Bell Bridge Books

DO PUBLISHERS AND EDITORS READ BOOKS PUBLISHED BY OTHER PRESSES?

By Danielle Childers

Do publishers and editors read books they didn’t publish?  You betcha!  After all, we’re in this industry because we love good books. We’re such reading harlots. So I have no shame in presenting you with A Library Trollop’s Reading Recommendations!

I’m absolutely obsessed with retro fiction right now.  The stunning covers. The world events. The vintage feel. When I pick up these books it’s like they whisper “I’ve lived.  Read my wisdom. Experience my days.” And lately I’ve been reading new books about old summers.

I am super late to the party to read Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter (Harper Perennial). But I was so excited that I purchased it in hardback. A luxury when you have to fund my reading habit.  A story within a story. A movie within a novel. The azure coast of Itlay. The 1960s.  An actress. An innkeeper. The filming of Cleopatra.  “The only thing we have is the story we tell.”

Yes.  It was beautiful. The writing. The imagery. The book.  Yes, this is literary fiction of a sort, but as a former librarian, I am bone tired of the limited genres we have to describe books that are just…more.  It’s vintage fiction. It’s retro-glam fiction.  It’s geographic fiction. It’s gently epic and strangely modern. It’s amazing. Read it. But don’t read it as a guilty pleasure. Read it like the clever and cultured book that it is. Read it with a touch of awe and leave your critique behind. Just…enjoy it.

Still on a high from Beautiful Ruins, I discovered (because books simply happen to me, for me.) Palisades Park by Alan Brennert (St. Martin’s Press). An Amusement Park. The 1930s.  It’s like The Great Gatsby gone wild but brighter, and the grit is not hidden by the glitz.  A book full of dreams from back when safety nets did not exist. Complete with frozen lemonades and the warmth of day that lingers in the asphalt.  It’s something you only notice as a child, I think. But it’s magic. I read it on my Kindle with a fan blowing in my face and the sun shining. Yes. Read it. Now. Read it and reflect on the happiest summers that were magical because you lived and breathed thirty years of summer at an amusement park. You didn’t? Well sometimes I can’t separate books from my life.

Now, when I’m feeling really sentimental or have found a book I know I’m going to love so much, I always turn to some old, faithful book friends. I like to read them and introduce them to their new book friends. They won’t sit beside each other on my shelves unless they have the good luck to be written by authors who are alphabetically compatible, but when I glance over their spines, I’ll know they’re related.

So, it felt completely natural after these thoughtful, retro books, to pull out The Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood (Harper Perennial). Don’t judge me. I feel very protective about this book, and I can’t explain it. I have a soft spot for Rebecca Wells because she can tell a great southern story spanning decades that will have you tasting pecans, dissolving in the summer heat with your friends, and sounding just like my Great Aunt Sherry. And it’s a great, mostly light hearted finale to this summer reading list.

There you have it. Three absolutely perfect summer retro reads. Where the time is just as much of a character as the beaches as the roller coasters, as the people.  Read Palisades Park and make lemonade. Beautiful Ruins should be read after watching Cleopatra.  And the Ya-Ya’s?  Just make a shoofly pie and drink the lemonade mentioned above. Sugar is sugar, and there’s just enough salt in the pie to enhance the tartness of the lemons.

Happy reading.

Bell Bridge Books presents these fabulous summer reading titles for only $1.99 on Amazon Kindle Today! 

Is the Novelist Work Not Valued, or Under Valued?

(Originally posted on Kat’s blog, at http://bit.ly/hMskPr)

Kat Magendie is a poet, novelist and Co-Publish of The Rose and Thorn literary magazine. She’s written three novels published by Bell Bridge, with a fourth on the way. Her TENDER GRACES was a 2010 bestseller in ebook at Kindle. Be sure to view her “Reading Nekkid” video at the end of this column.

And now, here’s Kat’s

Gentle Rant:

It’s not magic . . .

How much do you pay for a haircut? Let’s say your stylist cuts your hair in about 30ish minutes, and you return to have it re-cut every 4-10 weeks depending on you. 

What about going out to dinner? Or to lunch? Or a Supreme Latte with extra supreme? Keeping in mind that once you eat/drink, it’s gone, and to have that experience again, you must buy more food/drink by opening up your wallet again and again and again.

