Check out Amy Rose Capetta's 4-part series on LGBTQ YA over at Cynsations!

Love, love, love this.

Part One: Something Good Happened in 2016: Celebrating LGBTQ YA

Part Two: Something Good Happened in 2016: Intersectionality in LGBTQ YA

Part Three: Something Good Happened in 2016: LGBTQ YA Genre Fiction

My thanks to Amy Rose Capetta for pulling these posts together and the always-wonderful Cynthia Leitich Smith for hosting on her indispensable Cynsations blog!

***Update Dec 8, 2016: It's a FOUR part series! Here's the final installment, Where Does LGBTQ YA Go From Here? ***

My Article In Writer's Digest "Writing For Kids & Teens" May/June 2014 Magazine!

I'm delighted that my article, "Your Web Presence: 3 Keys to Connecting with Young Readers Online" is out and available now!

Here's the cover of the issue: "Writer's Digest Writing For Kids & Teens" May/June 2014

The first two pages of my article! (which is on pages 32-35)

 
It's a four page article, offering navigational advice for steering an online path to reach your readers. It's packed with tips and examples of authors who are doing amazing things in their online spaces that we can learn from, including: Cynthia Leitich Smith, Kiera Cass, Jeff Kinney, Ellen Hopkins, Mitali Perkins, Catherine Ryan Hyde, Greg Pincus, Scott Westerfeld, Libba Bray, Cheryl Rainfield, Richelle Mead, Wendelin Van Draanen, John Green and Sarah Dessen!

I'm grateful to Writer's Digest editor Jessica Strawser for both the opportunity and the amazing job she did helping me shape the article. It was very much the author-editor experience as Andrea Davis Pinkney so aptly put it, "my job as an editor is to hold the flashlight while you do the digging."

And we got to the gold!

If it interests you, I hope you check out the article.

And thanks for reading this post about it!

Namaste (the light in me recognizes and acknowledges the light in each one of you,)
Lee

Is This The Next Evolution In The World Of Children's Literature? Editor to Agent, and now Agent to Social Media Expert?

I don't often use this blog space to talk about the shifting ground of the world of Children's literature (or, as Rubin Pfeffer would put it, the world of Children's Content Creation.)

But in yesterday's Publisher's Lunch, there was this announcement:

San Francisco-based Curtis Brown agent Nathan Bransford announced via his popular writers blog on Friday that he is leaving agenting to work for CNet, where he will help coordinate social media strategy. He says the blog and its forums will continue.

What I find so fascinating is that over the past few years we've seen a lot of Children's book editors move to become Children's book agents. (I won't even attempt a list, but I can think of five off the top of my head.) A lot of incredibly talented, brilliant, and successful editors were let go by their publishing houses and a number of those former editors thought that the best way they could follow their passions to help shape the stories kids and teens read would be to stay working with authors on shaping their stories, only from the literary agency side of things.

And it does seem that as editorial staffs have gotten smaller, editors have less time to work with an author to get the manuscript ready - and that an increasing number of literary agents are "editorial," working with their writing clients to get the manuscripts in top shape before submitting them to editors. So there's been a flow from editor to editorial agent.

Now, with Nathan Bransford leaving literary agenting for a professional social media gig, I'm wondering if this is the beginning of a new shift in the current. Are there now too many literary agents (which of course brings up the question, were there too many editors?) Or is it just that genuine expertise in social media is pretty rare, and Nathan has an incredibly marketable skill set?

After all, Nathan is the second blog- and media-savvy literary agent I know of who has moved from agenting to a social media gig. (Colleen Lindsay is the other former children's literary agent - and she's now working as part of the business development team at Penguin.)

So here's a few questions for my Children's Content Creator peeps - what do you think? Is this a new trend, or just a natural cherry-picking of talented people with social media skills?

Is the job of literary agent going to become as fluid (and musical-chair like) as the job of editor seems to be?

And is there a tension between the idea of a writer trying to find an agent that represents them not just for a book but for their career - and literary agents having careers themselves that might take them away from being agents?

