What NOT to do at a Book Festival or Writers Conference

The spring book festival season is underway. As a public service, here is a list of bad behavior I've observed and/or had to contend with.

Panel Moderator: 

1. Wait to contact panelists till two days before the event—or not at all. 
2. Be unfamiliar with panelists’ work: Not read author’s book (at least the first few chapters and website); not know who the literary agent represents; not know titles the editor has worked on. 
3. Have no agenda for the panel, or a vague one, e.g., “I will read brief introductions, and each of you should speak for 12-15 minutes. Then we will take a few questions.” 
4. Let panelists talk for so long that there’s no time for audience Q&A. (This happened with the panel in #3.) 
5. Talk a lot about yourself or read from your own book. Your job is to help the panelists shine. If they look brilliant, so will you. 

Panelist: 

1. Cancel at the last minute because you just realized that the finances won’t work for you. Or cancel due to “family reasons”—but keep the plane ticket the organizers paid for. 
2. Author: Leave book at home, or not have a reading figured out—and practiced!—beforehand. Agent/editor: Leave business cards at home. 
3. Read for 15 minutes when you’re asked to read for five. 
4. Monopolize the conversation and/or interrupt other panelists. 
5. Belittle the moderator (“If you’d read my book…"), other panelists (“I can’t believe you’d say such a stupid thing!”) or audience members (“If you’d been listening, you wouldn’t need to ask that question.”) 

Audience:

1. Leave your cellphone ringer on. 
2. Give copies of your manuscript or self-published book to panelists. 
3. Pitch your book during Q&A session. 
4. Ask self-serving questions instead of general ones. (“Why didn’t you answer the query I sent you six months ago?” vs. “What should a writer do if an agent hasn’t responded to their query after six months?”) 
5. Engage a panelist in lengthy conversation afterwards, when there’s a line of people waiting behind you. 

  I'll be at VaBook Festival next week. Now go forth and be good!

Guest Post: Strength in Numbers

Book Promotion 101 alum Sally Nemeth (THE HEIGHTS, THE DEPTHS, AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN) reports on last week's West Hollywood Book Fair.

(That's Sally by the balloons, doing her Mama Rose impression.)

I am a lucky author. No, my publishing house doesn't do squat for me promotionally, I didn't win a major award with my very first novel, and I'm not on anyone's bestseller list. What I am is a LAYA.

I'm one of the Los Angeles Young Adult authors. And what we've found over our three years of existence is that when it comes to promotion and appearances, there is definitely strength in numbers.

We were organized as an ad hoc listserve by YA author Cecil Castellucci. Initially what we did was share information online, have cocktails, gather for parties and bitch about our publishers, agents, publicists, etc.

Then last year, when the BookExpoAmerica and American Library Association conventions were held in Los Angeles, we saw it as a call to action. We figured we could make a bigger splash at both events as a collective than as individuals. We came up with the idea of presenting a live game show--LAYAPALOOZA--with games based on YA lit guaranteed to amaze and amuse. We invented some absurdly funny quiz show games, got some righteous swag to give away (including our own books), and were not afraid to make total fools of ourselves onstage. And it worked.

For BEA, we contacted the Association of Booksellers for Children and performed LAYAPALOOZA in their hospitality suite, to great acclaim. At ALA, we performed at the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) pavilion and garnered quite a crowd, awarding Dum-Dums for wrong answers to the likes of Arthur Levine and Jay Asher. We set up a group MySpace page and at both events gave out rubber bracelets embossed with our URL: http://www.myspace.com/losLAYAs

Since then, we've been invited to perform LAYAPALOOZA at Vroman's Books in Pasadena, at the November California Library Association meeting and in January at Changing Hands Bookstore in Phoenix, AZ. And now all PALOOZAs are followed by book signings.

As a group, we've always talked about how book fests never get teen lit right. They either strand authors on the kiddie stage, where no teen would be caught dead. Or they put us on panels with other YA authors, where we blather to a room full of people who want to be YA authors about what it's like to be a YA author. Neither format attracts our target audience: teens.

Fellow LAYA Leigh Purtill and I approached the West Hollywood Book Fair with a proposition: If they'd set up a dedicated teen tent, we'd provide at least two hours of programming for it and rent a booth at the fair. We told them that, rather than present our own work, we'd adapt short excerpts of our books "readers theatre" style, and have an ensemble of teens perform the texts. If teens are performing, we reasoned, they'd tell their friends and families to come. Voilà! Target audience achieved.

To our amazement and their credit, the WeHo Book Fair organizing committee agreed. They said that if we succeeded in getting an audience at the teen stage, the LAYAs would have slots at the fest next year, and for years to come.