Do you like manicures/pedicures? Do you like massages? Do you have a personal trainer? Is there something you collect? 

And of all those things, and the et ceteras not mentioned, that you purchase and enjoy, do you ever expect to get them for free, or for the Service Provider to do their work for deep discounts because, just because?

Of course you don’t.

So why is it when authors talk about money they feel uncomfortable, as if they are embarrassed to even consider the idea of making money from Their Craft? 

Is a writer’s work not considered Work? 

A stylist cuts our hair and we shell  out the money knowing that we’ll have to return to have it cut again and again and again for the same results we hope, but do we ask the stylist to give us a cut rate? Do we ask the stylist to cut our hair for free? We’d not dream of doing that—because we Value the Service.

Somehow being a novelist isn’t Valued as a Service. You can buy a book from Amazon, or your favorite bookseller, or an e-reader, (and many times at discounts), and you

can enjoy that book and the feeling it gives you as many times as you want. You can lend your book (and one day, or now, e-reader books if I understand right) to a friend or relative and the author receives no royalty on that. 

You can sell your book to someone and the author receives no royalty on that. The author receives his/her one-time royalty when a book is purchased and that one-time royalty is a very small percentage of what the book sells for. Very small. On e-readers, authors make a bit more percentage because over-head costs aren’t as great. 

But what if in some alternate universe an author made most every dime of their book’s cost, which they never would by the way, are they somehow unworthy of it?

An author takes months (some longer) writing their book, then they must rewrite and rewrite, then they may go through rejection and uncertainty, then when they have that contract, their work is not done—more editing, more waiting, more stress. When the book is published, their work begins again: marketing, promotion, personal events, etc etc etc—and many things the author pays for out of their own pockets. Then they must then create more work, and the cycle begins again. 

Through all of this, the author does not know if his/her book will be loved or hated or ignored or somewhere in between; he she does not know if it will sell well or will not sell well. 

It won’t matter how hard the author worked, how much money he/she spent, he/she never knows what his/her paycheck will be. And, all the while, he/she must cringe in a corner while people tell him/her that they don’t want to spend money on books, or they want to spend very little money on books, and why should they have to spend money on books?

Anyone who goes into the Novelist business to make money should not go into the novelist business. There are simply too many unknowns. There is a lot of work, a lot of stress, a lot of rejection, and there’s a lot of feeling that your work is Not Of Value—imagine going to work every day and doing the best danged job you can and your boss quibbles with you over your salary and makes you feel as if you should be giving your work away for free or whatever he decides that day to pay you based on whatever he’s feeling that day about you compared to some other worker, because your work is Not Valued. 

In matters of art and the heart, it’s hard to place monetary values, but frankly, we have to. Novelists have to make a living, too, and for the Novelist to feel guilty for hoping his/her works sells so that he/she can pay the bills or contribute to the household makes this business seem as if it’s more a Hobby than Real Live Work.

Is it because unlike the stylist or the restaurant worker or the oil tycoon or the actor/actress or the football player or the ice cream man we can do our work in our pajamas tucked in our little houses? You can’t see us working? It looks like lots-o-fun? It’s “easy” or “anyone can do it” – well, even the person who digs a hole gets a paycheck, and just about all of us can dig a hole, right?

What is it that separates the Novelist’s work from everyone else’s work? What is it about matters of art and the heart that makes the Work not valued?

Or is it because the writer, the novelist, does not teach people to value his/her work? Did we start it all by being apologetic about what we do or for wanting our work to Sell like a Product. 

Do we not value our own work? Is it because many times we readily admit we’d do it all for free because we love it so much? It’s all we ever wanted to do? We are begging someone anyone to just read our work and love us, please please please just love us?

What do you think?

Kat creates wonderfully fun  videos! Take a look!

A big blog welcome to Kat Magendie, bestselling author of TENDER GRACES, SECRET GRACES and now SWEETIE.  Her books are lyrical, evocative Southern lit-fiction.  The Kindle edition of  SWEETIE is currently perched high on the literary fiction bestseller list at Amazon.com.  And now, here’s Kat:

She held out her hope like rose.