It's a fascinating time in the world of creating content for Children and Teens!

Namaste, and do let me know your thoughts...

Lee

Drowning in Slush: Laura Miller over at Salon looks at the brave new world of publishing... and is afraid. My Response? Don't Be Afraid. Get Vetted!

Yesterday over at Salon.com, Laura Miller published her article on the changes happening to the book publishing industry, "When Anyone Can Be A Published Author." It's a fascinating read.




She feels that as it gets harder for end-user readers to determine if a book is vanity or self-published versus having gone through the traditional gatekeepers of publishing (agents, editors, publishing houses) we will all be buried in an avalanche of slush - the drek books that might very well turn readers off from books entirely.

In fact, the article cites the wild statistic that last year more than three quarters of a million books were published non-traditionally. (incidentally, Publishers Weekly, when they reported this back in April, said that it was the first year these non-traditionally published books OUTNUMBERED books that came about the more old fashioned way (with someone besides the author and/or their kin willing to put their time, money, and reputation on the line for the project.)

The Salon article mentioned the studies that have shown that too many choices make people less adventurous in their sampling, rather than more, and I have to agree - if I was at the supermarket, and they were offering samples of 22 flavors of mustard, versus samples of 3 different kinds of mustard, I know I'd avoid the 22 flavor sample - too many options.

Miller makes the point that as the industry shifts, we may simply be exchanging one set of gate keepers for a new set - and she calls out bloggers and denizens of social media networks (I'm assuming my fellow facebook 'friends' and Twitter tweeps among them) as where the new power will rest.

But I'm frankly not sure I agree with that.

I don't think that the value of vetting will diminish as choice increases - on the contrary, I think the "brand" of quality will be more important than ever.

Readers will become more savvy, and will look at not just author names they know - "Ohh - Suzanne Collins wrote 'The Hunger Games' - I wanna read her latest!"

but they'll be looking at Editors -

"Ohh - Cheryl Klein edited 'Marcelo in the Real World' - I wanna read her latest!"

They'll be looking at Imprints -

"Ooh - Razorbill put out Jay Asher's '13 Reasons Why' - I wanna see what they do with Vampires!"

They'll be looking at established awards -

"Ooh - Laini Taylor's Lips Touch was a finalist for The National Book Award - I've gotta read that!"

And maybe even new awards -

"What did the book blogger's Cybils say about the best easy reader of 2009? Mo Willem's "Watch Me Throw The Ball! An Elephant and Piggie Book? I'm getting that for my kid!"

They'll look at reviews of the reviewers (print and blog and other media) that they like - Oh, What did Colleen Mondor like for boys in her last YA column over at Bookslut? Francisco X. Stork’s 'The Last Summer of the Death Warriors?' Cool! I'm gonna read that next!

And perhaps most important - they'll listen to WORD OF MOUTH, which can now spread through blogs, facebook, twitter, and the like!

Already people are trying to 'game' the system - like the PR firm that got caught posting Fake 5 star 'reader' reviews to all their client's books on Amazon! (or this guy, who offered to pay people to write good reviews of a product they didn't even own!) Trust is key as we move forward, people!

Ultimately vetting - and the magic of hearing of a book in more than one place will drive readers to books... (Laini Taylor's Lips Touch was a National Book Award finalist, and it was also published by Arthur A. Levine Books, the same people who brought America the Harry Potter books, and I loved her book "Faeries of Dreamdark: Blackbringer - I'm reading that next!)

Yes, I know things are changing.

But good stories are still going to be written.

And readers are still going to want to find them.

And it may be Polly Anna of me, but I think these changes will actually create a way for the handful of self-published successes to rise through the slush and be VETTED alongside the traditionally published books - because no matter what they're reading the books on (ipads or e-readers or paper) that's what readers will be looking for - good stories that someone besides the author said were worth the time.

So as for me, I'm excited about our brave new future of writing, and reading...

What do YOU think?