6 posts tagged “novels”

One of the biggest dreams many authors and writers have is to see their book on a library shelf. Getting your published book(s) into libraries, including public, municipal, state, university, research, and private libraries can seem like a challenge. How do you accomplish your goals and reach your dreams of selling your books to libraries? Although there is no guarantee that a library or librarian will buy your book, there are several general rules and guidelines one can follow in maximizing their chances.

Target Your Local and Regional Libraries

Most local and regional libraries actively seek books that are written by local authors and/or published locally. They are often especially interested in those books written about or that take place in the library’s city, region, or state. As a library books are often selected based on whether the content is written for the general reader or for the specialist or practitioner. Public libraries focus on books written for the general reader, while university and research libraries focus more on specialist or practitioner books.

Make Sure Your Book Has All The Necessary Features

Most libraries only accept books that have been commercially published. Some indications of commercial publication are a sturdy binding, preferably with the title on the spine; a title page clearly stating (on either the front or the back) the author, title, publisher and date of publication; an International Standard Business Number (ISBN) listed somewhere on the book or the jacket; and a price listed on either the book or the jacket.

Because books in most libraries get heavy and sometimes careless use from the public, librarians often look for ones which are sturdily bound, preferably sewn or glued. Spiral and comb bindings do not stand up well in libraries. Likewise, books with pages designed to be filled in by the reader, or torn out, do not fit in a library setting. Books that include objects such as toys, or crafts kits are also not appropriate.

Read more tips on marketing and selling your books to libraries here.

James Cox takes the title of his book from Sherman Alexie, for whom "white noise," the static that remains on a television after broadcasting ends, represents "the oppressive noise of white mass-produced cultures, the loud demand to conform to the invader's cultural belief system or be destroyed" (p. 11). Cox takes "white noise" to signify a broad history of colonial domination and erasure, which Alexie and the other novelists he considers write to resist. The introduction to Cox's book, "A Cup of Water," states his purpose to demonstrate how Euro-western and Euro-American literary and popular narratives, which almost always "culminate in the absence of Indians" (p. 13), support ongoing colonial dominance and produce real-world consequences for living Indians; and to explore the strategies used by some contemporary Native fiction writers to intervene in these colonial narratives of conquest, to render them powerless and suggest that "conquest, as imagined by non-Native authors, did not take place" (p. 18). Cox argues that his study "implements Osage scholar Robert Warrior's proposal ... that, in any scholarship on work by Native authors, the 'critical interpretation of those writings can proceed primarily from Indian sources,'" (p. 4); thus he intends to avoid "academic colonialism" by privileging the voices of Native writers in his own interpretations (pp. 4-5). If reality is constructed by stories, and if, as Greg Sarris observes, "In oral discourse ... no one party has access to the whole of the exchange.... [O]ne party's story is no more the whole story than a cup of water is the river" (quoted, p. 16), Cox wishes his own "cup of water" to resist the narrative flow that justifies domination and to "nourish" new plots for Native people (pp. 16-17).

Read more about Muting White Noise: Native American and European Novel Traditions here.

Salman Rushdie is often best known for his novel The Satanic Verses: A Novel.What many don’t know, however, is that he does magical realism in a way that is often not encountered in today’s fiction. The Enchantress of Florence: A Novelis at once a tale of Renaissance Italy, India, and most of the seas in between. It is a story of travelers, magical princesses, and the richness of desire and love. Deeply philosophical and profoundly lonely, The Enchantress of Florence: A Novelis bound to be one of Rushdie’s most popular novels.

Akbar the Great, whose realm stretches from Kabul to Bengal, is as mad and melancholy as Hamlet; despite his many wives, he lusts after a queen he dreamed up ''in the way that lonely children dream up imaginary friends.'' Then a Florentine magic man calling himself Niccolò Vespucci arrives in Akbar's court with a yarn about a common relative: a sorceress descended from Genghis Khan, a good witch at the center of a great fable. Qara Koz, a beautiful mysterious princess who bridges both Asian and European worlds with her powers of enchantment and sorcery becomes war booty.

Read more about Salman Rushdie's book The Enchantress of Florence here.

