion  

Last year I took a part time job at my local independent bookstore, Annie Blooms Books. I spend seven to twelve hours a week on the floor, restocking books, handling special orders, ringing up sales and helping customers find books. I spend another three to ten hours a week working on author events both in the bookstore and off site. Annie Blooms is a general bookseller with a strong children’s section so I’ve particularly enjoyed broadening my horizons beyond children’s books. Here are ten things I’ve learned from bookselling that have broadened my perspective as an author.

IMG_12941. People like to read what other people are reading. Blockbusters are not entirely engineered by publishers. They tend to occur naturally because reading is a more social activity than it seems.

2. But on a related note, Blockbusters are hard to predict. Sometimes a book gets a ton of hype, a fat advance, even a celebrity author and it just doesn’t connect with readers even if the bookseller happens to love it. Sometimes a quiet title surprises everyone.

3. Indy booksellers love it when an underdog takes the prize, whether the prize is an actual literary award or just strong sales. Indy booksellers are at a disadvantage in the marketplace dominated by Amazon and the big chain stores so we have a fellow feeling for small publishers and debut authors and often go out of our way to recommend underdog books.

4. Reviews matter. Without fail when a book is mentioned on NPR we sell out of that title by the end of the day. Probably we only had 1-3 copies of it in the store, but still, that’s impressive. Sunday is a good day for us because people come in with the newspaper book review section looking for something specifically. I always cared about the loss of regular book reviewing in the local paper. Now I care even more. If you are lucky enough to live in a town that still puts book reviews in the paper, give your newspaper some praise and attention.

5. Libraries are a bookstores best friend. Lots of parents & grandparents come in looking for the book their kid has checked out 500 times from the library. A long hold list at the library tends to encourage people to buy rather than wait. A strong library system feeds avid reading and encourages library goers to buy the best of the library books they’ve read.

6. Often people are buying a book gift for a person they don’t know well. So a bookseller who can spend 10 minutes chatting with them about what 10 year old girls, who like horses and magic but nothing to scary, are loving this year is a huge help. It’s one of the things that most sets a bookstore apart from an online book vender.

7. Book gifts reflect both the pleasure of the readeIMG_1353r and the values of the giver.  I find this especially true of grandparents. They often go for the nostalgia read which is why we still carry book like Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel. They also want something that reflects Oregon to send to distant grandchildren. Or something that reflects their family history which is why historical fiction and immigration stories appeal to them.

8. A white book buyer is often choosing books for a  child who is not
white. This was a very happy discovery and I’ve learned to be bold about suggesting diverse titles to white buyers (grandparents especially) who are thrilled to see kids on the cover who look, not like them, but like the beloved children in their lives.

IMG_1287_29. Often people are not there for the books. A bookstore more than most shops is a place people come for a little oasis in their busy life. We have families who make it the after soccer game treat every Saturday, friends who meet up before going to the pub next door, people who stop every afternoon on the way back from the dog park and teenagers who come to hang out with their pals. Most of these people don’t buy every time. Sometimes they are just here to pet the store cat or rock on the store dragon.

10. Passion matters. Booksellers tend to gush over their favorite books. They squee happily when someone brings it to the counter. Engage in lengthy patron chat about what else the favorite author has written, and brainstorm similar books. We don’t get paid to care and the books we care about are often not best sellers nationally, but sometimes booksellers can bring to light a book over looked by the big awards and reviewers and make it a star.

 

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The Cooperative Children’s Book Center

By on April 20, 2015   /   For Librarians, For Parents, For Teachers, For Writers, Giveaways, Writing  

When you read an article like this about diversity in children’s literature, you are likely to see statistics cited. Those statistics often come from the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, or CCBC, which has been tracking trends in children’s literature, with a special emphasis on diversity, for decades.

Multicultural Stats Graphic 2002-2014 (1)

The CCBC is a research library on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus devoted to books for children and young adults. For over fifty years, the CCBC has been serving the University community as well as teachers, librarians, and book lovers statewide.

If you are in Madison, you can visit the CCBC and wander aimlessly through the stacks or you can have one of the very helpful librarians help you find what you are looking for.  You can attend book discussions and presentations by the very helpful librarians, and lectures by famous writers and illustrators. For example, the Charlotte Zolotow Lecture  is held every fall. Past lecturers included Judy Blume, Lois Lowry, and Rita Williams-Garcia. Some of the lectures have been archived on video. This year’s lecture will be presented by Yuyi Morales.

The CCBC has recently moved to a larger space. They took their old friend Paul Bunyan with them.

Paul Bunyan closeup

He’s been in the CCBC, wherever it’s been located, since 1963.

There’s a new feature in the new space, a mural based on Lois Ehlert’s Planting a Rainbow. (Since it’s on window instead of a wall, should it be called a fenestral?)

