Of Thrones & Tempting Trailers: What Do You Like in a Book Trailer?

I don't often use this blog to blatantly push or promote Bloomsbury & Walker books (in fact, I don't really think I've shied away from putting them under the same analytical lens I apply to all of Young Adult lit), but today I do want to share a project that I'm immensely proud to have worked on: the book trailer for Throne of Glass, which debuted recently on MTV.com's Hollywood Crush blog.


By the by, if you like the trailer and want to read the book, Sarah Maas is holding an ARC giveaway on her blog through the end of this week.

Now, I want to know: what do you think of the trailer? More importantly, since I'll likely be working on many more of these over the next several seasons, what do you usually like in a book trailer? What do you never like to see? How much do book trailers affect your interest in a book, usually?

I'm looking forward to hearing from you!

On Breaking New Years Resolutions and Meeting Lifelong Goals

I made exactly two resolutions at the beginning of 2011: to rock the knee-high argyle socks off my job, and to read fifty books—five in each of ten categories I wanted to read more frequently. And, well… I didn’t do either of them.

I didn't do them, but in reality I did so much more. Rather than rocking the job that I had at the beginning of 2011, I came to accept that it wasn’t helping me get where I wanted to be, and I made the difficult decision to leave it for a much riskier but much more fulfilling position at Bancroft Press. And while I didn’t read all fifty of the books I set out to read at the beginning of the year, I read sixty-three books in total, including several manuscripts I provided editorial feedback for and a whole herd of books I read either to prepare for interviews or as a part of the new jobs I took in 2011.

In truth, 2011 was a year of accomplishments. I took a risk on a contract job in children’s books that taught me an immense amount and renewed my passion for the field, and from there I stepped up into an even better position in children’s books as the Assistant Marketing Manager at Bloomsbury & Walker Books for Young Readers. I not only survived the first two years out of college (someone once told me those would be the hardest two years of my life, and boy were they right), but I came out of them with flying colors. I moved to New York City, was tough as nails throughout a difficult apartment search and lease negotiation, and befriended roommates who truly make the city feel like home for the first time. I majorly increased the traffic to this blog and (in my opinion) upped the quality of its content, which has spurred enlightening conversations with wonderfully insightful readers all over the internet. And in less than five months at Bloomsbury, I’ve quadrupled the group’s followers on Twitter and helped brainstorm several innovative, exciting marketing programs and promotions for the company’s books, including a really exciting one for Fracture which I can’t wait to share.

2011 plucked me off every path I tried to walk down and plopped me onto new roads I never quite expected to take. It was a year that made me struggle to get a glimpse at my own future. It was often frightening or frustrating, and I was always aware that I should be controlling my own future and yet unable to do anything but hold my breath and leap or stumble forward. And yet, by its end 2011 saw the fulfillment of the goal I set for myself, however spectrally, in 2001—a goal I’ve been actively working towards since 2009.

I realized this late last November, when I stumbled across and reread my personal journal from 2009, the year I graduated from college. 2009 was a difficult year, as anyone who entered (or tried to enter) the workforce at the height of the financial recession can tell you. It dealt my self-confidence blow after blow, and I spent most of it struggling not just to heal my suffering self-esteem and decide what to do with my life, but also to feed and house myself in a city I couldn’t afford or bring myself to like. I remember it as a year of incredible downs, but I was surprised to find in my journal several moments of powerful hope. And, most poignantly of all, I found this moment of self-reflection from a week before I graduated from college and began that difficult journey:

I can remember back to when I was trying to choose a college, and I learned about Phi Beta Kappa and about Goucher's college literary arts magazine, and I told myself that I wanted to make it into Phi Beta Kappa and I wanted to be the editor-in-chief of the lit mag by senior year… I didn't think either of those things would happen… I can't explain how accomplished I feel, having fulfilled to two huge goals I set for myself a very long time ago, when I was a very different person, but just as driven. And I think that I will never stop being driven like that, and since I want to be in publishing so badly, I will never stop trying until I'm in.

And, what do you know, I am in.

It hasn’t been easy at all. A lot of times it’s been terrifyingly uncertain or incredibly painful. But everything I’ve done since graduating college has led me right to where I am now—happy, and doing the work I’ve always wanted to do. And whatever resolutions I’ve broken along the way, I’ve at least proven to myself, once again, that when I set goals I meet them. With flying colors.

On My New Job at (...wait for it...) Bloomsbury Kids!

I can't believe how quickly August flew by, cats and kittens! I'm so sorry for disappearing on you—and for the fact that I can't come back quite yet.

But I did want to pop in and let you know what's going on, now that it feels real enough that I can actually say it and not be afraid I'll wake up.

Between the last week of July and now, I've...

...Moved out of my house in Baltimore, and...

...Become a permanent resident of New York City, and...

...Started a new job as...

