First, of all, hooray for Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book winning the Newbery Award!! I was really impressed, not just with the award winners, but also with some of honor books, particularly for the Printz Award. Check out the whole list of winners online here.
There’s been some really interesting comments on yesterday’s post about Lev Grossman’s article on Modern Book Publishing. I was particularly taken by Joe’s comment. “The existence of a publishing hurdle will make the accomplishment of getting published a more meaningful one when it finally comes and, beyond that, will make it more likely that I will actually enjoy some success in connecting to readers, because it keeps me from inflicting my worst work on people.” That’s really close to what I was getting at!
There’s an interesting piece in Time Magazine this week by Lev Grossman about modern book publishing, and how the way mainstream publishing does things now is a dying breed, and that change is-a-coming.
We’ve all got to do it — following up. You guys are waiting to hear from an agent, and time just keeps going by, until the deadline she gave you is long since past, and you’re wondering about the protocol for reminding her. And, to draw back the curtain here a bit, I have to follow up as well.