Blogger Perks: Epic Meet-ups

One of my favorite parts of blogging has always been the community of authors and book bloggers. I've had the opportunity to meet many of my favorite authors and bloggers over the years, even some of my fellow League authors. I met Genn Albin for the first time last September and Mike Mullin at BEA this year - but I wasn't slick enough to get our photos taken together.  So today, when Susanne Winnacker came to Frankfurt and we went to my favorite sushi restaurant at Eschenheimer Tor (yes - the very one that makes a cameo appearance in LEVEL 2), I made sure we secured pictoral evidence:

Lenore and Susanne after devouring sushi



Next up I get to meet Lissa Price in November! So watch out Beth, Angie and Elana - I'm coming for you ;)

Book Blogger Appreciation Week

This week marks the 5th year of Book Blogger Appreciation Week, a yearly event to celebrate book bloggers that started my first year of book blogging back in 2008. After only four months of book blogging, my blog Presenting Lenore had already made enough impact to be nominated for Best YA blog that first year (an honor I won in 2010).

It's hard to believe how far I've come in five years, and I'll never tire of saying just how much book blogging was instrumental to my success as an author. In my acknowledgements for LEVEL 2 I say thank you to book bloggers for challenging me and enabling me.  What do I mean by that?  Let's break it down:

Challenging me
Book bloggers love creating and joining reading challenges, and though I've never been terribly successful at completing them, they have been my impetus for expanding my reading horizons (i.e. trying out an adult category romance book and reading more POC novels and more overlooked gems in general).  And book bloggers challenged me to read MORE books.  Before book blogging, I read maybe 50 books a year - which I considered a lot. After book blogging? More than 150 a year.  All this reading fed into my idea kitchen and gave me an excellent basis to start writing.

Enabling me
Ask a book blogger if you should buy/read a certain book always leads to the inevitable answer of YES.  So thanks to book bloggers for expanding my book buying habit about 30 fold.  Book bloggers have also been incredibly supportive of my writing habit - forgiving me when I go days at a time without posting on my once incredibly active blog.

But it's not just that. Coming from a book blogger background I am intimately aware of how much commitment it is to review one single book. Let's say an average time needed to read a book is 4 hours.  Then you have writing a review which may take around 1 hour.  Then there is the time spent formatting it and finding links and extra content as well as linking the review on twitter, facebook and other social media - not to mention uploading it to amazon, Goodreads, LibraryThing, and NetGalley which can also take up to an hour.  So the average book review you see on a blog? Takes that blogger 6 hours. And they do it for free. Because they love books.  And that's why I'm always amazed and incredibly grateful when book bloggers review LEVEL 2. It's a remarkable gift that I will never stop appreciating.

THANK YOU.

 

Bloggers + BEA

Did you hear the awesome news this week about BEA and book bloggers?  If you're a book blogger or a book lover or a bookseller, something very cool is afoot in the book world. (I win for most uses of book in a sentence.  Also my copy editor would be banging her head on her desk and scribbling "repetitive" all over this post.)

First of all, in case you aren't a total nerd for all things book like me, BEA stands for Book Expo America, and it's sort of like heaven for readers.  Technically it's for booksellers, who are readers of course, but in recent years, intrepid writers and bloggers have been turning out for the event in NYC.  Basically it's a conference to showcase books by publishers as well as other book related services.  It's also an excellent way to get your hands on advanced copies of upcoming books and even rub elbows with authors.

So what does this have to do with book bloggers?  Well, the organizers of BEA just announced that they've officially purchased the Book Bloggers Convention.  BBC used to be hosted at the end of BEA in a co-location but the events were separate.  This year BBC will be held in conjunction with BEA at the beginning of the week, because BEA wants to get bloggers even more involved with the conference.  Why?  Because book bloggers are integral in getting the word out about books!    

You can read all about the merger here on the BEA blog, and I don't know about you guys but I'm definitely looking into going this year.

A Shout Out to a Few Bloggers

While I was busy writing and trying to get published, I didn’t read book blogs. I read blogs about writing, mostly written by agents. It is only recently that I’ve come to discover the great variety of book blogs.

