Trac Changes

On Coverflipping, Misogyny, and, Oh Yeah—How You and I Are Part of the Problem

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Stark) — Tue, 21 May 2013 11:45:00 +0000

If you’re in any way involved in the YA publishing world, you’ve probably heard a lot about Maureen Johnson’s #coverflip challenge by now. In fact, thanks to the Huffington Post’s coverage, even if you’re not involved in YA publishing you may have heard of it. (Less clear is how you found yourself on my humble blog, but I’m glad you did! Hello! Have a cookie!)

I’ve been following the conversation about coverflipping since its start, but haven’t joined in because my feelings have been very mixed, and they needed a bit of time to percolate. After a lot of thought, I can say that while I’m excited about the idea of coverflipping as a way to spur conversation about a really important subject, I’m also extremely frustrated with the general tenor of the conversation. Overall, I think the point—and thus the conversation we so desperately need to be having—has largely been missed. And I don't feel like this is the first time this topic has been approached and then derailed—in fact, this just keeps happening when we try to have productive conversations about gender in publishing.

I believe that, as a whole, our society lacks the tools to have a productive conversation about gender, and my frustration stems not from Maureen Johnson's idea or from any individuals' responses, but rather from the overall conversation, which I see as highlighting that lack of tools. And I hope that this post can at least give us an idea of how we can begin to approach this topic productively and move forward from it with purpose. None of this is intended to be a personal attack against Maureen Johnson, who gives her own ideas about how to move forward here, or against any of the participants in the coverflip experiment.

So, here goes…

First, the only way to have a productive conversation about coverflipping is to be clear about what conversation we’re actually having. When we talk about covers as a reflection of prejudice in the book world, we all need to be on the same page about why we are starting the conversation there. It's useful to talk about covers because, if the publisher has achieved their intent in designing it, then a book's cover is a very clear indicator of what groups of people the publisher (rightly or wrongly) perceives as its audience. There are tons of other indicators of the perceived audience for any given book, including its marketing plan (where ads for the book appear, for instance, and what they look like and say), the cover and flap copy (everything from word choice to which plot events the editor chooses to highlight in writing flap copy), and the publicity campaign (the cities an author tours in and the publications their book is pitched to can say a lot about a publisher’s assumptions about the book’s audience, though of course it’s also worth noting that the stores’ and publications’ assumptions about their customers also plays a huge role here).

We talk about the cover rather than those other indicators because it is the easiest thing to get a quick read on, it is the most visible of the signs, it stays visible and often unchanged for the life of the book, and it can most easily be categorized and compared to other covers without intense linguistic and statistical analysis. But when we focus a conversation on a visual snapshot of the larger topic, much of the complexity of the issue is often lost, and we need to remember that books aren't gendered in the cover department alone. Asking why designers keep creating gendered covers is unfair to designers (many of whom, my colleagues among them, actively try to disassemble gendered stereotypes in their work) because it places blame on them for decisions that are often made long before the book ever comes to them to be designed. But, more than that, it misses the point, which is that many creators and moderators of content make assumptions about books’ intended audiences unfairly, and often based on gender.

The author’s gender isn’t the only thing that determines publishers’ perceptions about a given book’s audience, but I do believe that it plays a role. In order to understand that role, however, we need to be clear about when and in what way it plays a role. I think our conversation loses focus when we try to compare totally different books from completely separate genres and focusing on different subject matter. That’s not to say that I don’t think a discussion of how genre literature becomes gendered and why, and which genres are valued and esteemed over others and the part that gender plays in that valuation, is worthwhile. But I think the coverflip project is really only an effective tool if we use it to examine and discuss how books featuring very similar themes, written with the same style and skill, are often perceived differently due to the gender of those books’ authors.

It’s useful, for instance, to look at two authors of the same category, genre, and caliber (perhaps John Green and Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, for instance), for evidence of how, though they might write about the same themes, like first experiences of love and rejection, a teen’s dawning awareness of their own mortality, and learning how to have meaningful friendships and relationships, their gender might play a role in who they are perceived to be writing for. I can’t speak for Maureen Johnson, but I think that her original intent was to highlight the fact that men can write about largely internal struggles and relationships between friends and they will be tagged as literary, universal, and “for all readers,” whereas women who write about the same things are often assumed to be writing about their own, lady-specific interests, and they get tagged as "chick lit" and considered to be writing only for other women. There is nothing wrong with fiction written for women, but there is something very wrong with the author's gender being what determines that a work of fiction is solely for women. When an author's gender determines a publisher’s perception of a book’s audience, that is prejudice.

I think a few of the coverflip responses did an excellent job of grasping and illustrating what those differing perceptions would look like. Hannah's coverflip for Jack Kerouac's On the Road, for instance, suggests to me the way in which Kerouac's literary journey could have been reinterpreted through the lens of gender bias as a carefree road trip or a set of summer flings:

However, I felt that the vast majority of the coverflips I saw didn’t capture the intricacies of the issue, but rather reinforced exactly what I see as the problem: binary thinking and stereotyped assumptions about what is masculine and what is feminine. When we put blood, guns, and chains on a the male version of a coverflipped jacket for a book that has nothing to do with violence, we are not only misrepresenting the way in which gender bias is usually carried out, but we are also perpetuating the harmful idea that violence, anger, and toxic masculinity are things that are of men, by men, and for men. When we put flowers, kissing, and frills on the female version of a coverflipped jacket that has nothing to do with romance, flowers, and fashion, we are not only making a parody of the gender bias from which many authors suffer, but we are also perpetuating the harmful idea that love, friendship, and frivolity are things that are of women, by women, and for women. The coverflip examples that arbitrarily assigned objects and images from gendered categories in order to create a coverflipped look told me less about publishers’ biases in determining a book’s audience, and more about the coverflip creators’ internalized biases and assumptions about gender and what constitutes “maleness” and “femaleness.”