On Sunday, October 4, the LAYAs INVADED WEHO! Ten members whose books had been published within the year, along with 10 teen readers, took the fest by storm. The organizers have yet to do a post mortem, but we're pretty sure they'll be having us back.

We learned a thing or two. Next year we'll sell our own books at our own booth all day, rather than have a fest seller handle a single signing after the performance. Thus we can sign throughout the day and more of us can participate in the fest, rather than just LAYAs with books published that year. And the more of us on hand, the more attention we draw.

Next week, invited by YALSA, we'll be performing in pairs at libraries throughout Los Angeles as part of Teens Read Week. It's a great way for us to get to know area librarians, YA authors' best friends. The LAYAs are now something of a brand, all because we joined together to promote our work--and YA literature as a whole.

Not bad for a bunch of solitary authors.

Renaissance Woman

I never conduct my L.A. workshops without the presence of Kim Dower, better known as Kim from L.A. Turns out that not only is she one of the best book publicists in the West, but she's a damn fine poet too. She's the latest writer to be showcased reading work al fresco in Guerrilla Reads, an "online video literary magazine."

Another Swell Writer Coming to Denver

On Monday, April 7 at 7:30 pm at Tattered Cover Book Store, Highlands Ranch, Lisa Tucker will read from and sign her new novel THE CURE FOR MODERN LIFE ($24.95 Atria). Her previous books are the critically acclaimed ONCE UPON A DAY and THE SONG READER.

Per a starred review in Publishers Weekly:
"An enjoyable literary page-turner that also explores serious social issues. In crisp, lively prose, Tucker cleverly executes a series of surprising twists that, coupled with the Big Pharma backdrop and cinematic feel, make the novel as fast-paced as a thriller, but with astute and often humorous observations about the shifting morality of 21st-century America. An excellent choice for book clubs... solidifies her position as a gifted writer with a wide range and a profound sense of compassion for the mysteries of the human heart."

THE ENGLISH AMERICAN Comes to Denver

Actress and comedienne (and my consulting client) Alison Larkin will read from and sign her delightful debut novel, THE ENGLISH AMERICAN, on Wednesday, April 2, 7:30 pm at Tattered Cover Book Store, Highlands Ranch.

Alison will also be performing and signing books at a gala fundraiser for Journey To Me on Thursday, April 3, 7.00 pm at the Sheraton Denver West, 360 Union Blvd., Lakewood. Details and tickets: journeytome.com, the adoption gathering place.

Alison performed snippets from her very funny one-woman show, also called "The English American," at her launch party at the British Consulate in Manhattan last month. My official date for the evening, GalleyCat Ron Hogan, wrote about the event and captured some of her performance on camcorder here.

Simon & Schuster describes the book thus:
When Pippa Dunn, adopted as an infant and raised terribly British, discovers that her birth parents are from the American South, she finds that "culture clash" has layers of meaning she'd never imagined. Meet The English American, a fabulously funny, deeply poignant novel that sprang from Larkin's autobiographical one-woman show of the same name. With an authentic adopted heroine at its center, Larkin's compulsively readable first novel unearths universal truths about love, identity, and family with wit, warmth, and heart.

Here's a video of Alison's back story:

Rumors of Reading's Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated

Like others in our widely scattered clan, my second cousin Aaron Stander is a writer--also an English prof, kayaker and carpenter. He's self-published a couple of mysteries set in northern Michigan, where he moved after spending many years in Detroit. This morning he wrote me:

I've got to tell you about a recent Saturday evening. I was invited to give a talk about my books and writing at a small community library in one of the poorest little towns in the region. The main street is two blocks long, and the only businesses still operating are a bar, a small grocery, and a restaurant. There's also a VFW hall, and one church. There are a few dozen houses in town, most built during the lumbering years.

There was bingo at the VFW, about ten cars at the bar, and about thirty people showed up at the library. Most of them had read one or both of my books. After the talk they had cake and coffee. I had been asked to talk for thirty or forty minutes. They kept me there for more than two hours.

What an amazing experience. In spite of all the doom and gloom about the decline in reading in America, there are still people out there who love to read and talk about writing.

NBCC Finalists' Reading (Bella's Excellent NY Adventure 2)

I expected there would be the usual 10-15 authors presenting their work at the NBCC finalists' reading on Wednesday evening. But when I arrived at the New School's Tishman Auditorium, I found that only 3 of the 30 nominees wouldn't be showing up.

