Greetings and salutations, as Charlotte the Spider might say. Never forget what she gave up for some pig. Also, I’m so sorry for starting with that. I’ll make it up to you with a quote from the book I always think of these days, when I think of E. B. White. Well, after this.
Which I think we can agree is the absolute best way to say no, perhaps ever. Even better than Bartleby’s “I prefer not to.” ANYWAY, the book in question isn’t even Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style. This is a book I’d recommend to any writers or editors, and also to most readers: Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom, collected and edited by Leonard S. Marcus (whose books are uniformly worth hunting down). Since we’ve been talking a lot of editors and how important they are of late, this fits right in.
Nordstrom was a legendary director of children’s literature at Harper from 1940 to 1973. She edited most of the early marquis names in the field—Maurice Sendak, Margaret Wise Brown, Garth Williams, Shel Silverstein, and, of course, E. B. White. Her correspondence style can be summed up as sharp and delightful.
Here’s a snippet of a letter she wrote to White on November 1971, on the occasion of White winning the National Medal of Honor from the National Book Committee, something that didn’t happen much in children’s literature and of which Nordstrom said “the whole building is buzzing.”
They are writing directly to you. Of course I never should have told you that Vladimir N(abokov) was part of your competition. So forget this literary tidbit. The person at the National Book Committee was horrified I might tell you what your competition consisted of.
So there is a party anecdote to put in your pocket.
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We did our tax prep today, so the brain is a little gooey, and hence the miscellany post.
Brandon Sanderson put up a long, very detailed, and refreshingly open post about the Kickstarter and what motivated it, what lessons he’s learned, and things he hopes might change in publishing as a result. Definitely worth reading. Knowing that so much of this was an experiment in how to get around Am*zon if you had to is certainly fascinating, and he is right that sales platform is key and one entity holding so much power over authors’ careers, the way the big, big river does…
Well, don’t think about it when you’re trying to get back to sleep at night if you’re an author. That’s all I’m saying.
I continue to think one of his biggest innovations here will be as he says, bringing so many new readers to the Kickstarter platform.
A quote from his post:
Now, sure, most of these new backers probably aren’t going to dig looking for other publishing projects to support. BUT I keep seeing a few hints and projects from romance authors heading in this direction, and anyone will tell you romance is often where the innovation comes from. It certainly was with ebooks (and I agree with him that traditional publishing is still behind the times there in a lot of ways). If the big river is squeezing those indie authors, I would not at all be surprised to see lots of different models being tested out (including more migration to things like this, substack, and patreon, etc.). Big River may even be sensing this, and that could play a part in their recent opening up of the advertising opportunities he talks about that have wrecked organic discovery on the site.
Thanks to him for sharing the inside baseball. My earlier take on it here.
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More very soon, especially on topics some of you have asked me to write about (keep them coming). In the meantime, I have my first event of the new book release season coming up this weekend, where early copies of THE DATE FROM HELL will be available. Here’s the schedule as it stands. I’d love to see some of you at any of these or online!
I’m just BEYOND delighted that so many authors I adore — all of who write or have written or are about to be writing both YA and Romance — agreed to be in conversation and play silly games on April 7 for the virtual event and that Billie Bloebaum of Bookstore Romance Day fame offered to host us! That should be a REALLY fun time, and you can preregister here.
If you’re not going to be in Bowling Green, at the Los Angeles festival, or my launch here in Lexington and want a signed copy, the best thing to do is get in touch with the Lexington branch of Joseph-Beth Booksellers. They’ll hook you right up and get your book out lickety zip after my event on April 6.
If you’ve read and enjoyed the first book of the duology, NOT YOUR AVERAGE HOT GUY, please consider leaving a review at that old big river or goodreads or on a phone booth with For a good time read scrawled above the title.
I’ll be back in your inbox with a books-in-books themed Top Shelf Rec post, a publishing-themed playlist just for fun, and lots more soon. If you missed the q and a thread over the weekend, there’s some great stuff, so check it out.
That E.B. White approach is definitely unbeatable! I love the Bartleby response. In fact I wrote about it recently myself. I've never been attracted by Kickstarter but I am looking forward to reading that bit of your article properly, when I've had some sleep. Congratulations on your book launch. I'm in UK so will have to support you in spirit. I had a few dates from hell myself in the bad old days!
Always love that E.B. White bit. Have a good book event(s)! Will definitely check out that Nordstrom book, what a career she had.