Street Lit and American Publishing
Everything old is new again…
Not too long ago I was on a conference call about panel programming for Book Expo. The next show will take place in New York City at the Javits Center and the folks at Reed are working hard to create an event for the publishing industry that we will all want to be a part of. It really is a challenge for these folks to create programming or choose programming that will be worthwhile to the audience. What sort of panels do you choose? Why are they important? Who will benefit?
Along with the panels that the Reed team works to create on their own, there are a ton of panel ideas that are submitted by people from all walks of life. It is amazing really. The range of things suggested is actually pretty limited as most of the people making the submissions are looking to promote their self-published books. I have to give them credit for making the effort though. Self-promotion does help tremendously.
Back to the conference call. I can appreciate the challenges Mark Dressler faces with each Book Expo. How do you find or develop programs that will be insightful, informative or entertaining or create debate? Year in and year out the challenge is the same-to find the next new hot topics for the show.
One of the subjects that came up in our conference call was Street Lit. I hear two sides of the debate: One side says it’s a brilliant new form of storytelling while the other side basically calls it ‘crap’. Anytime a new art form emerges the old guard will dismiss it, the new generation will embrace it. Some because it is something exciting and new while the others embrace it because they think it’s what you are supposed to embrace. It happened with each new style of painting from the renaissance masters all the way up to Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol.
Street lit really isn’t anything new. If you think about it, what separates the style of the new writers from the Beat writers 50 years ago? They are writing in a language that is common to them. For that matter you can take it all the way back to Mark Twain. When he wrote Huck Finn using five dialects, the book was considered so crass and profane his publisher didn’t even want to sell the book. The thing is, he wrote in a language that people were used to hearing.
Even the Bard wrote for the people of the street. Think about it.
So, if you happen to find your way to Book Expo this year in New York City, do yourself a favor and attend some of the workshops. There has been a lot of thought and hard work put into developing great panels and finding smart, interesting and engaging people to put on them. You may discover that you learned something really worthwhile about street lit, romance writers or even graphic novels.
John Shableski works for Diamond Book Distributors as a sales manager with a focus on the independent bookstore market, public and school libraries. He's been a moderator and panelist at Book Expo, a moderator for library panels at the New York Comic Con, a guest speaker at library events, regional book shows and a symposium coordinator. He is currently collaborating on several graphic novel symposiums across the country. He can be reached via email at [email protected]. You can learn more about graphic novels at www.diamondbookshelf.com
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