An Evening with the Book Industry Guild!

By Hannah Bennett

Last Tuesday, some fellow classmates and I were invited to attend a Book Industry Guild of New York event entitled “What Inspires You?  Mediation on Jacket Design.”  The Book Industry Guild of New York is “a member-operated professional organization composed of professionals from every aspect of the book publishing and book manufacturing industries.”  As students and non-members, we felt a little timid as we entered the halls of Random House and took our seats for the panel, but we were instantly welcomed by the friendly people that we met on the way.

The evening consisted of three speakers, all prominent Art Directors and Jacket Designers, who came prepared with entertaining slideshows about what inspires them creatively.  The first speaker of the night was Krista Vossen, the Associate Art Director for Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.  She began by describing her path to graphic design, and then described her current work at Simon & Schuster, which involves overcoming the inherent challenges of working with middle-grade books and trying to make age-appropriate jackets that appeal to both genders.  Her description of YA jacket trends was hilarious, especially when she described how she used the “big dress trend” but “downgraded to a poofy skirt” for Poison Princess.  In the end, her inspiration was in large part the city of New York, where she said, “inspiration hits you in the face.”  However, she also emphasized the importance of clearing one’s head for true creative inspiration.

Next up was Greg Kulick, the Associate Art Director for Blue Rider Books (Penguin Group, USA).  Like Vossen, Kulick began his discussion of inspiration by taking a look at his earliest influences.  For Kulick, his early artistic influences were tied to skateboard culture and punk music. The intense graphic style of the skateboard artwork certainly had an influence on the jacket designs Kulick eventually created.  Kulick also discussed his transition to a management role and how that affected his creativity.  What inspires Kulick now?  “Giving work to other people,” was his tongue-in-cheek answer.  However, the ability to delegate has opened up Kulick to work on new projects, such as getting to produce photo shoots.  In a roundabout way, delegating truly has been a source of inspiration.

Photo Credit: http://www.newsarama.com

The last speaker of the night was the ever-vibrant Chip Kidd, who has garnered a certain celebrity status among jacket designers for both his inspired designs and his exuberant personality.  Kidd, who recently did a TED Talk in which he talked about some of his most famous designs, is the Associate Art Director at Alfred A. Knopf.  He looked at the subject of inspiration in several ways, discussing both his challenges, such as the crisis of redesigning a book last minute, and his successes, like the beautiful cover design of IQ84 by Haruki Murakami.  But after 25 years at Knopf, Kidd maintained that what inspires him is the text.  Another life-long inspiration for Kidd has been comics and graphic novels – as he said, he is a “professional Batman fan.”  In what was definitely the most entertaining part of the evening, Kidd discussed what it was like to write an original Batman graphic novel, entitled Batman: Death by Design.  Kidd showed pages of the graphic novel and narrated a scene from it, doing all the voices of the characters, including the Joker and the female roles.  Despite his great success as a jacket designer, it’s possible that Kidd missed his true calling of becoming a performer and comedian.

The entire evening was, for lack of a better word, inspiring.  So perhaps I should take a shot at answering the question of the evening:  ‘what inspires you?’  Well, creative people who work with books and are passionate about their jobs inspire me, as a student of publishing.  An organization that seeks to educate people about the book industry, and in doing so allows students to attend one of their excellent events, is certainly an inspiration.  And also, I’m going to have to agree with Chip Kidd and say Batman.

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uPublishU at Book Expo America

Excited about Book Expo America this year? We certainly are! And, we’re even more excited about the all new uPublishU event – especially since WNBA-NYC’s very own Susannah Greenberg will be a speaker! She will “speak about the elements of the new book publicity and how to get great publicity for books, both print and eBooks, including advice on meeting the special challenges facing the self-published author; from creating strategies and goals, to writing a great pitch to the media, to building a web presence and community online, to figuring out how to reach top journalists, producers and bloggers.”

For more information on uPublishU, check out Susannah’s blog post here.

