Notes Towards an Ambassador of Literature

Shortly after writing a post about the possibility of somebody making the transition from blogger to paid spokesperson for awesome books, I remembered how I’d been at Jon Scieszka’s inaugural appearance as the Library of Congress’s first Ambassador for Children’s Literature, with the mission “to evangelize the need for reading” not just among children, but parents and teachers as well. While Scieszka did already have an online platform where he was working to encourage boys to read more—Guys Read—his ambassadorship also involved a lot of public appearances, including book fairs. That, I thought, was something akin to the job description I was fumbling at in that original post—somebody who would always have plenty of great recommendations for books you could read, but who would also be ready to hear you out on the great books you have read, and maybe help spread the word about those books, too.

“Adult” literature does have someone sort of like that in Nancy Pearl, the Seattle librarian who shaped the whole “the whole city reads the same book together” paradigm and went on to become a regular commentator on NPR’s Morning Edition. And in that context, I think it’s worth noting that none of her 2011 holiday recommendations were the “obvious” books; neither, for that matter, had she taken the easy path with her picks for the previous summer. I really like that she’s guiding people to books that they might otherwise not have heard about, or almost certainly would have heard less about—when the highest-profile author on someone’s recommendations list is Stewart O’Nan, you know that they’ve been doing their fieldwork.

I think there’s definitely room for more than one such “ambassador of literature,” though, or maybe for it to be a rotating position. At the Library of Congress, for example, Scieszka was replaced after two years by Katherine Paterson, and now, in early 2012, Walter Dean Myers is stepping into the part. Some early reactions to his appointment have focused on the ways that he might be expected to reach a different audience than previous ambassadors, or whether it’s an endorsement of the alleged trend in “dark” YA fiction, but it seems to me that the ambassador’s fundamental mission hasn’t changed all that much. As Myers himself puts it, “I think that what we need to do is say reading is going to really affect your life.” And again: “We’ve given children this idea that reading and books are a nice option, if you want that kind of thing. I hope we can get over that idea.”

The way the Library of Congress has taken the lead in creating the ambassador’s position, and then sustaining it over the last four years, is inspiring, and I’d love to see some institution put the same kind of effort into a similar position encouraging grown-ups to keep reading, and to keep reading in a very exploratory, adventurous way, as Nancy Pearl is doing in her NPR lists. In my previous post on the subject, I suggested that the Association of American Publishers might want to underwrite a “lobbyist” or “literary evangelist,” which made sense at the time because I was thinking specifically about ways in which the publishing industry could invest in the sustenance and growth of an audience of active readers. But we don’t have to limit ourselves to an industry trade organization.

An argument could be made, for example, that a position of this nature complements the National Book Foundation mission “to recognize the best of American literature [while] raising the cultural appreciation of great writing” through the National Book Awards. You could also make a case that the National Endowment for the Arts, in addition to all the grant dispensation it does “to support artistic excellence, creativity, and innovation,” could authorize the literary director to get out there and be, as current director (and true mensch) Ira Silverberg) describes himself, “a passionate advocate of literary writers.” There might also be good reasons why neither organization is quite the right fit for what I have in mind—or, maybe, in both cases, what I’m describing already takes place to a certain extent and I need to educate myself about it. That’s a good idea, actually; I’m going to make a note to invite some folks out for some serious conversations in the near future.

6 January 2012 | theory |

Blogs: An Essential Part of Book Marketing?

In late 2011, I wrote a post about book culture, social media, and monetization, riffing off the public debate over marketing aspects to the popular FridayReads phenomenon. As I said then, “the question isn’t so much should [anybody] be making money off other people’s willingness to talk about their love of books online, but rather will they do so in as non-exploitative a manner as possible?”

Right around this time, I got an email from the marketing department at William Morrow, a division of HarperCollins, to which I didn’t pay attention because the “From:” line didn’t have an actual person’s name on it, and I know from experience that there’s usually nothing in an email like that I need to concern myself with. But then my friend Rebecca Joines Schinsky of The Book Lady’s Blog started talking about it on Twitter, describing its tone as offensively condescending to book bloggers, so I decided to dig it out and have a look. The opening was awfully glib:

First of all, thank you for reviewing books for us! We here at William Morrow value your involvement in the publication and marketing of our books. Your thoughts, opinions, and ability to reach readers across the world make you an essential part of the book publishing industry.

I didn’t much like that “reviewing books for us,” or a subsequent line about how, after letting the marketing department know which books we were interested in, “your job is simply to review the book within a month of receiving it and post your thoughts on your blog or site.” Because, you know, if the publishing company is talking about this like a “job,” and telling me how much they “value your involvement” and consider me “an essential part of the book publishing industry,” my instinctive response is, “Really? What’s the dollar amount you’d put on that, then?” (An apologetic follow-up email the next day managed nevertheless to continue this line of thinking, when the marketing team, apparently writing by committee, declared, “Each of you is vitally important to us and play an integral part in creating and sustaining the all-important ‘buzz’ factor when we publish a new book.” So now I’m integral to your marketing campaigns, eh? That’s got to be worth something…)

I don’t intend to single out individual members of Morrow’s marketing team, some of whom I’ve dealt with over the years (although probably not as often as I’ve been in touch with the publicists); it’s not outside the realm of possibility that some other Big Six imprint’s marketing department could just as easily have sent out a similarly tone-deaf letter at some other point in time—this is just the one that book bloggers actually happened to have at hand at that moment. Carolyn Kellogg wrote a thoughtful if somewhat alarmist analysis of the situation for Jacket Copy—thoughtful in its historical perspective on the evolution of the symbiotic relationship between book blogs and book publishers, somewhat alarmist in seizing upon an implication in Morrow’s original email that bloggers who weren’t reviewing the books they received in a timely manner might not see many more books coming their way. Here’s where Kellogg pins down the critical issue (emphasis mine):

“If that is really bloggers’ role—creating buzz for a publisher’s products—then it seems to me that publishers should be plying them with more goodies, if not paying them. But if the role of bloggers is different, to expand the conversation around books, things are a little more complicated. Does the number of readers a blogger has matter? Can and should there be room for disliking a book? Can and should book bloggers be book buyers, and are they? If some bloggers reject publishers’ freebies in order to establish their own freedom, should those that accept them somehow make that relationship clear? Should publishers make any demands on bloggers at all—and if so, are free books an even trade?”

(more…)

2 January 2012 | theory |