This article about a high school book club should brighten any writers day. Apparently more than 100 students are a part of a book club at Edina High School that meets once a month at 7:45 a.m.
Not only do they have high schoolers reading books, but they have them getting up early to talk about books. There is yet hope for the future.
Some depressing stats for writers from Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail:
In 2004, 950,000 books out of 1.2 million tracked by Nielsen BookScan sold fewer than ninety-nine copies. Another 200,000 sold fewer than 1,000 copies. Only 25,000 sold more than 5,000 copies. The average book in America sells about 500 copies. In other words, about 98 percent of books are noncommercial, whether they were intended that way or not. (page 76)
Those are kind of sobering numbers for anyone who wants to write a book. On the bright side, if you can sell 100 copies or more of your book, you’re in the top 21% of the publishing industry. The bar for success if fairly low, if you look at it from that perspective.
The author Madeleine L’Engle died last month at the age of 88. I must be living under a rock or reading the wrong blogs or something, because despite my love for her writing I had no idea she died. It’s kind of sad that I accidentally stumbled across the fact a month later.
I’ve also been mispronouncing her name. According the New York Times obituary it’s pronounced “LENG-el”–I’ve been saying it “LA-Engel.” Some fan I am.
Anyway, she’s best known for A Wrinkle in Time–which was rejected something like a million times (NYT says 26) and the resulting series, though my favorite work of hers is Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art. It was required reading for a required freshman class and I hated it the first time. But I somehow was convinced to read it again and fell in love with it, underlining half of it. We own three copies because we’ve underlined and written in the margins of each one.
So apparently friends publishing novels is a trend. Another writer friend, Christa Banister, has a new novel coming out next week, Around the World in 80 Dates: Confessions of a Serial Dater. Christa was my editor when I wrote reviews for CCM magazine, then she joined the freelance world and now lives within a mile or two of me in St. Paul (and we have still not met face to face).
I think I had heard about her novel-publishing success but had forgotten about it. Then something referencing Christa and her novel came across my desk and I realized another friend was about to be a published author.
So I thought we better put Christa through the ten question grill:
1) Your first novel–wow. What’s it feel like to accomplish every aspiring writer’s dream? Has it always been your dream to write fiction?
To say it’s surreal is probably the biggest cliché in the book. But that’s exactly how it feels to me. Ever since I read my first Judy Blume book, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, back in elementary school, I thought making up characters and storylines would be the best job in the world. But of course, you can’t snap your fingers and get a book deal, so I feel extremely blessed that NavPress enjoyed my work and wanted to publish my book. In fact, when I received my final copies of Around the World in 80 Dates the other day, I still freaked out a little. I knew I’d done the work, but I still couldn’t believe I was holding my very own novel in my hands. It was such an amazing feeling.
A couple years ago a friend of mine, Adam Palmer, suddenly became a published author with the book Taming a Liger: Unexpected Spiritual Lessons from Napoleon Dynamite (you can read my interview with Adam about Taming the Liger). It was one of those pleasant surprises that reminded me that you actually can write a book and get it published (not that I didn’t think Adam could do it, but I didn’t know anything about it until the book came out).
I just heard from Adam recently and was again pleasantly surprised to see that he’s kept the publishing streak up with two novels (as well as nearly a dozen other book projects–apparently I’m keeping the clueless streak going), Mooch (which I think I actually read an early version of) and Knuckle Sandwich: Sometimes Rock N Roll Hits Back (which is coming out around now).
Both novels are in the Christian fiction genre, though you shouldn’t hold that against them. Mooch (or at least the early version I read) wasn’t the typical character comes to Jesus or character doesn’t have real issues type novel you might expect. It was actually a funny, caper type story with an intriguing main character.
Knuckle Sandwich seems to be another unique and funny tale:
Knuckle Sandwich is the next big thing in Christian rock music. It’s a band formed by three Midwestern college students with three very different dreams. Bassist Jeremiah wants to reach the lost, singer Matt wants to be a rock star, and drummer Liz . . . well, she just wants a new set. But as the group moves from the youth group circuit to opening national tours, the friends begin to experience the perils of celebrity. While Matt’s ego grows faster than the band’s success, Jeremiah and Liz find themselves on the brink of a sexual relationship. Now as the band starts to implode, can anything save them from a Behind the Music-style meltdown? (from Amazon)
Plus both novels look to have some of the best cover design I’ve seen in a while.