I’m a reader and proud of it. I’d rather read a great new book then watch some rehash of a sitcom from last year on the TV. I’ve always been this way, ever since I was little and first learned to read it has been one of my favorite pastimes. Growing up I’d spend my summers out in the yard reading books. Later, as I went through high school I began to tackle all of the “greats.” One entire year I spent reading only Russian authors: Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Stendhal, etc. Another time I was really into authors from Latin America, and read through all of Borges, Marquez, Cortazar, and Allende. Now I’m much more eclectic, reading books for a variety of reasons. All through my reading life (literally thousands of books), I’ve never kept real close track of what I read, when, and what I thought about the book in the moment. Sure, I can think back and reflect on whether I liked a book or not, but those personal intimate moments I had while actually reading the book are lost to the dustbin of my memory.

That is why I am so excited about two new books (really more like reading journals) by Rachelle Knight. Read, Remember, Recommend; A Reading Journal for Book Loversis just that, a handy reading journal that not only works for recording your memories, but also helps you find that next great book. Sure, I’ve tried some of the online reading sites such as Shelfari, LibraryThing, and GoodReads. But those don’t come with you when you are looking for a new book in your local bookstore. Likewise, you can’t access them, log on, and surf to some book you saw the other day during a conversation with friends. Enter Read, Remember, Recommend; A Reading Journal for Book Loversand Read, Remember, Recommend: A Reading List Journal for Teens

Read more about this essential resource for all book readers here.

Interview with Nan Hawthorne - Author of An Involuntary King: A Tale of Anglo Saxon England

NGB: Welcome to the site.

I’m really excited about having you with us today. Let’s get rolling: Your book An Involuntary King: A Tale of Anglo Saxon Englandjust came out. How long were you in the process of writing and crafting it?

Nan: I suppose that depends on how far back you want to go. The novel, in its final form, took me about two and a half years with numerous interruptions, from writing the original episodes for the collaborative writing group Ghostletters (www.ghostletters.net) to forming the episodes into a novel to editing and editing and editing!

This is not my first book, but it is my first novel, and I have to say the experience of composition of fiction was a revelation for me. In a nutshell, the characters in the book wrote the book. I found myself setting up a situation and then just watching what they did. Now I understand what the authors who say they "channel" books mean. I think the fact that I know these people, my characters, so well made this happen.

Why I know them so well and what I meant by how far you want to go back is that the characters are from a series of stories a friend and I wrote when we were both teenagers in the 1960s. The king, queen, minstrels and the mercenary lord were as much my friends as anyone from my school or neighborhood. I wrote and thought about them daily. Thankfully the intervening decades of adulthood and experience have helped me develop them into complete persons. You could realistically say this novel took 35 years to put together.

Read more about Nan Hawthorne and her new book An Involuntary King here.

Alisa Valdes-Rodriquez

Dirty Girls on Top

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez jump-started the Latina chick-lit movement when she published the best-selling Dirty Girls Social Club five years ago.

Now she's back with a sequel, Dirty Girls on Top,which follows Lauren, Usnavys, Rebecca, Amber, Sara and Elizabeth as they navigate through marriage, kids, careers and boyfriends during their mid-30s.

It's easy to want to call the breezy, sexy book a Latina version of Sex and the City. But Ms. Valdes-Rodriguez says she doesn't like that comparison.

"It's good; it's just very different from what I do," she said recently. "With the first Dirty Girls, I was the Latina Terry McMillan. And with the second one, I'm the Latina Candace Bushnell. Hopefully by the third Dirty Girls book, I can just be me."

Here's more from the 39-year-old author, who'll sign copies of the new book tonight at Borders.

Lesley Téllez

The first Dirty Girls book seemed to end on a pretty final note. Why did you want to write a sequel?

I did leave some story lines open, actually, by design in that book. I didn't feel like I was finished with those characters. I felt like I could just keep writing. I immediately wanted to do the sequel but was advised by my publisher to do a few books in between. Which in retrospect, I'm not sure was the best choice. Read more about Alisa and Dirty Girls on Top here.

Read more about Alisa and Other Authors on the Great New Books site.