I groaned inwardly (OK, outwardly too) at the thought of sitting through TWENTY-SEVEN (!!!) readings, remembering with a shudder the year that the first of 14 readers went on for 25 minutes without interruption (I was ready to yank him off the stage myself). I'd had a yogurt before I came downtown, so I knew my stomach could make it through. But I wasn't so sure if my tush would, especially after having been on a plane for 4+ hours. Happily, the pace quickened throughout the evening, so that Fiction, Poetry and General Nonfiction, which came after an intermission, only took one hour--versus 90+ minutes for Autobiography, Criticism and Biography.

With a few notable exceptions--Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, for one--overall the NBCC finalists lived up to the stereotype of the pale, bespectacled, slightly rumpled author. Another stereotype some lived up to was the author as lousy performer: Few of them set up what their books were about, perhaps assuming (wrongly) that everyone in the audience knew already. Several read passages that gave no clue as to the book's overarching theme--or even its subject (I was as ignorant of Frederick Crews's FOLLIES OF THE WISE: Dissenting Essays after his reading as I was before). Some also had a sleep-inducing drone: Karen Emmerich, translator of the late Miltos Sachtouris' POEMS (1945-1971), did the classic poetry singsong voice in English and Greek. Snore.

Poet Daisy Fried (MY BROTHER IS GETTING ARRESTED AGAIN) gets the prize for worst career move/fashion accessory: She read with her two-month-old daughter strapped to her chest. Some in the crowd said "Awww!" when Fried went to the podium, but my reaction was "UGH!" The kid was sound asleep, but, as babies often do, emitted little squeaks and sighs, which were duly picked up by the microphone. The great thing about giving birth is that you no longer have to carry a big, heavy lump on your abdomen all the time. (The Boy Wonder was 9 lbs, 12 oz, so I know whereof I speak.) Surely Fried could have handed the baby off to its father, or a friend--or even her editor or publicist--for the 3 minutes she was onstage. During the awards ceremony the next night, Fried had to make a hasty exit from the packed auditorium when Baby Dumpling started squalling (as expected by me, if not by her doting mama). I was fresh out of sympathy.

Highlights:

• Alison Bechdel showed slides from her graphic-book memoir, FUN HOME: A Family Tragicomic, to accompany her reading. It barely mattered that she left off the last sentence of her text, which was eaten by her laptop.
• Alexander Masters gave the first emotional reading of the evening, from STUART: A Life Backwards. He was also the first of several authors from the UK Commonwealth, who were by far the best performers. In fact, thinking back on all the readings and panel discussions I've attended, I'd say that Commonwealth natives (except Canadians--sorry!) are overwhelmingly better public speakers than Americans. And it's not just because I'm a sucker for an accent.
• Daniel Mendelsohn, who had the loudest and most resonant voice of the autobiographical authors, gave a very expressive and funny reading from THE LOST: A Search for One of Six Million, complete with gestures, facial expressions and a Yiddish accent.
• Terri Jentz read an intense, horrifying account of her near murder from STRANGE PIECE OF PARADISE, which had the audience enthralled. I had a very hard time with it, though, as I'm still suffering from PTSD. If the reading had gone on any longer I would have stopped my ears and/or left the hall. Afterward, an NBCC member said that Jentz should have gotten an award just for surviving. Very true.
  
• After two deadly dull readers, Lawrence Weschler (EVERYTHING THAT RISES: A Book of Convergences) woke us back up by engaging the audience (what a concept!) with wit, humor and that old standy, an expressive voice.
  
• Debby Applegate (THE MOST FAMOUS MAN IN AMERICA: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher) and Jason Roberts (A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History's Greatest Traveler), besides giving lively readings, were among the few who gave a full sense of the book's subject. Coming away, I actually wanted to, y'know, read the book.
• I could have listened to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's (HALF OF A YELLOW SUN) rich and plummy voice all night. Sure hope she does the audio book herself.
• Kiran Desai, whose THE INHERITANCE OF LOSS was the only one of the 30 I'd read, gave an electric reading, which made me even happier because I LOVED that book.
• Troy Jollimore (TOM THOMSON IN PURGATORY) and Mark Doty, who stood in for W.D. Snodgrass (NOT FOR SPECIALISTS: New & Selected Poems), more than made up for Fried & Emmerich with wit and (once again) expression.
• Simon Schama (ROUGH CROSSINGS: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution) and Sandy Tolan (THE LEMON TREE: An Arab, a Jew and the Heart of the Middle East) brought the evening to a close with stirring readings that exemplified their work.

NBCC president John Freeman remarked at the beginning of the evening that there is something magical about a text coming alive through the person who wrote it. Very true--as long as that person can conjure up the magic to make the text come alive. The best of the group did that.