The Book Report Network

Libraries and Librarians Are Endangered Species: What You Can Do to Help

In April my mother called to say a cost-cutting move threatened to close my hometown's local library. The town council of Cedar Grove, New Jersey needed to trim the budget by $600,000, and by eliminating library funding council members thought they saw an easy cut. There were no unions to deal with, and the library line item in the budget of $490,000 for the remainder of 2010 was large enough that it could wipe out a huge chunk of the budget deficit. As one councilman noted, the surrounding towns had libraries; people could use those...

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE-GraphicNovelReporter.com, a leading website for graphic-novel and manga news and reviews, has released its second annual Hottest Graphic Novels of Summer list, a comprehensive collection of titles that will keep comics fans busy throughout the summer. The selections are arranged into five categories for easy reference --- Adult Fiction, Adult Nonfiction, Teens, Tweens, and Kids --- ensuring that readers of all ages can easily find books to suit their tastes on this in-depth list.

The selections include books on sale now as well as those being released through Labor Day. "Noting the vitality of this market, we wanted build a comprehensive list of exciting titles for the summer," said John Hogan, Editorial Director of GraphicNovelReporter.com. "We see this as an essential resource not only for readers, but for booksellers and librarians, too."

In all, nearly 120 books are on the list, ranging from thrillers and action titles to memoirs and epic fantasy. These titles will generate a wealth of content on GraphicNovelReporter.com throughout the summer as creator interviews, reviews, and excerpts for these selected books are added in the weeks to come.

The summer list comes on the heels of GraphicNovelReporter.com's recently released Core Graphic Novels list. That list, which helps booksellers navigate the essential graphic-novel titles they should carry in their stores, is divided into four sections: Adults, Teens, and Kids/Tweens. Both the Adults and Teens list have been published on the site, and the Kids/Tweens list will be published later this month. Core manga lists again broken out by age ranges will begin to appear on the site in July and roll out into August.

"This will be a huge summer for the site," said Carol Fitzgerald, President of TheBookReportNetwork.com. "Since launching in December 2008 we have been hitting a consistent stride with our biweekly updates. We are targeting readers who want to know about the best new books being released, librarians and booksellers who need to find the right selection for their patrons and customers and teachers who want to stay on top of what their students will be reading. And from the feedback we see, it's clear that our readers are responding to our mission."

In the fall, GraphicNovelReporter.com will release its annual list of Fall books.

A guide to help traditional booksellers entering the graphic-novel marketplace to build a basic collection, one step at a time.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE--GraphicNovelReporter.com, a leading website for graphic-novel and manga news and reviews, has released its Core Graphic Novels list for adults --- the first of four lists the website has planned to guide booksellers who would like to stock these titles, but are in need of some reliable information on what to stock to reach this continually growing audience.

"Since we started conceptualizing this site --- and even more frequently since it launched in December 2008 --- traditional booksellers have asked for guidance on what to buy for their stores," said Carol Fitzgerald, President of TheBookReportNetwork.com, which publishes GraphicNovelReporter. "We see a keen interest from retailers in carrying more graphic novels in stores, but they are overwhelmed by the number of titles out there. Given the depth and breadth of our content, we saw an opportunity to provide these honed lists."

These edited choices are divided into separate categories to help accommodate particular bookstores' needs, based on both content and size: beginning with 10 books for those with very small spaces to allot to graphic works,followed by 25 and 100 more selections for those with more room. A nonfiction list is also included.

In the weeks ahead, GraphicNovelReporter.com will debut lists for the Teen and the Kids categories, two of the biggest categories in comics, as well as manga lists again broken out by demographic.

"This is by no means an exhaustive list, nor is it a best-of list. It's a solid, core list for booksellers who want to branch out into comics selling and build a base," added John Hogan, Editorial Director of GraphicNovelReporter. "Once they jump in, whether it's with 10, 25, or 100 or more titles, they'll quickly learn how strong this category can be for them and also will learn what is interesting to their customers."

Graphic novels have never been hotter. Novels such as Watchmen and the NY Times bestseller, Stitches by David Small have shown that interest in the genre has expanded beyond the so-called comic book geek audience and into the mainstream.

One one of those leading that movement is GraphicNovelReporter.com's Editorial Director, John Hogan. We had the opportunity to speak with him at length and this is what he had to say:

Who are you John, really? I mean, tell us about your professional background and your current title.

For several years, I was the editor of Pages magazine ("the magazine for people who love books"). Unfortunately, the magazine came to an end in 2007. As sad as I was to see Pages go away, it gave me a chance to make a change, which involved moving from San Diego to New York and becoming a freelance writer and editor. I've been lucky enough in my career to always get to work with books in some form or another—that's about as good as it gets, in my opinion!


Your site is one of the most popular sources for information and news on graphic novels. Tell us about GraphicNovelReporter.com. What is it and how did it begin?

GraphicNovelReporter.com is a home for people on the web to find reviews of new and classic graphic books, interviews with creators and publishing professionals, news about the industry, opinions from readers and experts, and resource materials for teachers and librarians who want to incorporate graphic novels into their curricula. We're part of The Book Report Network, which was started by Carol Fitzgerald. Carol and I had known each other for years, and she had written a column for Pages. So when I moved to New York, we stayed in touch and in one conversation, she asked if there were anything in particular that I loved, a field I really wanted to work in, I quickly answered, "graphic novels." Flash-forward a few years, as Carol meanwhile began thinking about adding a graphic-novel website to her stable of sites, she called to see if I was interested in getting on board. So I was very fortunate to be in the right place at the right time. I began writing several graphic-novel reviews for bookreporter.com and teenreads.com all while Carol and I plotted out the editorial development of the new site we were envisioning. It really helped, because when we officially launched at the end of 2008, we were able to do so with a pretty diverse and well-rounded cache of content. Because Carol had already successfully launched so many sites, it was easier on us in some ways since she knew what to anticipate, but this was something new, so we wanted to get it right as much as possible from the get-go.


You seem passionate about using graphic novels as teaching tools. Why?

When we started GraphicNovelReporter.com, it was really a fan site. And in a way, it still is; we'll always be a home for every type of graphic-novel reader. But we also noticed there was a lot of activity going on with teachers and librarians. They were really at the forefront of bringing a newfound respect to graphic novels. But there weren't many places they could turn to for help, so we wanted to make sure we became that resource. Oftentimes, we were seeing teachers and librarians working with the same graphic novels over and over—they were great graphic novels, but it was obvious they weren't being exposed to the entire wealth of excellent material that's out there. Once we started, it was like we had opened a floodgate. The response we've gotten from teachers and librarians has been phenomenal. And obviously graphic novels are really successful in the classroom. There are so many readers who can be reached through comics. If we can help educators do this, we're really happy.


You've been a fan of comics and graphic novels for years. Do you roll your eyes at the public's newfound interest in graphic novels or does it excite you?

Oh, it definitely excites me. There's never been so much available all at once and all in so many different genres. This is a period of vast exploration in graphic novels. That doesn't mean it's all great, but seeing the range of things being published now is incredible. No matter how hard I try, I just can't keep up with it all. As frustrating as that is, that's just exciting. Plus, it's fun to be able to introduce so many new readers to what's good in the graphic format. It's unbelievable to see the amount of talent out there.

What graphic novels in particular have stood out recently? What should we keep an eye out for that haven't been released?

I could talk about graphic novels I love all day long. I try to cater my recommendations to the genres that people really like the most when I can. For example, if you like science fiction, two ongoing series you should really know about are Rasl by Jeff Smith and Echo by Terry Moore. The biggest literary graphic novel of last year was David Mazzucchelli's Asterios Polyp, which was brilliant. I've handed that to a few people who don't normally read graphic novels, and they loved it. I've done the same with The Photographer, by Didier Lefevre and Emmanuel Guibert. That book is stunning, both in content and design. Some other recent favorites of mine have included The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb, A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge by Josh Neufeld, and Stitches by David Small. George O'Connor just started a new series called Olympians; the first book is on Zeus, and it's a lot of fun. The Wasteland series by Antony Johnston and Christopher Mitten is incredible. One of the best books of last year, one that really blew me away, was Bayou by Jeremy Love. It was a webcomic first, and it was just collected in print a few months ago. The memoir genre is big right now too; there were two recently that have similar themes of women trying to understand the lives their fathers led, but both were incredibly different—and both were amazing: You'll Never Know by C. Tyler and The Impostor's Daughter by Laurie Sandell. Coming up, expect the Twilight graphic novel to get a lot of attention. And on the comic-book side, with the new Iron Man movie coming, you'll see a lot of good Iron Man books. I'm really anxious to see Top Shelf's new line of imported Swedish graphic novels; it seems like a brilliant idea to translate them into English and bring them to the States. Also, if you're a fan of noir books, keep an eye on the Vertigo line. They're brought in several talented prose and comics writers to work on edgy new graphic novels; so far, I've loved Jason Starr's The Chill and Kevin Baker's Luna Park. I'm really looking forward to Peter Milligan's Bronx Kill next.


