Posts Tagged ‘Books
17
Jul
09
2 Nite!!!!!!!!!!!
If you’re in town stop by
Night Biters Book Signing
03
Jun
09
The Start of a Long Fall
In the Long Fall, Walter Mosely introduces Leonid McGill a new protagonist set in modern day New York
29
Apr
09
Still I rise, again
Posro Media CEO Roland Laird appears on CW Philly’s Speak up to talk about “Still I Rise: A Graphic History of African Americans” by Roland Laird, Taneshia Nash Laird and illustrated by Elihu Bey. “Still I Rise” covers African American history from 1619 to the historic Presidential election of Barack Hussein Obama.
22
Apr
09
Night Ride
NIGHT BITERS is the first in a series of fast paced horror novels targeted toward readers who enjoyed Harry Potter and the Twilight series, but yearn to read about characters that reflect their own rich diversity.
NIGHT BITERS tells the story of 16-year-old Jamilah and her 14-year old brother Omari when the two arrive in the city of Oakland, CA. A mysterious stranger gives Omari a magical compact disc and crucifix. Upon listening to the CD the siblings learn that the lyrics and the crucifix can aide them against the danger of vampires, but danger has never been as attractive as the handsome and charismatic heartbreaker Tyrone, or as beautiful and deadly as the vengeful Jennifer. Soon the siblings find themselves in twined with rival gangs, the Crimsons and the Cobalt’s. Their leaders transformed into vampires whose hatred for another threatens to destroy the city.
23
Feb
09
Reading Too Much Into Race
Reading Too Much Into Race
By Carleen Brice
www.washingtonpost.com
Sunday, December 21, 2008; Page B04
What, you haven’t heard of it?
Wondering whether it’s a joke?
Well, it is and it isn’t. I’ve got my tongue firmly lodged against my cheek, but I’m really hoping that this holiday season you’ll buy a book by a black author and give it to somebody who isn’t black.
Because as a black author trying to reach a wider audience, I believe that this guerrilla marketing effort — although sort of a stunt — may be one of the only ways writers like me will be able to find white readers.
The accepted wisdom of the publishing industry is that books by black authors should be marketed to black audiences; after that, hopefully, they will cross over to whites and others. This is what a writer friend of mine was told when she wrote her first book. Ten books later, she has yet to cross over, despite respectable sales and favorable reviews. Without that crossover success, she’s having a hard time finding a publisher for her latest literary novel. One editor rejected her latest work with the comment that it was beautifully written, but since there hadn’t been a new “breakout” African American author in years, she would have to pass on it.
It’s not that black readers aren’t buying books. According to the research firm Target Market News, which tracks African American consumer spending, black households spent an estimated $270 million on books in 2007.
But as my writer friend’s situation and that of many others illustrates, it’s extremely hard to have a viable career in publishing without support from a wider (read: not exclusively black) audience. And it’s difficult for black authors, especially of literary fiction, to develop the buzz that sells books. White readers don’t hear our books discussed generally (except, of course, the ones by heavy hitters such as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker and a few others). And without media exposure and water-cooler talk, they don’t know which of our books they might like.
Publishers themselves are spending their precious marketing dollars targeting black readers specifically. “As editors and publishers we have to acknowledge that the base audience for these books are African American readers,” said Stacey Barney, an editor with the Penguin imprint G.P. Putnam’s Sons. “Once you’ve secured that base readership, then you can go after other markets for the book.”
But securing that base readership is part of the problem. A trip to one of the major chain bookstores shows what Barney’s talking about. Walk past the general fiction section, and you’ll find the African American fiction section. The shelves there will be lined with all the same subjects you find in the rest of the bookstore. The one thing linking them is that the authors are black. It’s very handy if all you read is fiction by black people. You can go right to your “special section.” Someone like me, who enjoys a wider variety of reading, might look in both general fiction and the black fiction section. I’m black and would never feel out of place browsing in the black books section. A white reader, on the other hand, might not take that same look and might not know that the books exist at all.