And if we want anything to change in the way books are interpreted, jacketed, marketed, and read—if we want to even the playing field for authors and readers of all genders and make the publishing world a more fair and equal place—we need to disassemble binary thinking and gendered stereotypes altogether. We need to be sure to recognize and celebrate the gray areas between and within categories that we think of as opposites. And, moreover, we need to stop ourselves from assigning a greater than/less than value system to the binary categories we have created.

Which leads me to the fact that, more often than not, the covers that I saw being arbitrarily assigned stereotyped imagery, and the covers that I most often saw being ridiculed as frivolous or slammed for being part of the problem, were the feminine interpretations of books actually written by men. Instead of a discussion of our gendered assumptions about books and readers, the conversation turned quickly into a vilification of all things that are considered feminine.

Among the calls to action spurred by the coverflip discussion, I heard countless voices asking publishers to create more “gender-neutral” covers, whether to encourage boys to read books featuring strong female characters (an argument I strongly disagree with; how about teaching our boys that there's no shame in female or feminine things?), to prove to female authors that we truly value them and their work, to once and for all end stereotyping based on authors’ genders, and so on and so on. I can get on board with some of those reasons, but my problem with that call to action is that, again and again, I saw the objects and images associated with the dominant class being accepted as universal, whereas the objects and images associated with the less dominant class were defamed for being gendered.

Can you actually define gender-neutral? To do so, we’d have to have a clear definition of both sides of the gender binary, and then we’d have to find the middle ground in between. The thing about living in a world in which one half of a false binary is valued over the other half is that the valued half becomes dominant, and its dominance makes it invisible. The dominant class or category is defined not based on its own characteristics, but based on its not being the other class. Most covers that were assigned to male authors were defined as being for men simply by virtue of their not being specifically for women. And, importantly, these were also the covers that were most often defined as good, universal, gender-neutral, and ideal for all readers.

I feel that when we talk about wanting gender-neutral covers, we’re not talking about wanting covers that are equally devoid of masculine and feminine stereotypes, because we don’t have a strong grasp of what masculine stereotypes are. Instead, we’re talking about wanting covers with fewer things tagging them as feminine. We are accepting the dominant class as the default and arguing to have more of it, instead of questioning the dominant class and dismantling its universal hold on our psyches.

Eliminating feminine covers is not a good option. It takes away the options that many people of all genders prefer. As many publishers have pointed out, it would take some of their bestselling covers off the shelves. And, most importantly, eliminating or vilifying feminine covers, and allowing readers, male or otherwise, to write off images and storylines that are considered too "girly" helps to perpetuate biases that hurt not only women, but also anyone who deviates from gender norms or embraces femininity in any way. Hating things that are considered feminine devalues women and contributes to sexism (because, no matter how hard a woman works, she is seen as the very definition of femininity and is considered less valuable than a man, inherently). Hating femininity also contributes to homophobia, particularly towards gay men, who are often ridiculed for feminine behavior and interests. Hatred of femininity contributes to trans*phobia and the oppression of people who don’t identify with the gender binary (both because it insists that people who are biologically female are defined by their biology as feminine, and therefore have less value no matter how many stereotypically masculine traits they adopt or portray, and because it allows people to ridicule those who are biologically male for embracing their identities as women and adopting feminine traits). And hatred of femininity devalues many qualities, beliefs, and objects which should have value for people of any and all genders but are often scorned for their perceived “girliness,” like empathy, compassion, the ability to negotiate and make peace, and so on. Devaluing the feminine and those who embrace it is not the answer to sexism; it is a part of it.

And, all of that aside, the argument about whether we like or don't like "feminine" or "masculine" things is actually just a distraction from the real conversation and the changes we need to enact in our publishing and consuming methods. What we need to do is stop arbitrarily categorizing things—be they flowers or plot points or writing styles—into categories attached to gender and biological sex. We need to recognize that there is nothing inherently male or female about any color, object, character, subject, or style. And then we need to start treating that whole spectrum of colors, objects, characters, subjects, and styles as a grab bag we can select from at will and mix and match from with abandon.

The solution isn't for all feminine covers to be abolished; it's for as many male authors to have feminine covers as female authors. It's for as many men to enjoy and seek out covers we currently see as feminine as women do. Even better, it's for every author to get the cover that best represents their book, its subject matter, and the interests of people who will most likely enjoy it—and for our assumptions about who will enjoy a book to stop being influenced by gender and biological sex, both of the author and of readers.

“Wow, Rachel,” you might be thinking right now, “you sure have a lot of feelings about coverflipping!” Well, hold on to your butts, because I’m about to get to the part of the coverflip conversation that I find the most frustrating of all.

