Kid Lit Industry Catch-Up

A lot's been going on lately, and as we head into November, I wanted to make sure you knew about these stories:


Lauren Myracle is a National Book Award Finalist. Err, wait. She’s not.

Evidently "Shine" sounds a lot like "Chime."  And "Lauren Myracle" sounds a lot like "Franny Billingsley."  Hold on there...

Here are three angles on the story:

The Publishers Lunch version

Libba Bray pulls no punches in her backstage pass assessment of the situation (her husband, Barry Goldblatt, is Lauren Myracle’s literary agent.) It’s funny and passionate, but if f-bombs offend, read the other two links instead. Here's Libba's blog post.

Vanity Fair has an interview with the remarkably gracious Lauren Myracle, here.


Amazon's exclusive digital rights deal with DC comics, and what happened next

The new deal means that hundreds of DC’s popular graphic novels (think Superman, Batman, Watchmen...) will only be available on Amazon’s new Kindle Fire tablet. Barnes & Nobel and Books-a-Million responded by pulling all the physical volumes of those titles from their shelves, saying they wouldn’t carry any book it they’re denied the right to sell the digital version. The New York Times story is here.  


Sales Data Sharing With Authors

And there was more news featuring Amazon, this on Amazon driving changes in how publishers do business – since Amazon announced they would share some sales data with their authors, Simon & Schuster (and now Random House and Hachette Book Group) will do similarly. It’s an interesting article in Publishers Lunch.


New Radio Book Club for Kids

“Prisoners of NPR” (kids in the back seat forced to listen to ‘All Things Considered’ because their parents are listening) are getting their own Back Seat Book Club.  Here's the story at Publishers Weekly.


Traditional Publishing's path of Print first, digital second gets flipped

Ruckus Media is teaming up with Scholastic to publish digital first, and print second.  You can read more about it here.


Is a book ever finished, or just published?

For the 40th anniversary edition of the best-selling horror classic, "The Exorcist," author William Peter Blatty not only polished, but revised and added a whole new character.  You can hear the interview (and read the article) from NPR's Weekend Edition here.


And finally,

If you won the Newbery Medal, would you want that gold sticker on the cover?

On the right, the old cover, Newbery Medal flashing.  On the left, the new cover

Turns out this isn't a mistake.  It's the strategy for attracting adult readers.

Find out more about the new cover without the Newbery Medal for Neil Gaiman's "The Graveyard Book" at this Media Bistro post.

And interestingly, "The Graveyard Book" will be the inaugural title for the new NPR Back Seat Book Club.  Fun how that came full circle, isn't it?

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee