Wilda Williams

Librarians Wined, Dined, and Wooed at ALA
June 29, 2007

This past weekend the normally humid swamp that is Washington, D.C.in June felt more like San Francisco with clear sunny skies and surprisingly balmy and pleasant temperatures, setting the stage for a very successful ALA experience. As my colleague Michael Rogers noted in  "ALA Journal: Publishers Catch On--Finally', adult trade publishers were at last acknowledging the show as worthy of their full attention, and not just an afterthought of BookExpo. Besides the free galleys Mike spotted on the exhibits floor,  I noticed  long lines for author signings(including  Joyce Carol Oates, Sherman Alexie, Donna Leon, and Bill Bradley). There also were more book-related programs this year, including a marathon four sessions moderated by LJ's  own book review editor Barbara Hoffert and an auditorium speaker series that included documentary film maker Ken Burns, thriller author David Baldacci, book maven  Nancy Pearl, amd as a last-minute replacement for Kite Runner author Khaled Hossieni, bestselling author Patricia Cornwell. 

Publishers also courted  librarians on a more personal, intimate  level with author lunches and dinners. Having been impressed with the successful turnout at last year's dinner in New Orleans, Grove/Atlantic  invited 25  librarians, including Fayetteville P.L.'s Shawna Thorup (a 2007  LJ Mover and Shaker and former Christian fiction columnist for LJ ), NYPL's coordinator of adult and information services Miriam Tuliao, and Cathy Jo Yarmoski, head of the Fiction Unit at the Chicago Public Library,  to a Friday evening gathering at  Mark and Orlando's Restaurant in D.C.'s trendy DuPont Circle neighborhood. There they chatted and dined with popular Native American author Sherman Alexie (Flight),
 


mystery writer Donna Leon (Suffer the Little Children),
 


and Weekly Standard editor Andew Ferguson (Land of Lincoln).




At the the tail end of an exhausting 35-city book tour, Alexie still was charming and funny, while Donna Leon raved about a novella she had just read, Alan Bennett's The Uncommon Reader, about a bookmobile and a very special royal patron, (which just also happened to be LJ editor Margaret Heilbrun's BEA pick) And everyone congratulated Ferguson for the review he had just received in the New York Times.  Following dinner the authors graciously signed copies of their books for the happy guests.
 
To introduce its new Orbit science fiction and fantasy imprint, Hachette Book Group (formerly Time Warner) invited 80 librarians and industry professionals to a Saturday luncheon at Clydes of Gallery Place, near the Convention Center. Besides receiving attractive Orbit messanger bags filled with five selected Orbit galleys and a catalog, attendees heard Orbit publishing director Tim Holman discuss the British publisher's plans to launch  imprints in the United States and Australia. Of the 11 titles Orbit planned to release for its first U.S. fall and winter season, Holman noted that seven were fiction debuts, including Brian Ruckley's Winterbirth, a big brutal bloody fantasy epic (the fastest growing segment of the sf/fantasy market, Holman noted) based in the Scottish highlands.










Also coming is Jennifer Rardin's paranormal vampire fantasy Once Bitten, Twice Shy, tapping into a very still hot market.





   
           



And March 2008 sees the arrival of Jo Graham's historical fantasy debut, Black Ships. "We knew we wanted to publish Jo almost immediately," said Holman in his introduction to the author, who briefly but eloquently discussed the inspiration for this haunting retelling of Virgil's The Aeneid and read the opening chapter to enthralled listeners..

Posted by Wilda Williams on June 29, 2007 | Comments (0)