The main reason I am frustrated by this conversation is that nothing is changing. And nothing is changing because no one is taking responsibility for the problem.

Whose responsibility is it to stop our gendered assumptions about what books are for what readers and what books and covers have value?

Yours.

Mine.

EVERYBODY’S.

Editors and publishers need to stop mentally categorizing books as “girl books” or “boy books” and tailoring their choices of what manuscripts to acquire, their suggestions in edits, and their choices in copy writing and positioning towards specific and stereotyped genders. Marketers like myself need to resist the temptation to use the perceived gender of a book’s audience to decide where and how to market the book. Cover designers need to question what stereotypes they may fall back on when designing covers to reach a specific audience, and question and subvert gendered stereotypes when necessary. Sales reps need to be open to nontraditional cover choices and use their selling skills to help win buyers over to non-gendered cover decisions. Buyers at major chain retailers and independent bookstores need to be willing to take risks on covers that are different from what they’ve seen many of their customers purchase, and trust that changing the look of books in certain sections might also change the demographics or increase the number of customers who flock to those sections. Readers need to challenge their own assumptions about the content and quality of books based on those books’ covers, and support the types of covers and books they enjoy with their buying dollars, which will encourage publishers to give them more of what they want.

Yes, many people within this chain are currently doing it wrong. But pointing fingers and denying any responsibility is simply a way to run circles around the actual problem. The actual problem is SEXISM. Misogyny. Not perpetuated by one person or corporation, but a facet of every single aspect of our lives. Yes, dear reader, even yours.

Why is it easier to focus on which covers we like and want to buy than it is to talk about the overall, insidious mis-categorization of books and authors on the basis of sexist ideals? Because owning up to the fact that we have all internalized problematic beliefs and are playing an active role in perpetuating them is hard. Because it puts the responsibility on all of us to unlearn those problematic beliefs and behaviors.

Damn, you know, I get that it's hard. I'll grant you that is really hard. But we can’t change anything if we keep pointing out how others have internalized sexist beliefs without also owning up to how we’ve done the same. So I'll go first, okay?

I am sexist. I don't want to be sexist, but I am, and in my thoughts, assumptions, preferences, and behaviors I contribute to the oppression of women and femininity in small ways every single day. Why? Because our culture and our world is sexist. Because oppressive beliefs are everywhere, stated as fact, used to sell products and ideas, and woven into the very fabric of our society, and despite my attempts to question and resist them, I can't escape them. I am also racist, homophobic, ableist, sizeist, ageist, trans*phobic, classist, and more (no, the fact that I am female and queer does not make me immune to sexism and homophobia—oppressing ourselves is a part of being oppressed). I don't want to be any of those things, which is why I am actively working to educate myself, to become conscious of my bad behaviors, and to unlearn my problematic beliefs. But because I have, willingly or not, internalized the oppressive messages that run rampant in this society, I am all of those things.*

I don't wake up in the morning and think, "Man, today is sure a great day for oppressing people!" And neither, I'm certain, do you. But you consume the same toxic messages that I do, so now may be a good time to take a look at what you like and value, and how you express that, and see if those values reflect any internalized sexism. Chances are, they do in at least a few ways. And acknowledging and working to change that is the only way to begin a productive conversation about gender bias in the media, including in books.

So that’s what I encourage you to do today: sit down and think about what you believe to be good, and attractive, and literary, and valuable. Think about what you consider to be masculine and feminine. And then try to figure out why you think that, and try to challenge yourself on it. Decide for yourself what is for you. Decide for yourself what has value. And go support that in whatever aspect of the publishing industry you participate in. Meanwhile, support others in their choices so that they, too, can be empowered to define themselves as individuals whose values and interests are not determined by their gender or biological sex. And subvert the hell out of any stereotype you see.

Because it’s only through every single one of us doing that, in every single corner of the industry we inhabit, that anything is ever going to change.

*For a super, super good article elaborating on this subject and wonderfully explaining what I mean by it, follow this link to Queer Guess Code.

Tuesday Muse: Ellen Degeneres on Success and Integrity

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Stark) — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 11:57:00 +0000

"It was so important for me to lose everything, because I found out what the most important thing is is to be true to yourself... I know I'll always be okay, because no matter what, I know who I am... For me, the most important thing in your life is to live your life with integrity and not give in to peer pressure to be something that you're not; to live your life as an honest and compassionate person; to try to contribute something."

Oh, Ellen.<3>

Tuesday Muse: Hank Green on Growing Up

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Stark) — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 11:53:00 +0000

Because every now and then I step back and look at my life and consider my age and wonder why I don't feel more like a grownup:

Growing up is what you want it to be. We're grownups now, and it's our turn to decide what that means. Being silly is still allowed; that's not excluded by adulthood. What's excluded by adulthood is thoughtlessness. So be silly and thoughtful...

We pretend like we live in a world of harsh edges, but there are no harsh edges. There are no borders between these things. Those hard lines are all imaginary, and they're just created for convenience. Whether it's loving or growing up or raising a child or having a job, these aren't destinations; they're not achievements to unlock. Life isn't a video game; it's a journey. Everything is a journey, and we get to travel it together. And I hope, I hope that you enjoy it.

Tuesday Muse: Kristin Cashore on Starting Over

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Stark) — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 11:51:00 +0000

Last Tuesday I attended an event at Books of Wonder that was run in an unusual way: three powerhouse writers who knew and really loved each other and each other's work (Kristin Cashore, Melina Marchetta, and Gayle Forman) sat down together and just had a conversation about books, and writing, and relationships, and equality. What was essentially a planned converging of such smart minds made the event the best signing I'd ever been to, and today's Tuesday Muse is just one of many inspiring snippets from that evening.

When asked what the best advice she'd ever gotten from her editor was, Kristin Cashore answered with one sentence from the editorial letter she received in her first round of edits on Bitterblue: "Would you consider starting from scratch?"

Can you imagine—to have written a novel of Bitterblue's length and, moreover, of its incredible complexity of depth and character, and to be asked to scrap it and start again from a blank page? And yet, Kristin said, it was freeing. She knew where the novel was going at that point, but could never have gotten it there trying to mold the words she had written into the right shape. Instead, she wrote the New York Times bestseller on her belief in the story she had to tell and the characters she had to tell it, and on the faith that throwing all those words out to begin anew would redeem them.

They talk about being willing, as a writer, to "kill your darlings." Hand in hand with that, though, goes a willingness to rethink everything, to go back to the drawing board, and to start from scratch. So finish your novel. And if it doesn't work, that's okay. Would you consider starting from scratch?

Tuesday Muse: Where the Hell is Matt? Dancing and Building Community

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Stark) — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 11:57:00 +0000

It started out as one man dancing badly (his words, not mine!) all over the world. Over time, it became one man bringing people together to dance with him all over the world:

And this year, Matt hit the road one more time, this time to learn dances from as many people as he could:

As one friend of mine pointed out, he travels to countries and areas some of us may never have heard or or dreamed of visiting. He dances in countries that are torn by war or silenced by oppressive governments, and he dances across lines drawn by deep prejudice and international conflict. And in all cases, his dancing brings people together without pretension and without bias. It inspires people to learn, to teach, to build community, and to enjoy simple pleasures. To me, that says so much about the power of dance and the incredible joy of teaching and learning.

I can't be sure, but this video feels like Matt's farewell and thank you to everyone who's come together to dance and to watch. And it's an appropriately touching tribute to the unity brought about by as simple an act as inviting someone to dance and celebrate with you.

Tuesday Muse: Taking a Different Approach to the Ordinary

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Stark) — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 11:00:00 +0000

I think I noticed the sculptures in mid-May. It was oppressively, bone-draggingly hot out, and my coworker and I were walking (which we already regretted) to a food truck several blocks from our office. We cut across Madison Square Park and I pointed out the gravel walkway that seemed to have been created recently. It was dotted with benches and picnic tables, and bordered with brightly colored fences and, well, these slug-like, amorphous blobs of colored metal.

"I'll never get this side of modern art," I said to Laura, and then we kept walking.

Because honestly, it was hot.

It was only last week that Laura and I finally walked up that new gravel walkway and sat down on the benches encircled by the installation. I rested my hand on one of the sculptures and, to my surprise, it sang. Not the echoing tone of metal struck just the right way, but loud, discordant, electric music.

And then suddenly both Laura and I were on our feet, flitting from sculpture to sculpture and calling back and forth to each other about what we heard. There was a purple sculpture full of sound so faint we had to kneel on the ground, press our chests to it, and parse the vibrations for sound. The yellow sculpture we could barely keep from singing; the slightest breath seemed to set it off. The gray sculpture, its toppling heap of a shape already suggesting over-abundance, was alive with sound that swelled and rose the longer your hand rested on it.

And suddenly I'd found whimsy in that which I had nearly overlooked, reminding myself once again that sometimes when you think you need a new concept, all you need is a new approach. And, perhaps even more so, that discovering something magical where you expected only the mundane can be more delightful than magic itself.

Charles Long's Pet Sounds will remain on view in Manhattan's Madison Square Park until September 9, 2012.

Tuesday Muse: Real Life Fantasy Worlds in the American West

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Stark) — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 11:42:00 +0000

This week's Tuesday Muse (and the reason I was M.I.A. last week) is Zion National Park in Utah.

I've spent much of my life possessed, like many habitual readers, by a soul-deep desire to find something more in this world. It's not just the hope that one day the back of the wardrobe will reveal a forest or that a letter from Hogwarts will come in the post, but rather a cognitive dissonance that arises between your perception of the world, largely gleaned through books, and the image that the world presents. It's a sense that there must be another world that's richer, somehow, than our own. A sense that we're owed an adventure or two there.

But, visiting Zion National Park last week, I realized I might never have needed to feel that way if I'd known exactly what the park held. It's a fantasy world all in its own right. So here's to discovering uninhabited places and unconquered wildernesses. They've reminded me of the magic of this life: not the same as the magic of fantasy worlds, but entirely comparable in its own way.

Tuesday Muse: Mary Oliver

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Stark) — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 11:58:00 +0000

Tuesday Muse: Book Spine Poetry

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Stark) — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 11:00:00 +0000

Today's Tuesday Muse was going to be "meeting your childhood heroes" (see Exhibit A below), but because the last two Tuesday Muses I've made specifically referencing people have directly followed their passing away, I decided not to curse Bruce Coville. May he live long and prosper and write many more books about unicorns and dragons.

So, instead, today's Tuesday Muse is this brilliant little bit of book spine poetry from Maria Popova:

Next time you find yourself stuck, go to your bookshelf. Grab a few books with titles that interest you and rearrange them until you have a poem or an insightful phrase.

And share your poem here, because I want to read it!

And if that fails, try a limerick. Because really, everyone likes limericks, and if they don't you shouldn't trust them.

Tuesday Muse: An Invocation for Beginnings

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Stark) — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 11:23:00 +0000

Today's Tuesday Muse is Ze Frank's "An Invocation for Beginnings." We all know the struggle of staring down a blank page. This is your inspiration as well as your invitation to begin.

"There is no need to sharpen my pencils anymore. My pencils are sharp enough. Even the dull ones will make a mark."

Tuesday Muse: Pixar's Rules for Storytelling

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Stark) — Tue, 29 May 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Today's Tuesday Muse is this article on storytelling rules learned from Pixar's writers and animators, because whatever we think of Pixar's politics, I think we can all agree that they know how to tell a darn good story. These rules offer excellent insights on building character, getting your manuscript out of a stuck place, and figuring out story structure. Here are some of my favorites:

#1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.

#4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.

#11: Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.

#14: Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.

#20: Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?

Now, head on over to the Pixar blog to check out the rest!

Tuesday Muse: A Thank You to Jean Craighead George

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Stark) — Tue, 22 May 2012 11:49:00 +0000

After Maurice Sendak's death two weeks ago, I was doubly saddened when I learned last week that Jean Craighead George, too, had passed on. She is this week's muse, and my own muse in a hundred small ways so much a part of me that I'm hardly conscious of them.

If Maurice Sendak shaped the field that I work in, well, then Jean Craighead George shaped me. I spent my childhood ankle-deep in mud or tangled in thorns, fishing for tadpoles in the brook behind my house or following foxes to their dens. Raised in the epitome of suburbia, I nonetheless learned to read the slight disturbances in grass and shrubs that betrayed a deer trail even before I learned to read words on a page. The wetlands and the woods felt like an extension of my soul.

In Jean Craighead George's writing I found that same utter devotion to nature multiplied a thousand times over. I discovered a world in which nature was home and hospice and mentor—too formidable to be a utopia, but nonetheless the stuff of pure, distilled dreams. I ground acorns into meal alongside My Side of the Mountain's Sam, soared and hunted with Frightful, and dreamed of waterfalls with Alice. I romped with wolves like Julie did, and after I turned the last page of Julie of the Wolves I hunted down every bit of information I could find on wolf pack interactions and saved quarters until I could sponsor a wolf at a nature reserve. For want of wolf pups, I named a gaggle of goslings after Julie's wolves. I still, to this very day, see hollowed-out trees and can't help but dream of slipping away to live in them.

It's not difficult to see the trail I took to publishing when one compares my high school English papers to my lackluster performance in Biology (I could never seem to find the same wonder in naming cell parts that I found in studying wolf pack dynamics), but in another life I could easily have found myself in a tent on the tundra, tracking and tagging wolves like Julie did in Julie's Wolf Pack. And there will always be a part of me that needs that pilgrimage to the Catskills, so close to me here in New York but part of another life. There will always be a part of me that's more at home on the mountain than on the M train, a part of me that skims across the top of the snow like molten silver and howls to the moon at night.

My very own Frightful

So thank you, Jean Craighead George, for making the earth your home and inviting thousands of children to join you there. Thank you for creating a world without parents, in which nature taught all the lessons we needed to learn. Thank you for awakening my wonder at the natural world, for making me dream of falconry and tanning leather, and for teaching me a new and invaluable way to see and appreciate and utterly love this complex, harsh, beautiful earth, bursting with life.

Wherever you are, I hope you run with the wolves and fly with falcons.

Of Thrones & Tempting Trailers: What Do You Like in a Book Trailer?

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Stark) — Thu, 17 May 2012 11:57:00 +0000

I don't often use this blog to blatantly push or promote Bloomsbury & Walker books (in fact, I don't really think I've shied away from putting them under the same analytical lens I apply to all of Young Adult lit), but today I do want to share a project that I'm immensely proud to have worked on: the book trailer for Throne of Glass, which debuted recently on MTV.com's Hollywood Crush blog.

By the by, if you like the trailer and want to read the book, Sarah Maas is holding an ARC giveaway on her blog through the end of this week.

Now, I want to know: what do you think of the trailer? More importantly, since I'll likely be working on many more of these over the next several seasons, what do you usually like in a book trailer? What do you never like to see? How much do book trailers affect your interest in a book, usually?

I'm looking forward to hearing from you!

Tuesday Muse: Maurice Sendak

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Stark) — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:52:00 +0000

Today's Tuesday Muse is (and couldn't possibly be anything but) Maurice Sendak, the much-beloved author and illustrator of Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen, and many more books for children. It seems that children's literature has lost a number of its greats in the past year, but Maurice Sendak's loss has hit particularly hard. Perhaps that's because it would be difficult to name another author and illustrator whose effect on the field that I work in and love has been so profound. I truly don't believe children's literature could be what it is today without him. And for a man who saw much of society going downhill around him, he nonetheless maintained a childlike sense of whimsy and an ability to tell stories that inspire.

I leave you with some Maurice Sendak quotes on writing for children which The Telegraph quoted last week:

"No story is worth the writing, no picture worth the making, if it is not a work of imagination.”

"I refuse to lie to children. I refuse to cater to the bullsh*t of innocence."

“You cannot write for children. They're much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them.”

“. . .from their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions, fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives, they continually cope with frustrations as best they can. And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming Wild Things.”

Thank you, Maurice Sendak, for understanding children—and for understanding dreams—in a way that few people do.

Tuesday Muse: The Most Astounding Fact about the Universe

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Stark) — Tue, 08 May 2012 11:30:00 +0000

"We are part of this universe. We are in this universe. But perhaps more important than both of those things is that the universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact... many people feel small, 'cause they're small and the universe is big, but I feel big, because my atoms came from those stars." — Neil deGrasse Tyson

Need I say any more? Life is pretty astonishing.

On the Gradual Process of Reaching Your Dreams

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Stark) — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 11:00:00 +0000

Several things have happened in the past couple of weeks.

I went home to Baltimore and stood outside the big house in a small city that was once mine. I sat with friends on cobbled walks and sipped sugar-soaked drinks, drank in sunlight and the easy comfort that comes with people who know your whole soul. I remembered telling those same friends, one night when lightning struck by the harbor and we watched it from our porch, that one day the city I loved would be too small to hold all the dreams I harbored. During my visit, I walked familiar streets, felt the thrum of energy beneath my feet, the warmth of the earth itself. Felt again the strain of pulling my roots up from that rich loam, heard the groan of damp soil disturbed, the creak of branches and the snapping of twigs. I visited my favorite coffee shop and found that I no longer had a taste for the coffee there; it hadn’t changed, but I had.
I started taking Spanish classes because it’s been a goal of mine—because I want to belong in the city that’s chosen me, and because I want other people to feel they can belong when they’re in my presence; I see that as my responsibility. I am blessed in that learning has always come easily to me, so long as I set my mind to the schoolwork. But returning to the classroom made me realize all the areas of my life in which I’m learning and it in no way mimics the classroom, all the areas where trial and error equals real-life success or failure, where the difference between getting it right and screwing it up can be your job, or it can be your principles, or it can be your happiness. Or they can all three be tangled together, and maybe you can’t tell where one ends and another begins, and so you try to satisfy all of them in perfect balance, if you can do that, but I don’t know how.
I read this beautiful post by The Rejectionist—I mean Sarah McCarry, goodness, we can say that now—and the second I realized my cheeks were damp was also the second I realized I was sad. I wondered what I had to be sad about, when I’d earned my dreams, when I’d spent my day doing what I’d labored since high school to have the right to do. I read and re-read this line, over and over, again and again: “If you think getting what you want changes your life, you're most likely mistaken; there you are, still, in your same old body, fucking up, getting it right, no telling which.” And I cried, because I don’t know which. I don’t. It changes, day to day.
On another day, I cracked open a fortune cookie after a takeout lunch, unfolded the scrap of paper inside, and read:
“The only way to enjoy anything in life is to earn it first.”
A week later I went somewhere I’d never been before and left with new friends, and then I went somewhere I’d been often and found it seemed to welcome me for the first time. The next day I sat down in the office with a pen and a notebook and I spent all day doing work I was proud of, and when I left for the night I thanked those around me for the opportunity.

This isn’t the kind of blog post I meant to write after so much silence. I guess I just hope it’s the kind of post that you needed to read. Perhaps you, like me, tend to live in the Where You’re Going and forget to enjoy the Where You Are. And maybe you must always be moving forward, because getting what you want will always, must always, be a gradual process. I’m not even sure there is a What You Want, not that doesn’t morph once you’ve reached it.

But in all that reaching and staying hungry and letting your dreams evolve, don’t ever forget that you’ve made it. Wherever you are now, you’ve made it to there, and that’s no small thing. That’s something to be proud of.

You’ve made it.

Tuesday Muse: Figuring it Out (with Feminist Teens)

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Stark) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:00:00 +0000

This is today's Tuesday Muse (and every day's inspiration) for a number of reasons:

Teens. They are so smart and inspiring, right?!
I wish that at fifteen I'd had even a fraction of the feminist gusto this girl has. (Actually, I wish that at fifteen I'd even known I wanted to be a feminist; I hung out in the "Sure I believe in equality, but I wouldn't call myself a feminist" camp until college.)
I think this girl is on to something: whenever you acknowledge a problem, be sure to also acknowledge those who work to fix it. That's a good practice for life in general.
It's not true that you must be perfectly consistent in your beliefs. Feminism—in fact, everything (and yes, that means writing, too)—is not a rule book, but a discussion, a conversation, a process.
Be unapologetically present, and unapologetically you. In your writing, in your reading, and in your life.