The Assistant Marketing Manager
at Bloomsbury & Walker Books for Young Readers!

I can't even begin to tell you how happy I am to be a part of Bloomsbury USA's vibrant, close-knit, and utterly brilliant team of editors, publicists, designers, and marketers. I absolutely adore the company's books and am loving every minute I get to spend talking to fans, bloggers, librarians, and booksellers. What's more, I'm diving right in with trade and digital campaigns, and making full use of social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook (links to our pages below; I can't wait to connect with you there!). It's too soon to talk about everything I'll be doing, but I can say that Bloomsbury and I are a very happy fit. We share the philosophy that good marketing is about strong connections, and that all books deserve a unique touch and a totally customized marketing program. I am very excited, not just about Bloomsbury's books, but also about the company's future. And I'm proud to help shape that future.

Follow us on Twitter
Or on our Facebook pages:
Bloomsbury Teens
Bloomsbury Kids
Perfect Chemistry, by Simone Elkeles (The #8 NYT Bestselling Series!)
Need, by Carrie Jones
The Drake Chronicles
Alyxandra Harvey
Shannon Hale

By the way, that image up there is from the cover of Jessica Day George's Tuesdays at the Castle, one of our Fall titles!

"We Aren't as Pretty or Interesting": Why White Readers and Publishers Have Got to Think in Color

I've had this post outlined for weeks, but I've been too busy during the week and too exhausted on weekends to find the motivation to write it, and now it seems a bit outdated. So let that be a lesson to you, writer-friends: make time to write, because if you don't a giant Amazon/Macmillan debacle will come and outshine you.

I considered scrapping this post altogether in order to focus on what's hot in the news right now, but to be honest, I haven't got much to add to the breakdown you can get from Rachelle Gardner, Kristin Nelson or that awesome dude named Eric over at Pimp My Novel. But since I do have something to say about people of color on book covers, and because it's incredibly important that these things get said, well... here goes:

In another blogger uproar like the one I posted about in November, the white-washing of Jaclyn Dolamore's Magic Under Glass made big news. After enough bloggers pointed out the fact that Bloomsbury -- the same publisher that whitewashed Justine Larbalestier's Liar -- had misrepresented the novel's darker-skinned narrator on the cover, the company issued an apology, stating that they'd soon be providing a new cover for future editions. And the book-blogging world rejoiced, again.

But when we stop celebrating, we've got to realize that the fact that the same publisher whitewashed covers twice, in rapid succession, is indicative of a serious issue. And other bloggers have noted that it's not just these books, and not just Bloomsbury. So why does this happen?

It happens because, unfortunately, the publishing world has yet to fully step outside of the white privilege with which it's been associated for ages. And it will be hard for it to do so.

Breaking into the industry -- even devoting serious amounts of time to reading for leisure -- requires money. It requires proximity to most of the publishing world in Manhattan, a notoriously expensive place. It requires a certain amount of leisure time in which to read and think. It requires, usually, the privilege of education. It requires the propensity to dream big dreams, and to see their fulfillment as a possibility. And all of these things are unavailable to a large segment of our society: the lower classes. And because race and class (along with gender and sexual orientation and gender identity and countless serious matters I can't discuss in one post) are inextricably bound in our culture, publishing's class issues are also its race issues.

I'm uncomfortable blogging about this, as a white, upper middle class Editorial Assistant. Only 33% of my city's population identifies as white, and yet 95% of the people I work with from day to day are Caucasian. I can't ignore the fact that my background -- my class and my race -- benefit me in this industry. Does that make me an inherently bad person? I hope not.

But it does mean that I, and other white readers and industry professionals, have an added responsibility. Because a huge percentage of the decision-makers in the book business are white, proposals most often get read by white agents, who bring their white perspectives to the table when deciding if characters feel realistic and if their struggles feel relevant. From there, they're read by white editors who bring them to acquisition meetings attended by the mostly-white staff of their respective houses. So, in effect, the people who get to decide which stories are worth telling, worth re-telling, and worth printing and binding and hyping up and selling, are mostly white. And if we're not careful, it's easy to forget that our experience is not universal. Having benefited from our backgrounds, we as publishers have a responsibility to consider what stories will speak to those whose experiences have been different from our own.

It's very, very easy to assume white as a default -- especially when we spend most of our time around people who share our background. One of the reasons that an uproar was so long in coming is that Magic Under Glass stated its narrator's skin color less explicitly than did Liar. And, having read the textual descriptions of the main character's appearance, I can see why many readers assumed Nimira looked just like the model on the cover; the book never specifically calls her colored.

And that's the problem. Too often, when we imagine a character from a book, we assume white unless otherwise stated. And we've been able to do that for too long because of our privilege. But white is not the default race -- whiteness is not the default experience -- and we must shake the idea that it is.