Borders developed its stand-alone African American fiction section more than a decade ago, according to buyer Ernesto Martinez. “The stand-alone section is a successful strategy,” he said.
After years of being against the idea, the Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver, my local independent bookstore, is considering launching an African American fiction section in its flagship location. Black customers asked for one after the store moved to a more diverse neighborhood.
To me, it seems a bit ironic that, at a time when black authors are fighting not to be marginalized, some black readers are asking for African American fiction sections. But I can understand their reasons. Some blacks read only books by black authors out of loyalty or a desire to keep seeing stories about themselves in print. It makes sense that they’d like to find those books in one location, but it also speaks to the way readers have come to expect a dividing line, books clearly marked “us” and “them.”
Marketing black books only to black readers is frustrating in another way. Who says that all black readers are alike? That’s a question Karen Hunter has struggled with. She’s an author who also has her own imprint with Simon & Schuster’s Pocket Books, primarily publishing works by black authors. “Black people are not monolithic — we don’t all like the same things,” she said. “So why wouldn’t a white person be interested in some of the same subjects that a black person would?”
Of course, one best-selling black author of the moment happens to be our president-elect. Black writers are hopeful that Barack Obama’s election will help publishers “get a clue about our stories,” as Lori L. Tharps, author of the memoir “Kinky Gazpacho” put it recently in an article on the Root. “Obama has proved, after all, that readers of all races and backgrounds can take to non-mainstream literary portraits of the American experience,” she wrote.
The novelist Bernice McFadden wrote on her blog that Obama’s popularity has the potential to change how black authors are published and marketed. She hopes that the interest in Obama — as president and as an author — might translate into a different approach to introducing black authors to a wide range of readers. “How many other industries practice this [segregated marketing] behavior?” McFadden asked. “I love me some Paul Simon and when I drive through the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn I see Jewish boys pushing Cadillac SUVs blasting 50 Cent and Jay-Z, so why is publishing operating as if this is the Dark Ages?”
Sometimes it seems like the Dark Ages to me, too. But I remember an even darker age. After all, it wasn’t too long ago that the publishing industry thought that black people didn’t buy books. I own a how-to-get-published guide that’s copyrighted 1985. “Your book may be of interest to minorities, the elderly, or the handicapped,” it states, “but stressing these groups won’t help sell your proposal because publishers do not perceive them as important book buyers.”
I purchased that guide in 1992, the same year that Terry McMillan’s blockbuster “Waiting to Exhale” proved to publishers that black people do indeed buy books. I ignored the guide’s advice and wrote a self-help book targeted specifically at blacks.
More recently, I turned to fiction. That’s when I found not only that minorities are “important book buyers,” but that it’s often impossible to predict the universal appeal of a specific story.
My first novel, “Orange Mint and Honey,” is about the adult child of an alcoholic and her now-sober mother. A few months after it was published this year, I got an e-mail from a reader. “I bet you never thought a middle-aged white guy would read your book and cry,” he wrote.
I guess I’m naïve, but yeah, I did kind of hope that I might get a few teary-eyed white-guy readers. While I was writing, I wasn’t thinking about the characters being black, and I certainly never thought of their story as “a black story.”
So although it might not be in the best taste to recommend that particular title for your holiday gift-giving needs (at least, not only that particular title), it would help you mark the traditional season — plus our new December holiday: Buy a Book by a Black Author and Give It to Somebody Not Black Month.
Carleen Brice is a writer and blogger living in Denver.
More (and Better) Books for Black Teens
by Felicia Pride and Calvin Reid — Publishers Weekly, 12/8/2008
Talk to a YA editor or take a stroll through that section at your local bookstore and it’s evident that there’s a growing number of books aimed at the young adult market—and those numbers include more titles geared specifically to African-American teens. As publishers are addressing the lack of material aimed at this market—many African-American teens have turned to popular adult authors because of this dearth—there has clearly been some improvement.
These days publishers are offering black teens books that deal with serious issues, such as drug addiction and pregnancy, as well as pure entertainment; they’re looking to introduce new authors and experiment with graphic novels and even historical fiction for teens, all while looking for creative ways to make sure parents, teachers and librarians—as well as the kids themselves—know what’s on their lists specifically for black teens.
