A love letter to teachers, librarians and independent stores.

A J HartleyA J Hartley
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Most of my posts this year have been either craft oriented or driven by larger ideas about why we write, so I thought I’d say something about the business end of writing today. As some of you may know, last week my fantasy adventure Darwen Arkwright and the Peregrine Pact was named both one of the nine finalists for the North Carolina Young Adult book of the year for 2012 in the middle grades category, and one of the four finalists for the young adult book of the year by SIBA. The winners will be announced in the next few months. (It should be said that one of the other 3 nominees for the SIBA award is our very own Carrie Ryan, so MW has snagged HALF the YA nominations for the year!). I have no idea who will win, but this really is one of those “it’s an [...]

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May 3rd, 2012 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)

On Publishing: 6 aspects of writing YA that surprised me

Carrie RyanCarrie Ryan
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I loved David’s recent post on the five things about the business that surprised him and I agree on all fronts.  Then I got to thinking about whether there was anything in particular about writing YA that surprised me (since I try to bring the YA perspective to the table whenever I can).  While there’s a lot of overlap, I thought I might piggy-back off of David’s post and add my own thoughts about what surprised me in publishing YA.  Most of these are just my observations and, like any other thoughts about this industry, there are always exceptions to the rule.  

1.  The time — there is a lot of it between selling and book release and in casual conversations with adult authors I’ve found that YA seems to (more often) have a longer lag time between sale and release [for an overview of this process, click here].  [...]

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March 7th, 2012 | Tags: , , , , | | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)

A thought on reading

Misty MasseyMisty Massey
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It’s the last day of school.  I’ve been fielding phone calls all day from irritated mothers whose kids waited until last night to mention that “oh yeah, I can’t get my report card because I have an overdue library book I have to pay for.”  One even came in to scream at me personally.

Then there was the sixth grade mother I just got off the phone with.  Her son had lost three books back in October, to theft if one believes the boy.  (He may be telling the truth, he may not – I have no way of knowing.)  He’s known that we hold the book’s borrower responsible when books go missing, yet he’s spent most of this year denying his responsibility.  So now his mom comes along to tell me how her son is so wonderful (I’m sure he is!) and how he shouldn’t have to be held [...]

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June 5th, 2008 | Tags: , , | | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)