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Around Town: Creativity and Curation in the Digital Age at McNally Jackson

We can’t get enough of McNally Jackson bookstore! Stop by this Soho spot on May 30 at 7:00 pm for their panel on ‘Creativity and Curation in the Digital Age.’

Join Austin Kleon (author of Steal Like an Artist) as he interviews three of his favorite NYC ladies around the topic of collecting and sharing inspiration online. The panel will feature Maud Newton, legendary litblogger; Maria Popova, creator of the stupendously popular blog Brain Pickings; and Maris Kreizman, creator of the hilarious Tumblr blog  Slaughterhouse 90210.

Click here for more information about the event or check out McNally Jackson online. 

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Member Monday: Meet Amy Hill Hearth

Amy Hill Hearth is the author or co-author of seven nonfiction books, including Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years, a New York Times bestseller for 113 weeks. Her first novel will be published by Atria/Simon & Schuster on October 2.

Hannah and Erica: Congratulations on the completion of your first foray into fiction, with Miss Dreamsville and the Collier County Women’s Literary Society! How did the process of writing a novel compare to writing non-fiction works such as Having Our Say?

Amy: Everything I learned as a journalist and narrative nonfiction author was useful when I tried fiction for the first time. The two are, of course, opposite and yet there are still some basics that apply: For example, it’s a story, it has a dramatic arc, and there’s a lot of instinct and judgment about what belongs and what doesn’t. The leap – and it is huge – is letting go of the deeply ingrained concept that facts rule the day and allowing your imagination to take over and tell the story. For me, it was terrifying and liberating at the same time.

All I was trying to do was take a breather from the publishing business and try something new. I wanted to write just for fun. I didn’t set out to write a novel. I started Miss Dreamsville as a short story but the more I wrote, the more I loved my characters and plot, and I thought, Maybe it’s a novel. Some little voice told me to just keep going. The book is inspired by a real person – my late mother-in-law, crazy as that sounds. As a middle-aged mom, she got into all kinds of trouble when her family moved from Boston to a town of 800 people in Collier County, Florida in 1962. When I write nonfiction, I feel a great responsibility throughout the process to my subjects since, after all, it is about their lives. With fiction I did not have that responsibility, although I had some concern, of course, about my husband’s reaction. I didn’t show him a draft until it was very far along. What really freaked him out was I added a character inspired by him as a child. He’s been a good sport about it, once he got over the shock. I only wish my mother-in-law was alive to see it. She was quite a character and I believe she would have gotten a kick out of it.

Hannah and Erica: Your NY Times Bestselling book Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years was also made into a Broadway play. Were you involved in the adaptation of the book to the play? What was it like to see your book translated to theater?

Amy: I was very involved with the adaptation of the book, both as a Broadway play and then an award-winning film. The Delany Sisters wanted me to participate on their behalf to be sure the adaptations were  “done right,” as they said. My official role was Production Advisor and in this case it meant making sure the adaptations were authentic and in keeping with the sisters’ values and expectations. I edited the scripts, visited rehearsals, met privately with the actresses (at the home of Ruby Dee in New Rochelle, New York, for example), and even advised the set designer about wallpaper patterns. With the film adaptation, the producers added me as a character, which is a bizarre experience. My part was portrayed by the wonderful actress Amy Madigan.

Hannah and Erica: What has been the most rewarding aspect of your successful career?

Amy: I’ve always said I am most grateful for the special friendships that are a direct result of my book projects. How many people can say they are friends with an Indian Chief and his mother? (“Strong Medicine” Speaks: A Native American Elder Has Her Say.) Or a pair of centenarian sisters whose father was born into slavery? (Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years.) Or a married pair of Holocaust survivors who survived by masquerading as Christians and working as spies for the Underground? (In a World Gone Mad.) Or Nancy Pelosi, the first woman Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and one of the most thoughtful people I’ve ever known? (Know Your Power.) I am grateful, also, that my parents have lived long enough to enjoy my success, and that I married the right guy 27 years ago who remains my biggest fan (despite being a character in my novel!).

Hannah and Erica: How do you keep your creative muse alive and well?