Tis the Season: Job and Internship Search Tips from the Archives

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Stark) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 12:07:00 +0000

It's getting to be that time of year again; everyone's smiling, wearing their nicest clothes, and stocking up on thank you notes in preparation for... interview season! Who out there is just starting a job or internship search? Well, dust off those notes from your college's career workshop, have your interview outfit dry-cleaned, and get ready to slam out a cover letter and resume. If you're interested in working or interning in publishing, I wrote a blog series on how to get an internship in publishing last year, and much of it applies to job searching as well. Here are the topics:

Know What You Want
Become a Master Networker
Write a Strong Cover Letter
Find Out What Interviewers Want from the Source: An Interview with Scholastic's HR Manager
And finally, learn more from these great links

Once you have that awesome job or internship, you'll want to make the most of it so you can move up in the industry and have even more fun in your career. Jessica from BookEnds LLC wrote an excellent post recently about the types of interns who ultimately get hired. It's well worth a read!

Tuesday Muse: John Cleese on Creativity and Play

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Stark) — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 11:05:00 +0000

Today's Tuesday Muse is long but entirely worth your time, so put it on play in the background while you brush your teeth this morning or open the mail this afternoon. John Cleese insists that creativity isn't a gift some people have and others don't, but a frame of mind anyone can learn. The most creative people are simply more open to playing than others, and more efficient at switching between play and efficiency. And there are only four things we need to reach this state ourselves, which Cleese shares in this awesome video.

Tuesday Muse: 1000 Awesome Things

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Stark) — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 11:00:00 +0000

Today's Tuesday Muse is a reminder of all the little (and secretly huge) joys in life: 1000 Awesome Things, a blog I found via PostSecret's founder, Frank Warren.

A thousand is a lot of things, so you might try starting with the first bite of a piece of gum, picking up a Q and a U at the same time in Scrabble, anything that can grow wings, and especially smiling and thinking of good friends who are gone. Even reading through the list of links for the top 1000 guarantees a smile.

Another awesome thing? The fact that there are two books of these!

A New BookExpo America: Is it Time for BEA to Become "Book Con"?

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Stark) — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 11:00:00 +0000

It’s time to bust out your badges and prepare your bag for ARC-stuffing, because it was announced last week that BookExpo America will open its doors to general consumers for the first time ever this June. Publishers Weekly announced last week that the show manager's plan to welcome consumers in 2013 had been accelerated by a year.

Granted, the change will start small, with the show’s managers offering no more than a thousand tickets to consumers. And in its first year tickets won’t be sold directly to consumers. Instead, they’ll be doled out to publishers and booksellers to offer to their avid fans or most active book-talkers—a move which is likely to ensure that this year’s consumer attendees are still unlikely to include many customers far removed from the mainstream publishing bubble. But it’s nonetheless a move that could drastically change the feel of the show in future years, especially if at some point down the line the show decides to make consumer ticket sales its main focus.

And many within the industry are less than enthusiastic, to say the least. “This is a booksellers [sic] convention and we have become the least important entity as to the floor,” said one bookseller in the comments on the article. “Giving the jump on industry professionals is a privilege," commented another. "Now consumers and e-hawkers will be scanning and selling books illegally. Bad move."

Personally, though I think it would take many years and a very drastic change for the show to become entirely consumer-focused, I think the idea of a convention that welcomes customers is a fresh one that could have huge benefits for the industry. In 2005 I read a fantastic article on Publishing Trends which pointed out Comic Con’s strong role in both promoting comics to fans and, perhaps more importantly, keeping comic publishers informed about—and directly in touch with—their market base. Publishing Trends quoted a correspondent from the traditional book publishing industry, who said it even better than I could:

We all talk to each other, to buyers, to marketing and we may even have some research to let us know who is reading our books. But these are numbers, not interactions with real people. This attention to the fan is what I believe has kept comics and will keep graphic novels alive, even in hard times… Imagine if you will a BEA, open to fans, where publishing showcases their best and the brightest they have to offer. How many would show up? How many would dress up like their favorite characters? Is this the type of passion that needs to be ignited in publishing in order to survive the hard times and build for the future?

How much better could we as publishers, and especially as representatives of individual imprints, brand ourselves if given that kind of direct face time with—and avid enthusiasm from—fans? Few general consumers know their Knopfs from their Bantam Dells, but I think we could see a positive change in bookselling if they did, and if they used that knowledge to follow the publications of imprints whose sensibilities they like, just as avid fans might follow a particular author who's struck their fancy. I think it's no coincidence that one of the few imprints which I would argue has come close to achieving household name recognition is Tor, an imprint which produces genre working for a highly specialized audience and devotes significant time to networking and building a community with actual consumers via its forums at Tor.com. But while genre fans flock to Tor's booth at BEA, could a literary audience flock to another imprint's booth to discuss the latest Atwoods and Franzens? Could general consumers of children's books be counted on to dress as their favorite character and drop by the booth of the publisher who brought them that character? Could die-hard fans of a whole variety of genres be brought together in one celebration of the written word—and how much could publishers learn from and connect with their fans if so?

With consumers making up only a twenty-fifth of the show's attendees this year, any such change is a long way off. But still, I have to wonder: could the BEA that Publishing Trends's correspondent imagined be around the corner? Would you welcome it, if so?

Tuesday Muse: How to be Emotionally Stable without Getting Bored

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Stark) — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 11:00:00 +0000

For anyone who's ever been to dark places and then come out of them, this is a beautiful tribute to both the darkness and the light in life. To hope and elation. To finding the most miniscule of things fascinating and uplifting. Most of all, it's a tribute to the power of the human spirit and the role inspiration plays in exciting it.

