All this month I'm posting letters to Book Biz Santa from readers of this blog. If you have one, please email it to [email protected]
Dear Book Biz Santa,
My Holiday wishes this year follow me year round – the hope for a larger readership for writers of high quality material. The sort of readership that will afford them more time to do this writing, and less doing whatever it is they are currently forced to do to keep roofs over their heads. The sort of readership that will volunteer opinions of their books just as often as Steven King or John Grisham fans offer opinions of those works. The sort of readership that thinks books are the best presents to both give and receive, and not just during the Holiday season.
My Holiday wish is that this readership develops from the groundswell of support from Literary Blogs, online reviewers, and others who care enough about reading to spend great portions of time doing whatever they can to promote the books and authors that they enjoy. That this burgeoning community continues to develop and in some way begins to help shape the reading public. That more publicists come to the realization that this community is as deserving of their support (ARC’s, author access, press kits, etc.) as print journalists. That others follow the lead of those like Caitlin Hamilton of Unbridled Books, and Tasha Kepler at MacAdam/Cage and James Meader at Picador, USA and begin to search out those people pushing the types of books their companies are publishing.
My Holiday wish is that publishers who worry as much about the work that they publish as they do the bottom line continue to grow and prosper – those like Unbridled Books, Graywolf Press, MacAdam/Cage, Impassio Press, Sarabande Books, Ahsahta Press, Soft Skull Press, Livingston Press, and Algonquin. That University Presses taking the time to find great fiction to go along with scholarly tomes can continue to find and publish such great authors and maintain the necessary funding to stay around – presses like those at Carnegie Mellon University, SMU, University of Michigan, University of Georgia, Ohio State University, Michigan State University and the University of Nebraska. That editors like Gary Fisketjon can continue to push quality while entrenched within the offices of major publishing houses, making sure authors like Steve Yarbrough, Martin Clark, David Gates and Haruki Murakami can see the type of print runs and contracts that so many great authors deserve.
And lastly, my Holiday wish is that you somehow find a way for me to expand time to allow me to get to all of the great books and authors that have found their way into the huge stacks, and piles throughout my home during this upcoming year!
As always, enjoy,
Dan Wickett
Dan Wickett is the founder of, and reviewer/interviewer for, The Emerging Writers Network . He can also be found pushing his thoughts around all over the net on various LitBlogs.
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