CCBC flower wall

If you find yourself in Madison, check out the CCBC, but there’s one thing you can’t do at this library—check out books.

Even if you can’t get there in person, you can still use many of the resources at the CCBC. One of the most unique is the online exhibit of drafts of Ellen Raskin’s Newbery-award-winning book The Westing Game, along with notes, galleys, and an audio recording of Raskin talking about the manuscript.  It provides a wonderful insight into the writing and book design process.

One of the most popular resources is CHOICES, the annual best-of-the-year book published by the CCBC. Each issue of CHOICES includes an essay on that year’s publishing trends, a description of each book (there are 259 in this year’s issue), and author/title/illustrator and subject indexes. You can get the list of this year’s books here.  If you want to get your hands on the book itself, go here (or enter the giveaway at the end of this post).

choices 2015

 

The Charlotte Zolotow Award is presented by the CCBC every year and recognizes outstanding writing in picture books for children.

On the website, you will find pages full of information about Harry Potter and graphic novels. There are videos highlighting great new books, podcasts, webcasts, and interviews. The carefully curated bibliographies and booklists cover a wide range of topics from poetry to bullying to food. And don’t miss the CCBlogC for the latest news and books.

The CCBC provides services to Wisconsin librarians and teachers who are facing book challenges.  There are also resources for anyone dealing with intellectual freedom issues.

Many of the activities of the CCBC are supported by the Friends of the CCBC. The Friends help out with the publication of CHOICES, the events and awards, and with outreach by the librarians.  And the book sale. Oh, the book sale! The CCBC receives thousands of books each year. Even in the new, bigger space, they can’t keep them all.  Twice a year, the Friends sell the extra books to raise funds for their activities.  A couple of weeks ago, I scored a grocery bag full of some great books at the spring sale. I also picked up five issues of CHOICES (2011-2015) to send to one lucky winner. Enter here:

A RAFFLECOPTER GIVEAWAY

Jacqueline Houtman has used the collection at the CCBC to study books with autistic characters while she was working on The Reinvention of Edison Thomas, and to study biographies for young people while she was working on Bayard Rustin: The Invisible Activist.  She served on the Board of Directors of the Friends of the CCBC  for three years. 

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Where the Story Is …

By on April 13, 2015   /   For Writers, Writing  

“Geography of Nowhere” – the session at the Association of Writing Programs (AWP) conference on April 11, 2015, caught my interest before I noticed the powerhouse lineup of authors presenting (Kirstin Cronn-Mills, Nikki Loftin, Janet Fox, and Geoff Herbach). The topic of setting as character is one a writing pal and I have recently been discussing (read: obsessing over). How do some writers create a sense of place that roots the story and gives the characters context? On the flip side, how can we avoid the excessive description that I keep encountering in books I’m reading (and abandoning) recently?

Screen Shot 2015-04-12 at 6.33.03 PM

Details in “The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy” by Nikki Loftin bring each corner and shadow to life. Setting is a sinister character.

I walked into the session just as Kirstin Cronn-Mills talked about the setting of one of her YA books (The Sky Always Hears Me and the Hills Don’t Mind) as “fifty miles from the closest Target.” Brilliant! With six words she immediately conjures the expansiveness and confines of the character’s hometown.

Each of the panelists talked about sensory details, like how the sound of wind changes at the top of a hill. And in some locations, you can’t overlook the weather. In Texas in August, Nikki Loftin said, the weather is a character; it’s there in the dust and the sweat and the sheer oppressiveness of heat.

“Choose details that will reflect an aspect or emotion of the main character,” Janet Fox advised. In Nightingale’s Nest, Loftin created a bargain store — the kind that exist in towns too small to attract big-name big-box stores — called Emperor’s Emporium. She needed the specificity of this store to show the longing of her main character, John, whose family’s poverty is a level below the people who shop there

What about the settings that seem so mundane and repetitive to many of us? The suburbs or the residential housing along interstate corridors? Cronn-Mills sees these as “a blank canvas that you can embroider;” authors can create quirky places where kids want to go.

My notes from this conference session are full of arrows and underlines, along with my own characters’ names and details of their surroundings. In the midst of revising a manuscript, the nuggets I gained from this session are helping me cut and clarify. And that is a glorious thing.

This was my second year attending the AWP conference, and I again was overwhelmed by how helpful, instructive, and motivating these sessions can be. There were 13,000 writers in Minneapolis for the 2015 AWP gathering, and hundreds of sessions on the craft of writing. This is a hard-working and hard-writing group, and workshops were every hour, right through lunch and dinner, and beyond. The focus of the conference isn’t on writing for children — there were only a handful that specifically called out middle-grade — but every presentation I attended had a valuable take away. I want to be a better writer, and this focus on words — rather than marketing and selling — was pretty spectacular.

 

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