That's so five minutes ago

by Michael

Yesterday, Scholastic released their list of the "Ten Trends in Children's Books from 2010."   Aside from the fourth on the list, which felt more like them pushing the multimedia series that they're very invested in, I thought the list was pretty accurate.  There's happy stuff there: expanding YA marketplace!  Return to humor!  Books that aren't about vampires!  I can definitely cheer on all of those things, though I should say that I still love vampire books, despite the market saturation.  There was sad stuff, too: The steady decline of the picture book, which shows no stopping.  The power of big brands to dominate all forms of media.  I love picture books, but I represent very few because it feels like the get harder to sell every day, and that's disappointing, since I think they have the power to make children into life-long readers.  And though there are many popular, brand-name characters that I, too, love, it's hard knowing that books thought of solely as "product" are taking up precious shelf space that could have been devoted to new voices.

While I always keep an eye to trends, I also try not to get too caught up in them.  And, as writers, I encourage you to do the same.  It's important to read about what's happening in the market, so that you can have an understanding of where your work fits in.  But chasing trends, or writing to them, can be as bad--or even worse--than not knowing anything about the business.  I've seen so many manuscripts over the years that are clearly following a recent trend, and as every agent will tell you, if you're modeling your book after what's on the bestseller list now, you're way behind.  With how long it takes to for a book to get published (2 - 3 years from completion of a submission-ready manuscript), those trends will be long gone.  My two cents: write what you feel drawn to write, while keeping an eye on the market to help understand the context of your work and to help tailor your pitch.

What do you think of trends and the list from Scholastic?  Did they miss anything?

Incoming Amish

by Jim

This blog post from Entertainment Weekly is just the latest in a series of articles about Amish romance novels that are breaking out all over the place.
I can see why the chaste world of the Amish could be a fascinating place to set a romance novel. All that restrained passion. All those longing looks. And sure enough, there are enough “bonnet books” creeping into bestseller status to indicate the beginning of a trend. But could it actually happen?

Call me crazy, but I can’t see this becoming a full-blown trend. And EW’s comparison to vampire books is off base. Part of what made that so sustainable is that the genre naturally allows for people to bend mythology and create entirely different sorts of worlds. But with the Amish...I mean, there are only so many ways to not use electricity.

My prediction: one as yet unpublished bestseller followed by a slew of copycats flooding the marketplace and never becoming as successful again.

But what about if the Amish WERE vampires….

Fictionalizing Anne Frank

by Chasya

A few weeks ago I asked you all about your thoughts on books that reinvent some of your favorite characters, like Shakespeare’s Juliet. So when I read in the Guardian about a recent dispute centered around Sharon Dogar's book Annexed, a novel that fictionalizes Anne Frank and, as the article put it, “should probably bear the subtitle of Peter van Pel’s Imaginary Diary,” I thought I would bring this to a blog vote as well.

Meg Rosoff makes the point that Anne Frank’s trust has every right to be upset (and says that is, in effect, what they’re supposed to do). She points out, however, that writers should be allowed to write whatever they like so long as they do it well, though she herself doesn’t approve of what Dogar is doing. I, too, feel uncomfortable with the notion of Frank being used this way. As someone who’s read and enjoyed one or two Philippa Gregory novels though, I wonder if this reaction is due more to who the fictional character is based on.

So now I turn to you for your opinion: Has Dogar done something wrong, or does she have the right to use Anne Frank’s history and make it her own?

From Vlad to RPatts

by Miriam

Around these parts, everyone knows that my love of vampires long precedes the Twilight phenomenon. Robert Pattinson was probably still in diapers when I was falling in love with Anne Rice’s Lestat and I remember then-starting-out agents at DGLM rolling their eyes at me when I suggested that they fill their lists with vampire books. One who took me seriously was Jim McCarthy and he’s got the delightful and talented Richelle Mead and her Vampire Academy series, among others, to show for it.

Thing is, it made sense for people to be skeptical. Before Stephenie Meyer re-energized the vampire tale with her sparkly bloodsuckers, this was a tired literary standby. As Meg Cabot reminds us vampires have been around longer even than Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula, and, throughout the ages, they have preyed on our imaginations precisely because they traffic in the two most powerful human preoccupations: sex and death.

I’ve been hearing a lot about The Passage, Justin Cronin’s contribution to vampire lit (the description of which makes me think of a cross between 28 Days Later and The Road), including Stephen King’s over-the-top praise of the novel. It’s expected to be one of the summer’s blockbusters. We publishing people are forever trying to predict trends (a fool’s game in the best of times), and we at DGLM often ask ourselves whether the vampire mania is subsiding or getting ready for yet another resurgence. Is it too late to be signing up yet another vampire novel? Or am I right in thinking that this genre will, ahem, never die?
What do you all think?

Retelling stories

by Chasya

One of the many galleys being distributed at BEA this year was the much-hyped Juliet by Anne Fortier, a retelling of Romeo and Juliet. I was skeptical. Really, I thought, how many times have we seen this done? I mean, I can’t go anywhere without staring at Amanda Seyfried’s face on either a poster or trailer for the film Letters to Juliet. Jim alluded to this in his post about knock-off queries, and I also can’t but help but wonder, can’t writers and artists think of something original for a change? (Harsh, I know.)

And then I stumbled on Cory Doctorow’s list of Pulitzer-winning works that came into existence by doing something similar—riffing off of something that already existed.  I always knew that Rent, which is on the list, was a retelling of La Boheme (and for someone who’s not crazy about musicals, I’m crazy about Rent) but I didn’t really know there were so many others in this category that received the illustrious Pulitzer Prize.

Doctorow categorizes these award-winners as fanfic, and, as he says, provides the list “as a service to writers who believe that fanfic is ‘immoral, illegal, plagiarism, cheating, for people who are too stupid/lazy/unimaginative to write stories of their own.’”

Though I’ve never felt terribly offended by fan fiction, I’m no longer feeling the cynicism that tickled the back of my brain when I first read about Fortier’s new book.

What about you, readers? For you skeptics, has this article affected you? Are you willing to give these reboots another chance?

James and the Giant Zombie

by Jim

Sometimes a book will become a bestseller and we suddenly see dozens of knock-off queries. There were about two years when everyone said they wrote the next Da Vinci Code. The thing is, you can’t tell if they were working on something that ultimately felt comparable to the original title or whether they’re peddling a quickie novel they pounded out to fit what they perceive as a market need. Ultimately, it doesn’t really make a difference as long as the quality is there. But, well…it usually isn’t.

There’s another rash of query-alikes happening right now, but this time, I KNOW they’re just ripping off a formula. And for some folks, it’s working.

First came Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Then Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. And since then, dozens of similar literary mash-ups have been acquired and hundreds have been written (or at least queried).

My question to you: isn’t this a gimmick that gets old after the first time? Even the author of the first book moved onto something different right away: Abraham Lincon, Vampire Hunter. Now THERE is an idea….