I have so much admiration for all the book bloggers. I’m going to do a shout-out to a few that you’ve probably never heard of (that’s the point), and two that you should definitely know about if you don’t. Some of the following are small, but display an infectious love of reading.

http://Brokeandbookish.blogspot.com American college students who love YA.

http://onceuponaquote.blogspot.com A French college student studying English.

http://www.overflowinglibrary.com/ A British blogger.

http://www.publishingcrawl.com An international group of authors and publishing professionals.

http://presentinglenore.blogspot.com - our own Lenore did my first blog interview.

http://www.kamigarcia.com/blog/ - One of my favs, by rockstar bestselling author Kami Garcia (Beautiful Creatures), lots of YA dystopian book recs. And currently, she has a great post up now with writing links that is a don’t-miss for the writers out there.

Enjoy the read!

Why I read reviews

I know many experienced writers tell debut authors: “don’t read reviews of your books” or “don’t read the bad reviews” or “stay away from goodreads, shelfari, etc...” or even “don’t read good reviews”. And many writers seem to take this advice to heart – stop interacting on goodreads altogether once their ARCs are out in the world for readers to dissect.

Back in October 2010, when I sold THE OTHER LIFE and reviews were still far off, I thought: “Huh, why should I not read reviews? I can take criticism.”

Fast forward a few months, when ARCs were finally sent out, I suddenly wasn’t all that sure about my thick skin. I checked goodreads religiously and then I got my first not-so-stellar review (a two star rating) and I sat in front of my laptop paralyzed. I was too scared to read it and was driving myself insane with the possibilities. But then I told my husband (with the warning that he shouldn’t read it either and that I didn’t want to know what was written!).

Yeah...Husband didn’t listen and in the evening while we were making dinner, he described the review to me and I didn’t die. I could deal with it. My husband shrugged at the end of his recount and said “that wasn’t so bad”. And he was right. The next day I read the review and it was well-written and I was grateful that the reviewer had taken the time to write something about my book, though they didn’t like it.

I still cringe every time I see a low-rating, I still hesitate before I read a negative review but I do it anyway because, while it hurts a little to find out that not everyone loves your book, it helps me grow as a writer. Every time someone criticizes some part of my writing, I challenge myself to do better next time. And I love a good challenge.

Of course I know that no matter how hard I try, I’ll never make everyone happy and that’s not what I’m striving for (though maybe a little part of me does). But I want to know what readers think, want to know why people hate some books while they love others with such a fervor that they fight for them.

I often find myself browsing reviews of books I’ve read, and one day I found a negative review for a book almost everyone loved (myself included). And there were dozens, maybe hundreds of comments defending that book. I was stunned (and I felt a bit sorry for the poor reviewer who’d done nothing but write their opinion and got bashed for it). People were willing to defend a book – not because it was written by their relative, or agent sister, or friend. No, because they loved it so much. I think it’s wonderful that books are still capable of evoking such strong emotions in us – hate, love, despair, blind rage. Isn’t that what we want as writers?

Movies have pictures, soundtracks and big actors to get a strong reaction from their audience, we have only our words.

Celebrating Bloggers

Where would I be without blogs and bloggers? Maintaining a book blog and reading a ton of other book blogs and author blogs is what originally sparked my interest in YA lit – and in writing my own YA novel.

By keeping up with blogs, not only do I keep up with the zeitgeist, but I also learn what readers love and love to hate (insta-love, red-headed best friends, inaccurate college application timelines to name a few) as well as a ton about craft and how to improve my storytelling.

Let me give you one example of a blog event that directly impacted LEVEL 2. Frankie Diane Mallis (writer, blogger and member of The First Novels Club) puts on an event in January called the No-Kiss Blogfest, where participants are challenged to find or write an "almost kiss-- the rising, crushing, excruciating, longing, tension that comes when two characters get oh-so-close to kissing that you can just feel it, want it, NEED it....and then...they don't!"

Well, it just so happens that in January 2011, I was about to sit down to revise chapter 1 of LEVEL 2 when I stumbled upon Frankie’s post. My first draft of LEVEL 2 had my main character reliving one of her favorite memories with her boyfriend and it involved a kiss. But Frankie got me thinking … could the scene be even better with an almost kiss? So I tried it out. And guess what? It upped the excitement factor tenfold – and had a profound effect on the plot going forward too.

So thank you Frankie, and thank you book bloggers and writing bloggers who continually inspire me with your insights, passion and love of literature. I am proud to be a part of the conversation.

PS: For more tales of blogger love, check out YA Fusion.

Lenore's Blog