Publishers Weekly talked with a number of editors and category buyers as well as an agent specializing in titles for African-American teens in order to get a better view of the past, present and future of titles aimed at black teenagers.
There is also a selected listing of adult and children’s African American titles online.
Supply Versus Demand
Although black teens read plenty of books that feature no prominent black characters—Stephenie Meyer’s titles, for example—the emergence of more young adult publishing programs geared toward African-Americans is in many ways a response to demand. Most editors contacted by PW agree that the publishing industry is starting to understand that black teens not only want to read about themselves but are also an economically viable readership. “The aha! moment is unfolding slowly,” says Andrea Pinkney, v-p and executive editor at Scholastic, “but it is happening.” “I didn’t see enough books out there for the constituency that I was teaching,” says Stacey Barney, a former educator and now an editor at Penguin. Barney acquired the first titles in Kensington Publishing’s Drama High series during her tenure at the publishing house. “When I would ask my male students why they weren’t reading,” she adds, “they would reply they didn’t see anything worth reading.” This need for more relatable titles aimed at African-American teenagers is also being spurred by parents, according to Cheryl Hudson, cofounder of Just Us Books, an African-American house focused on children’s titles that is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. It was feedback from parents that motivated the publisher to start releasing young adult titles in addition to the picture books it is known for. “It’s important that young people have books to read that resonate and are age-appropriate,” says Selena James, who helped to launch Pocket Books’ YA African-American program in 2006 before landing her current job as executive editor at Kensington’s Dafina imprint. “So many young people are reading [adult authors] like Zane and Eric Jerome Dickey. We need to provide young people with stories that are toned down but still resemble them and their experiences.”
What’s Available
Hands down, Walter Dean Myers continues to be a leading author in the YA market. Edited by Pinkney at Scholastic, the prolific author is published by a number of houses. One of his most recent books, Sunrise over Fallujah, about an African-American young male who goes to fight in Iraq, was a 2008 PW Best Book of the Year.
“Most of Walter Dean Myers’s books are on school reading lists, so he’s a given in our stores,” says Sandra Wilson, kids’ and teen buyer at Books-a-Million. But while there are some major African-American young adult authors, like Myers, Sharon Draper and Sharon Flake, most publishing professionals agree that there’s still a need for new, diverse and sometimes even younger voices.
Hudson believes that publishers must honestly engage young adult readers, who often are more knowledgeable and more interested in adult writers, if they expect to attract and hold them. Just Us Books recently released 12 Brown Boys, the first foray into YA literature by commercial fiction author Omar Tyree, generally considered a pioneer in the street fiction genre.
Launched as an African-American teen imprint at BET Books before being acquired by Harlequin in 2005, Kimani Tru was just what the romance publisher was looking for, according to editor Evette Porter. “The YA category was booming, Harlequin was looking to get into it and we started to look for multicultural titles,” Porter says. “But what we saw were black kids reading street lit.” She says the challenge for teen imprints like Kimani Tru is to offer young readers a “bridge”—quality titles that address “the mature stuff that kids today have to deal with. Books that are realistic but offer reasonable answers to serious issues.”
The house offers a mix of stand-alone titles and series, which serve to bring readers back for more.
Inspirational Titles and more: http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6620241.html
06
Feb
09
Were Wolves the Mix Tape
First Look
What do you get when you mix
Clueless Teens
Gangbangers
Pit bulls
Drugs
Yosemite National Park
DJ’s
Pychics
Escape Convicts
A Party to End all Parties
And a Pinoy Werewolf
All to the Sound of one Beat?
A Tale of Urban Horror
Part 2
July 2009
As librarians who work in big cities with teens, we know that kids are crazy about street lit. But as we were researching the genre for our collection-development class at Pratt Institute, in New York, we wondered how other librarians felt about street lit. Is it offered in most libraries across the country? Do teens in rural communities also crave street lit? Do most librarians tend to shelve these titles in the teen section or in the adult section?