Why Katniss is a Feminist Character (And It’s Not Because She Wields a Bow and Beats Boys Up)

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Stark) — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 11:00:00 +0000

WARNING: If you haven’t read the books yet (and really, what have you been doing with your life if you haven’t?) this post contains spoilers.

When The Hunger Games hit shelves in 2008, its feisty main character quickly earned the “strong female character” seal of approval from fans of young adult lit. Hot-tempered, bow-wielding Katniss is fiercely independent, scornful of feminine frills, and barred off to any emotion that could render her vulnerable. Essentially, as one Tor.com blogger pointed out recently, she’s the anti-Bella Swan, a golden girl for all those YA readers who like their female protagonists to do something more worthwhile than choose between two men.

But amidst the flurry of excitement over Katniss’s complete and utter BAMFness (to use the technical term), it’s easy to forget what keeps her alive is not superior strength, speed, or intelligence, but rather a characteristic that no one else in the arena embraces. Ultimately, it’s not the weapons Katniss wields but the relationships she nurtures that save her life.

And I’m convinced that she’s a feminist character not because she wields a bow like Bella never could, but because while in the arena she learns to recognize, value, and eventually embrace feminine strengths. It’s her ability to find strength in other women — and to support them in return — that makes the girl on fire a feminist.

[Read the rest of this article on Tor.com]

Tuesday Muse: Ira Glass on Storytelling and the Ambition to be Good

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Stark) — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 11:00:00 +0000

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

Give yourself permission to create something that disappoints you. Then create more of it. Create lots of it.

It's the only way to get to that wonderful work inside you that's dying to get out.

What Authors and Publishers Can Learn from the Hunger Games Marketing Campaign, Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Stark) — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 11:00:00 +0000

Who's going to the midnight showing of The Hunger Games tonight? By show of hands? Pretty much everyone, from the looks of it, and with the brilliance of the movie's marketing plan (on top of the obvious brilliance of the books), it's no surprise.

Last week we started talking about how savvy authors and publishing pros might learn from the movie's fantastic marketing plan—first by building a bridge for existing fans and then by creating extra content to entice new ones. (If you missed Part 1, click here to read it now.) Now, let's talk about how to bend the odds in your favor by putting that extra content to use!

3.) Have a plan for all of your extra content. Lionsgate created an enormous amount of the content fans could go crazy for while pulling The Hunger Games together, but what made the campaign so successful was the careful order in which the studio released materials, and its impeccable timing. The studio started small, feeding conversations among fans, announcing the casting of minor roles, dropping the names of the major stars, and releasing the first character posters. And they built up to larger releases like the first photos from the set, short video teasers and new platforms for fans to talk, the first tracks from the movie soundtrack, and eventually full trailers released at just the right time to go viral in an explosive way. The bigger the content, the bigger the venue that released it; articles started in smaller publications and back-page arts sections, but by the time of the first promotional images from the set, major media outlets were hosting content exclusively and exposing it to whole new sets of potential fans. Fans couldn't have forgotten the movie was coming if they tried, and new people were introduced to it every day.

Why it matters for books: Lionsgate created lots of content right away, but they held their cards close to their chest and doled out one at a time, building tension much the way an author structures a good plot. By giving fans small bites of content but hinting at more to come, and by gradually building up to their biggest content, the studio created a near-constant feeling of excitement. Publishers and writers can build similar anticipation into their own marketing plans by strategically working up to the release of their own biggest content, like covers, trailers, and sample chapters. And strong fan interest in early releases can help convince sites with even bigger audiences, or audiences that haven’t yet been introduced to the series, to host the release of major materials and spark an explosive response.

4.) Work with what existing fans love to gain new ones. Throughout the planning and creation of the Hunger Games movie, Lionsgate has brought new fans on board by targeting what existing fans liked. The best example is the film’s soundtrack; though a Hans Zimmer or Howard Shore type might have been the obvious choice, the studio turned instead to fans’ favorite artists to build an unexpected tracklist. The soundtrack targeted the favorite singers of the series’ teen fans (from Taylor Swift to Arcade Fire), giving them one more hook to buzz about. Then the studio announced tracks from bands popular with a slightly older and decidedly different crowd (see mainly: The Decemberists), and existing fans squealed while a new and huge musical fan base got their first doorway into film fandom. Very smart indeed.

Why it matters for books: Marketers and savvy authors must know their audience. That means knowing not just who they are but also what they like beyond a specific book. Can a tour be arranged with the audience’s other favorite authors? Could you create a playlist for the book including some of their favorite bands? Can their favorite song be in the trailer? Can an artist fans love do sketches of the main characters? Can a Pinterest board or Tumblr of images in the theme of the book draw fans’ interest? The brilliance of all these plans is that they’ll appeal to an existing fan base, but people won’t need to be a fan in order to get something out of them. You’ll know you’re doing it right when an existing fan finds that extra content and it reminds them of a friend who may never have heard of the author or book—and bingo, you may just have earned a new fan.

What do you think of the Hunger Games marketing campaign? Any more tips or ideas based on everything that’s been done?