Bloggy bits: April 2008 Archives

Still loving my Kindle, and yet still very interested to hear what others think about their high-tech reading devices. On No Want Decaf!, an editor shares her thoughts about her Sony Reader, and how it has basically changed the way her publishing house does business -- saving huge bundles of money on copying fees alone:

Step 1: You receive the manuscript via email and put it immediately on your e-reader, swinging your deliciously small bag over your shoulder with glee. You can tell that the people shuffling their newspapers are impressed as you read one-handed while standing on the train.

Step 2: You love the manuscript and ask other editors to read it, and email it to them right away. When you walk by the copier later, you can't help but smile.

Step 3: Good news, the other editors love the manuscript too! Time to take it to acquisitions -- email the manuscript to everyone on the committee. Get on with the rest of your job!

Now, granted, I don't have the same worries about sharing material widely that an editor does, but I still found it interesting reading -- not just about a reader, but also about the acquisitions process.

Rexroth, superb web-monkey and all around awesome husband, just gave me a Kindle as a wedding present. Squee!!

Now, it should be noted that I am not typically an early-adopter of new technology. I like to wait, hear about other people's experiences with stuff, wait for the price to drop, and then make my decision. In this case? Rexroth took all the pesky deliberating out of my hands, and instead just provided me with a fantastic new way to read manuscripts.

Sure, Amazon will keep touting the Kindle as a great way to read books, and I may very well use it for books at some point in the future, when I've gone through all the unread lovelies waiting patiently on my bookshelves to be read. For me, the device is a way to be disconnected from my desk -- to read manuscripts from the comfort of anywhere!

I have to go through a little forwarded rigamarole to get the documents onto the Kindle -- there is an easy way, but it costs 10 cents a shot, and I am nothing if not frugal. Because of that, I'm not going to be reading EVERYTHING on the Kindle -- queries will still get read in my email, but once we get to chapter stage, and particularly full manuscripts -- I'll be doing my part to save trees and read them all on my little Kindle.

In fact, I'm heading to Seattle on Friday for the SCBWI conference, and I'm looking forward to bringing my Kindle along for downtime on the flights and between sessions. More soon!

Good morning, gentle readers! Read something interesting this weekend that I thought you might enjoy. Fabulously fun editor Abby Zidle blogs weekly at Hey, There's a Dead Guy in the Living Room, and though that blog is dedicated to mystery writing, she covers all aspects of the publishing process from an editor's perspective. Her post this week, about wanting to acquire a book and how to make the deal sweeter without increasing the offer, is pretty interesting. Enjoy.

When most people think about publishing auctions, they imagine the money going up and up until all but one publisher drop out, and the agent and author go with whomever offers the most money. This isn't unusual, certainly, but there are other ways to make an offer appealing when you don't have more cash in your pocket. In my case, one of the tools I can sometimes employ is a marketing letter.

Met today with an editor of romance novels, among other women's fiction, who wished she were seeing more great Western romances -- cowboys, frontier women on the range, gunfights, and all that good stuff. It's yet another example of the cyclical nature of publishing -- things go out of favor, and then pop back in again. Highlanders, however, seem a perennial favorite. Who doesn't love a Scotsman in a kilt?

Well, besides Kind Edward. William Wallace reference, anyone?

Her house's publishing plan was pretty evenly split between contemporary romances, romantic comedies, paranormals, and historicals. Another division of the same house does the chick lit-y stuff, as well as what's termed in British publishing circles, "faux lit." Think Alice Sebold, Phillippa Gregory, The Dogs of Babel...

Speaking with her got me excited to find some great women's fiction authors, so keep those queries coming! I'll be taking a week or so off from April 8th through the 15th, but will try to get to the letters I do have before I throw up the "temporarily closed" sign. Anything that comes in after the 8th will have to wait!

Alyson Noel's blogging over at the Teen Fiction Cafe today, asking what books changed your life or your view of life?

This is so hard! The moment I think of one great book, I think of five others that I'd feel guilty for NOT mentioning. So I'm going to go with one of my stand-by favorites, The Chestry Oak by Kate Seredy.I'm sure I found my way to this book via Seredy's Newbery Honor-winning novel The Good Master, which presents an idyllic view of traditional Hungarian life. (You might not have known it to look at me, but "Unfeasible" comes from the Hungarian, of course.) After The Good Master, I grabbed everything else I could read of Seredy's -- her Newbery winner, The White Stag, The Singing Tree, which was a sequel to The Good Master, and finally found my way to The Chestry Oak. I'd never cried so much reading a book as I did the first time I read this. it's about a young Hungarian boy, a prince as I recall, living in a castle just before World War I, whose parents are killed or in some other way are out of his life, and how the hardest thing he has to do in leaving his home and everything he's ever known to move to the safety of America is to say goodbye to his stallion.

Let me just say, I bawled. I remember my mom coming up to check on me, just to make sure I was ok -- my sobs had carried down to the kitchen below. I don't know if The Chestry Oak kicked off my horse-book-reading phase or if it just happened around the same time, but suddenly, I was tearing through everything in the library with the words "horse," "stallion," or "pony" on the cover. Besides that, it was a piece of real-life history -- and not ancient history, either. Something that happened recently enough that I knew people who were involved in the battles being described -- granted, it was a great-uncle, but he was still family, and that made it immediate. That made it REAL.

I'm still a fan of historical fiction, even though, looking back now, I doubt The Chestry Oak was all that "historical" when Seredy wrote it. But books like it are why I majored in history in college (along with English because, hello! Books!), why I dragged Rexroth to see The Other Boleyn Girl at the movies, and why I think of Sean Bean first not as Boromir, but as Sharpe.

So -- what books changed YOUR life? Tell me, and tell Alyson!

Working from the New York office again this week, so thanks for your patience! We had a number of great comments on yesterday's post, which were all waiting patiently in cyberspace for me to approve them. They're all up now. Feel free to add some more!

So yesterday I bounced around quite a bit from lunch with a YA and middle grade editor from Putnam, to an afternoon meeting with several editors from Kensington Books, followed by drinks with an editor at Pocket. Made some great new contacts, promised to send some exciting material, and throughly enjoyed myself. What, you thought this was all work?

In the middle of the day, after I finished with my Kensington meeting and before it was time for drinks, I spent a lovely few hours getting some reading done in a completely appropriate space -- the Main Reading Room at the New York Public Library. Besides having a number of convenient sockets for me to charge my phone, the long tables and delicious hush make a perfect background for some serious reading.

What's your favorite place to sit and read?