Street lit is so popular that it’s often stolen, and the high theft rate makes it even more difficult for librarians to justify purchasing the controversial genre. Not surprisingly, many respondents are concerned about the money “wasted” on books that sometimes disappear before they’re even checked out. Some library users are too embarrassed to request or check out street lit titles—so they steal them. But by making street lit easy to find, and being open and helpful when teens and adults request the genre, librarians can help patrons feel more comfortable asking for street lit. click for more
28
Dec
08
Valjeanne Jeffers Immortal
Ms. Jeffers has created an oddly vivid and not so far-fetched neo-Earth in Immortal. Quick paced and well-crafted, I felt a connection with her protagonists and a distilled hatred for her antagonists. The characters’ backstories fit together like the pieces of an intricate puzzle. From the absence of war to the presence of the obscenely paranormal, the frightening and beautiful; dangerous and air-tight; Immortal is filled with yins and yangs that somehow culminate into a satisfying literary balance. A wonderful read from beginning to end.
B. Sharise Moore, author of Taste
HER DREAMS ARE TERRIFYING.
In the year of our One 3075, Tundra has been at peace for 400 years. There is no racism, poverty or war. Karla is a young Indigo woman working as a successful healer. Yet she is tormented by lucid and erotic dreams. Dreams in which she is IMMORTAL. Two men emerge from these phantasms: the first a Copper colored shape shifter and the other a demon more dead than alive. But when this creature appears in her apartment Karla realizes they share a lust that may one day consume her.
HIS WILL UNLOCK A MYSTERY.
Joseph has always dreamt of becoming an artist, warrior…and a werewolf. Now he’s dreaming of a sorceress who commands that he leave his homeland.
TOGETHER THEY WILL JOURNEY TO THE EDGE OF TIME…
To a nightmarish world of revolution and magic. But will they save Tundra or perish in its destruction?
Q. Where did you find the original impulse to write this novel?
Valjeanne: For years I devoured science fiction – I’ve spent my last five dollars on Stephen King
Novels and wandered around in libraries looking for new books. My impulse to write grew
from my desire to create my own “scifi” worlds that I could escape into.
Q Who inspired the characters of your novel?
Valjeanne: All of my characters are collages of people I’ve met and oftentimes loved in my journey –
including myself. The heroine of Immortal is based upon a young woman who befriended
me when I was ten years old.
Q. Looking at the book now, what surprises you?
Valjeanne : My own imagination surprises me! I go back and read Immortal and Immortal II
and I can believe the dialogue, the sex scenes; or that I wrote about folks shape
shifting into werewolves and demons.
Q. Many writers describe themselves as “character” or “plot” writers.
Valjeanne: Which are you? What do you find to be the hardest part of writing?
I guess if I have chose one I’d say: character driven. I work very hard to make Immortal’s
characters “real people” and by that I mean believable: folks who curse, make love,
make mistakes, lie and dream just like the rest of us. “Perfect” characters just don’t cut it with me, because real people are flawed. The hardest part of writing I’ve found is struggling to create new and different realities – in other words something fresh and not a rehash of other
writer’s work.
Q. Who has influenced you in your writing?
Valjeanne: I have many but Octavia Butler, Stephen king and Tananarive Due are probably
my strongest influences.
Q. What was the book that most influenced your life and why?
Valjeanne: Wild Seed by Octavia Butler had the strongest influence on me. In Wild Seed I
found folks that I could readily identify with written by a Black female author.
I think that’s when I really started to believe that I, a Black woman, could create
alternate worlds.
Q. What are your 2 favorite books and why?
Valjeanne: Meji by Milton Davis and Taste by B. Sharise Moore. I love the way Milton blends
African mythology and history in Meji. And Taste is a wonderfully unique mix of erotica and science fiction.
Q. What are you currently working on?
Valjeanne: I’m putting the finishing touches on Immortal II: The Time of Legend. I’m also writing Stealer of Souls which is the third novel in the Immortal series.
Click here to order Immortal on lulu