Amy: Sleep. I think I actually write in my sleep. I don’t know why, but sleep is vastly under-rated in our society. You can’t do anything well unless you are well-rested. It may be more important than diet and exercise, in terms of fueling the creative mind.

Hannah and Erica: We’re excited to welcome you to the NYC chapter of the WNBA. What inspired you to join the organization?

Amy: I like the idea of being part of an organization of women who love books as much as I do. Even if I can’t attend many events, I enjoy being connected to all of you. Knowing you are out there gives me a psychological lift. I am still learning and eager to have women guide me along the way.

Find out more about Amy on her website or check out her blog! 

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“Fifty Shades” of Ethics

 By Erica Misoshnik

Disclaimer: The following post is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect the thoughts of the Women’s National Book Association – they were simply kind enough to let me post it.

By now I’m sure you have all heard of Fifty Shades of Grey, the erotic novel by E.L. James that has taken the country by storm. It’s the sort of book that makes people happy to have e-readers and despite its popularity, is in no way something you would give as a present on Mother’s Day – though the writers of this SNL skit may disagree. It has been featured on ABC news and discussed on The View – even Ellen is up on the trend. There is also a parody being released this summer. So yes, everyone is talking about the salacious novel, but there is something people outside of the publishing world seem to be forgetting…and it has nothing to do with Fifty Shades’ steamy content.

This book started as a work of Twilight fan-fiction.

Fifty Shades of Grey was initially called Master of the Universe and the original Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele were none other than Edward Cullen and Isabella Swan. Master of the Universe was published on fanfiction.net and garnered approximately 37,000 reader reviews before James moved the book to her own site. Those are just reviews, not page hits. Only the authors can see how many total hits they have gotten per story on fanfiction.net, so it is currently impossible to know exactly how many people read the story before it was moved. It has been estimated that E.L. James had tens – if not hundreds – of thousands of fans on fanfiction.net alone.

None of this would be a big deal because there are some wildly popular works of fan-fiction, which have accumulated their own fan bases. (Fun fact: Cassandra Clare, author of the best-selling Mortal Instruments series, was a writer of fan-fiction, too.) But it is a big deal; because none of those writers went on to get 7 figure book deals for their fan-fics.

To be fair, Fifty Shades of Grey is technically an original work. Even Master of the Universe bore little resemblance to Stephenie Meyer’s paranormal young adult romance. In fact, there were no vampires or werewolves, and no paranormal activity of any kind in the fan fiction. Other than the names of the characters, there was virtually nothing else the two stories had in common – with the exception of the Twilight fan base.

Therein lays the issue I personally have with Fifty Shades. It is not that I think there’s an issue of  copyright infringement, since the fan-fic had little to do with Stephenie Meyer’s work apart from the names. Under copyright law, Stephenie Meyer (as the copyright holder) would have to take legal action against E.L James if she felt that Fifty Shades was in violation of said copyright, which she has not done. And, E.L. James is open about her Twilight “inspiration.” Whatever the case, what I think is pertinent is that a huge proponent of E.L. James’ initial success was due to Stephenie Meyer’s fan base.

While the laws are clear that fan-fiction cannot be published for money (though it has been published for charity, with the original author’s express permission) what of cases like Fifty Shades? What happens when a fan-fiction writer changes some names around, adjusts a few details, and goes on to publish with a major house? Anne Jamison, an English Professor at the University of Utah, who recently taught a course involving fan-fiction, brought up a good question about “whether [or not] the explicit, conscious use of another writer’s fan base, via creation of characters known and experienced as ‘versions’ of the writer’s characters, for commercial purposes, constitutes any kind of damage or infringement.”

Personally, I think this falls into an ethical grey area (no pun intended!), but I’m open to hearing debate on the topic. What do you think? Will the huge success of Fifty Shades of Grey pave the road for other popular fan fiction authors to change a few names or places and then publish the work? Is there even an issue at all – or did I just get too invested in my ethics class this semester?

Let me know what you think in the comments!

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