So I’ve been addicted to sci-fi lately: The Road, Ender’s Game, Rendezvous with Rama, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, Foundation, Out of the Silent Planet, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Whew.
I’ve come to the rather obvious conclusion that the sci-fi genre (and I imagine other genres like it) isn’t really that specialized. Certainly there’s all that space or futurism or time travel or neat new technology, but in the end it’s still just a story. It could be a love story or a political discourse or an adventure or whatever. The science fiction part is more or less the setting. That’s perhaps an oversimplification, but there it is. Star Wars didn’t need the stars.
Which is an interesting conclusion if you want to write fiction. Genre helps sell fiction (so they say), but it’s merely window dressing compared to the story. At least in the best books, anyway.
A little help from the library geeks in the audience: Why is it that libraries shelve paperbacks and hardbacks separately?
So the hardback of say, Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis is in the hardback sci-fi section, while the paperback of Perelandra is in the paperback sci-fi section. And if you don’t get why that’s inconvenient, they’re both the first and second novels respectively in Lewis’ Space Trilogy. I don’t care if it’s hardback or paperback, I just want to read the trilogy.
Or an even simpler example, I’m looking for The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein (I told you I was on a sci-fi kick). But I can’t just check the paperback section (which didn’t have it), I also had to check the hardback section (which did have it).
How screwy is that? I love libraries, but I don’t get this. Is there some rhyme or reason to it? Is it easier to shelve books when they’re all hardback or all paperback? Does it save shelf space? And whatever the rationale, does it justify making it harder for patrons to find books?
Hmm… it makes about as much sense as having to call Northwest Airlines five times at three different numbers to finally talk to a human (and no, the “customer care” line did not result in talking to a human, no matter how hard I tried). I hate to put libraries in the same category as a bankrupt airline–but that’s where I’m at.
So I’m on a little sci-fi bender, and let me tell you–the bookstore doesn’t help. Your sci-fi books are classified in one enormous section: Sci-Fi/Fantasy. Both genres are a certain kind of fanciful fiction where unrealistic things can happen. But there’s an incredible difference in that lack of realism. It stretches from Lord of the Rings on one end–a made up world with made up magic and creatures–to something like Serenity on the other end–a fictional world that includes realistically possible scientific advancements, but no fanciful elements like magic (and Serenity is probably a bad example with its Western bent and River’s psychic powers, but it’s a better example than say, Star Wars with its Jedis and the Force).
So as you wander through the aisle you get medieval warriors with swords and armor next to realistic portrayals of settlements on the moons of Jupiter. And there’s plenty of room in between: realistic, modern day stories with fantastic elements (Buffy, X-Men, etc.), futuristic stories with fantasy elements (Star Wars), fantasy stories with elements of sci-fi (I don’t have a good example of that), even realistic sci-fi stories with elements of horror (Sunshine). It gets even weirder when you consider sub-genres like revisionist history. Right now I’m reading Empire by Orson Scott Card that the library considered sci-fi, but it’s more a political thriller or maybe a dystopian future (though it’s hard for it to be future when Fox News is involved and the president is obviously supposed to be George W. Bush).
In addition to my blog bender, I’m on a bit of sci-fi bender of late. I’ve always liked sci-fi. For the longest time Star Wars was my favorite movie and it was only dethroned by another sci-fi flick (Serenity). But I’m a casual sci-fi fan. While I’ve watched Star Trek, I’m hardly a Trekkie. And my reading list of sci-fi is fairly short. Until this weekend I had never read Orson Scott Card, and I’ve read nothing but short stories by some of the masters like Isaac Asimov.
But I do enjoy the genre. Specifically, I love space stories (Star Wars, Serenity, etc.) and post-apocalyptic fiction (Mad Max: The Road Warrior). I find something tremendously captivating about these stories, both the realism of a future in space and the harsh reality of a world gone wrong in a post-apocalyptic era. I can’t put my finger on it, but I love those stories.
In honor of the new Harry Potter book you can watch Lexi say Harry Potter.
Lexi says Harry Potter from kevinhendricks and Vimeo.