I'm working hard to do this. I'm trying to shake the fact that my internal narrator has an undeniably European-American accent. I'm trying to imagine characters in a rainbow of colors rather than picturing them as white characters and then modifying that image when I learn of their race. Frankly, it's hard. It's hard to go outside my own experience and forget what it's like to be in the majority -- which is to say nothing of how hard it is to not be in the majority, and to have no choice but to venture outside one's own experience.

So I'm looking to you all. How do you deal with this issue? Are you challenging yourselves to read or buy books about people of color? To drop whatever assumptions you may have about race? And how do you think we can help change the industry and -- even more importantly -- the way we and other readers and publishers think?

How Book Blogging Can Make a Book Big, or How it Can Change the World

A few weeks ago, I spent a Saturday afternoon at the Children's Literary Cafe at the New York Public Library's new Children's Room. Pam Coughlan, Elizabeth Burns, Susan Thomsen and Anne Boles Levy (co-founder and director of The Cybils, who is unfortunately no longer blogging) led a fascinating panel on the Kidlitosphere and The Cybils. Moderated by SLJ blogger extraordinaire Elizabeth Bird, the four blogging powerhouses talked about everything from the creation of the Cybils to FTC limitations on advertisements in blogs.

Now, I'm always interested in thinking about how power shifts and influence is asserted, so when we began to discuss how bloggers have changed not only the book review process but the whole of the publishing process, I was intrigued. Fifteen years ago, the ladies said, publishers would have sent Advanced Reader's Copies (ARCs) of an upcoming title to all the known review sources (The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and so on and so forth), just as they do today. But, for the most part, that would have been it; a whole world of active bloggers didn't yet exist.

These days, bloggers have asserted themselves in a big way, and publicity departments take bloggers who review books more than seriously. The big-name review sources are great for reaching wide general audiences and especially for appealing to librarians. Nonetheless, really good bloggers often have their own groups of hundreds if not thousands of dedicated readers, and no publisher wants to miss the opportunity to reach that book-hungry crowd.

So bloggers can find themselves practically swimming in free review copies (major bonus), and publishers can benefit from the sort of word-of-mouth publicity that turns great books into major hits. The catch for publishers? Reviewers get to say whatever they want.

And so they have, to great effect. What I love about the power bloggers now wield in the book industry is that they can do far more than just trash a book; they can question it. And when enough bloggers question, somebody has to answer.

It was bloggers who first started questioning the review copies of Justine Larbalestier's Liar, wondering why the cover featured a white girl when the main character was clearly African-American. When Justine admitted that she was unhappy with the cover but that the house had refused to change it, posting her own powerful objection to the white-washing of titles in what is still, in many ways, an unequal industry, the battle took off.

Publishers and readers alike began to look for how race was addressed in the books they read. Cheryl Klein of Scholastic's Arthur A. Levine Books immediately posted her encouragement to writers dealing with issues of race, and updated her submission guidelines to encourage racially diverse submissions. Justine suggested that readers show the industry just how well covers featuring minority groups can sell by making an effort to buy at least one book featuring a person of color on its cover, and readers delivered. And everyone in the industry was reminded that book publishing no longer happens in some hidden room filled with the smells of ink and rust and paper where editors lurk and marketers plot their dastardly marketing plans (interns, of course, lurk in an even darker and more hidden room).

Justine's plea for readers to buy books featuring characters of color plays off of the power of the consumer, which is a strong force indeed. But the power of bloggers may even exceed it. Publishers are spending more money and more time attempting to appeal to reviewers -- a look at the flashy covers attached to review copies now but never present twenty years ago can show you that -- and they're looking to early reviewers to do more than generate blurbs. Because they see books before they even hit the market, bloggers can provide feedback that incites change in a book before it's ever released.

The best Justine might have hoped for, after her book's release, would have been a paperback reissue with a different cover. But bloggers saw the book before anyone else and made their opinions known; in response, Bloomsbury changed the cover of Liar.

My guess is that the power of bloggers will only grow as social media and e-publishing become more prominent in the industry. As bloggers test the limits of their power, publishers are beginning to realize that they have no choice but to be up-front about their practices. And the more we talk about what's going on behind publishing-house doors, the more the industry has to take our opinions into account.

So you can consider this an invitation, a wake-up call or a mission statement. What's bothering you right now? Is it the dearth of minority characters in fiction? Is it the infuriating absence of female writers on the Publisher's Weekly Top 10 Books of 2009 list? The antifeminist trend of glorified, disempowered female protagonists? Or perhaps the questionable motives of large publishers experimenting with new divisions and sources of income?

Whether you agree or disagree with those conflicts -- in fact, whatever issue gets you fired up, I hope you're being very vocal about it. What's more, I hope you're being vocal in a way that encourages discussion, sharing and, most of all, change. Because you have more power than you may know.