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Sunday, June 27, 2010

Three years ago, electronic books were hardly a hiccup. Now, they are nine percent of the market. It looks like the generation-long wait for an electronic reader technology that people would actually use is over. So, okay. People who still want something made of paper that doesn't require batteries will still be able to get it, and those who want to read off a screen will have more choices all the time.

Among which, I am happy to announce will be a few of my titles. Vampire High: Sophomore Year, which comes out next month, will be available that way, and two of my out-of-print books, Smoking Mirror and The Janus Gate will be available as downloads. This is very nice, as neither one of the was a huge seller -- in particular The Janus Gate, which the original publisher, Watson-Guptill did everything to kill but bury at midnight in a New Jersey swamp -- so Random House must think the books have some merit. Random House bought Watson-Guptill a couple of years ago, and with it they got W-G's backlist. Nice, very nice.

Smoking Mirror is a straight historical novel about Paul Gauguin in Tahiti, and the mysterious male figure who occurred in five or six of his paintings on that first trip and never again. Totefa, whom he wrote of as if he were a real person but whom no one but Gauguin ever seemed to have met. Smoking Mirror is Totefa's story, and explains why no one afterwards was able to locate him.

The Janus Gate is a sort of ghost story, based on the famous and mysterious portrait, The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, which was painted by John Singer Sargent. A sort of a ghost story, but with something weirder than a ghost at the heart of it.

Anyway, thanks to Random House for giving these books a second shot at finding their audience.

Wednesday, June 16 2010

Harlequin Teen has done a great trailer for Majix. 

And in other happy news, Samuel French has asked to publish the musical version of Uncle Pirate. It didn't even occur to me to say no.

For some reason, Canadian libraries seem to be pre-ordering Vampire High, Sophomore Year is pretty large numbers. I always said Canada was a great country.

Publishing sales have been flat, at best, for years. This is true across all genres and all age levels, with one exception: Young Adult fiction. Young Adult gets stronger every year, and publishers with no background in it are jumping in to try their luck. Sometimes, as with Watson-Guptill, they find they are out of their depth. Other times, as with Harlequin Teen, they have the skill set to make it work.

But teens are supposed to be non-readers, especially teen boys. Whole publishing lists come out each year based, in part, on the assumption that the guys don't read. So, who is buying (and presumably reading) the books?

I have an idea about that.

One of the features of teen lit in recent years has been that the readership for it has broadened. A large number of regular readers are now in their twenties and even their early thirties. My impression is that older readers of fantasy were the first to discover that teen writers were turning out high-quality imaginary worlds and setting interesting stories in them. The fact that they weren't fourteen thousand pages long wasn't an indication that the writing wasn't good. And so, authors like Jane Yolen and Diana Wynne Jones gained a whole new readership.

Then came Harry Potter, and all the old guidelines about what was possibly in publishing books for kids were shown to be just that -- guidelines, perhaps even guidelines based on untested assumptions. In any case, everyone was wild about Harry. J.K. Rowling became richer than her queen, and other good writers of books for teens and children saw their sales increase, and their stories get movie options.

All very nice, and it persists after the last Harry Potter book had come and gone. How come?

My guess is this: young adult writing is moving into a sort of ecological niche that was left largely uninhabited when publishing stopped relying on mid-list novels for its bread and butter.

Back when I was young and unpublished, most publishers were fairly small, and they made their living by bringing out lists of good books that were expected to sell five to ten thousand copies. These lists offered a wide range of stories, and a wide range of literary quality. But the average mid-list book was pretty good. Then, in the 1960's, publishers began to be acquired by other publishers, and then by media conglomerates, and the game changed. The new owners didn't like the small profits that mid-list titles earned. They wanted big stores they could put their marketing powers behind, ideally big stories that would turn into big movies and earn some real money. But, because publishing isn't movie making or rock music, there was still a strong notion that quality mattered. Thus, the intellectual novelists could still get published. The industry went for mass and class with almost nothing in between. The fields where the mid-list books had grazed and raised their young were left empty and lifeless.

Into these vacant precincts have come the Young Adult novels. Stepping tentatively out of the thickets of teenage life, they have found broad, open pastures where they may please a whole new group of readers, readers who are glad to have a story told them that is tightly plotted well-written and, often, fairly intelligent. The relative shortness of most Young Adult stories (say 40,000-50,000 words versus 80,000 plus) may be an advantage too, for busy people, or for readers whose attention spans have been conditioned to expect that beginning, middle and end will follow each other quickly.

Whatever the reasons, Young Adult writing is going strong, expanding its reach, and changing the game. It may even be changing the game back to what it was before the conglomerates put their stamp on it. Please pass the bread and butter.

Thursday, June 1, 2010

I heard yesterday that Samuel French the play publisher wants to put the Uncle Pirate musical in their catalog.

Apparently, Ben H. Winters the librettist, and Drew Fornarola the composer-lyricist had already signed off on the deal they were offering, so all that was needed was my okay on the terms. Honest, it never even OCCURRED to me to say no. So, along with the chance of another New York production by the Vital Theatre Company, there will now be the chance of productions all over the country.

Another bit of good news: both the Uncle Pirate books are being reprinted by McElderry Books. So far, it's been a pretty good week!