Teen Bullies, Outcasts, Prejudice and SWEETIE

 Whenever Bellebooks/Bell Bridge Books sends my novels out to the world (bless you BBs!), something hidden is always revealed—because of my readers. You’d think I’d know all the inside and outside and in the nooks and crannies of my work, but this is not the case. Readers will see what has not occurred to me or has not been revealed to me, and then they will open my eyes wider and brighter.

 I knew SWEETIE’s themes of belonging, place/displacement, home, friendship, loyalty, and family—topics I return to time and again. But what I never thought was that Sweetie would help readers with their own painful memories of childhood/adolescent angst, loneliness, being bullied, and those awful feelings that one is a misfit in a world of Those Who Fit. As sophisticated as we think we have become, we still have problems with compartmentalizing on the “playground,” in schools, in social networking, in neighborhoods, at work, and sometimes even within families.

Narrator Melissa remembers torment by the Circle Girls (Beatrice and Deidra were the head Circle Girls. They picked the girls to be The Circle, and the ones to be inside of it. It was never good to have their attention until you knew which one . . .) as she says, “What society of children could resist tormenting the walking cliché from daytime movies?—I was always the awkward new girl in town. One would hope I brought that cliché to the limit, somehow growing to be beautiful and showing them all, but I was at best unremarkable, average . . . .” And Sweetie says, “Not nothing average about you, Miss-Lissa,” because she sees deep into the full burning heart of Melissa.

The bestselling first book in The Graces series

Kathryn

There is a troubled boy who, along with his Posse, bullies Sweetie and Melissa. But it is again Sweetie, with her wonderful insight, who understands T.J.’s bullying behavior, “Nobody deserves to be treated like a dirty worm under a dirty foot by they’s own kin. T. J.’s mean but his daddy’s a long-sight meaner. Guess his daddy teaches him how to be.” Sweetie, who is scarred and strange and mis-fitting sees the world with wonder and generosity—we could all use a Sweetie in our lives.

A humbling but incredibly cool thing is mail I receive from teachers and from parents. Teachers have said how through the years children like Melissa and Sweetie have come to their classroom, and the Sweetie novel not only resonates with their experiences, but with the teacher’s own memories of childhood awkwardness, friendship, with their own mothers and fathers, with fitting in and filling out, and even first crushes.

And mothers pass my book(s) on to their daughters to read to inspire discussion about just how hard it is to be a kid, an adolescent/pre-teen/teenager, no matter if it is the 1960s, 70s, or 2011—we all have been 11, 12, 13, and we all have searched to find Identity without being Different—oh to celebrate our differences!

What more could an author hope for than to have teachers, mothers, fathers, and other readers relay to her how her books promote discussion—to those who remember a time when they felt as if they’d never fit in, or never rise above a bully’s harsh words and taunting, or felt ugly or weird or fat or scared or skinny or . . . just different. (Melissa: “I think it would be great never to feel pain.” Sweetie: “I reckon that’s what most would think.”) We do rise above it, things do become better, we grow up and out and beyond—we learn empathy, a great gift. As Melissa says, we are beautiful biological wonders; scientific anomalies. No one can take away our joy if we only believe in the magic of our own beautiful Selves.

When I write a book, I never set out to teach a lesson, or write something that will promote discussion. I just write what the character experiences, digging deep into the core, the heart of the character, peeling away layers (except those that must remain). I listen and I relay. It is you all, you readers, who take my work to the highest level, opening up my world and their world to even greater possibilities.

Thank you for reading with such care. Thank you for telling me your stories. Thank you for your trust. And in return, I promise to do the best I can—to write my stories with a full and burning heart. As Sweetie says, “All a person can do is give it all they’s got. Right?” Right, Sweetie . . . that’s right.

—–

Kat lives in Maggie Valley, North Carolina, in a little cove at Killian Knob with two dogs, a ghost dog, a GMR (Good Man Roger, her husband,) a mysterious shadowman, and many wild critters. She is co-editor/publisher of the Rose & Thorn. Visit her at kathyrnmagendie.com, follow her on twitter @katmagendie, on Facebook, or  her blog www.tendergraces.blogspot.com.