Where do you see the future of graphic novels as an industry going in the next 5-10 years?

In no particular order, I think several things will have a big impact on comics in the coming years. Right now, we're starting to see a lot of overlap between graphic novels and "mainstream" publishing. Major properties and writers (like the aforementioned Twilight and James Patterson, Janet Evanovich, Laurell K. Hamilton, and numerous others) are crossing over, and that will get more plentiful, which will bring in an even wider audience for comics. Webcomics and independently produced works will gain more momentum, which will continue to push the industry in new and exciting directions. So many of the most challenging and rewarding works come out of this environment already. And of course, one of the big questions people are trying to answer currently is how fans will read graphic novels in a few years whether they'll be moving more significantly to electronic devices like the iPad. I think there will be a lot of traction gained there, but I'm a print purist myself. I love the smell of books, comics especially. I think there are enough people who feel similarly to keep comics presses running for a long time to come. And the collector market alone can keep print alive.

Marching over snow and ice while playing tour guide, Gilbert chats about recipes with a restaurateur, commiserates with a store owner about slow Christmas sales, and asks a little girl if pink is her favorite color — and is suitably impressed when the answer turns out to be orange.

Suddenly, Gilbert's boast in Eat, Pray, Love that "I can make friends with anybody (and) if there isn't anyone else around to talk to, I could probably make friends with a 4-foot-tall pile of Sheetrock" seems less far-fetched.

She's equally uninhibited with a reporter, opening up about everything from why she chose not to have children to being insecure about her wispy hair.

"I'm not a very private person," says Gilbert, 40. "I share stuff with people when I'm standing in a grocery line."

Translate that winning emotional candor into print, and you may have the answer to why Eat, Pray, Love became a publishing phenomenon with its own acronym. Published in 2006, EPL has sold more than 6 million copies in the USA, plus an additional 1 million overseas. It was already a word-of-mouth sensation and book club fave when Oprah Winfrey called and invited Gilbert on to her show twice in 2007.

EPL is the tale of how Gilbert — then a thirtysomething broken-hearted New Yorker — fled a bitter divorce and messy love affair for Italy, where she ate pasta. Then she headed to India, where she prayed in an ashram. She ended up in Indonesia, where she found love on Bali with a Brazilian charmer she calls "Felipe." (To protect his privacy, Gilbert does not use his real name — José Nunes — in her writing.)

If possible, the EPL juggernaut is poised to get even bigger this summer when the film version, which stars Julia Roberts as Gilbert and Spanish smolderer Javier Bardem as Felipe, arrives on Aug. 13.

Bureaucratic odyssey

But first, Gilbert has a new book to promote —Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage (Viking, $26.95), on sale today. A sequel of sorts to EPL, it has an announced first printing of 1 million copies.

After the success of EPL, Committed totes some big sales expectations. Can it meet them? Maybe, says Carol Fitzgerald, president of TheBookReportNetwork.com. "There is a built-in audience just waiting for this book. ... For many women, Gilbert has become a character for them and they want to see what happens next in her life."

Early reviews have been mixed. Entertainment Weekly gave Committed a "C" and wondered whether the subject matter — marriage — "perhaps combined with sophomore jitters after such a phenomenal publishing success, has spooked the author." Publishers Weekly was more positive. While disliking the part-history, part-travelogue structure, the reviewer concluded that "Gilbert remains the spirited storyteller she was in EPL."

In Committed, Gilbert explains how she and Felipe, both veterans of divorce, ended up violating their sacred vow never to marry.

The Cupid of this story? Homeland Security. In spring 2006, the couple flew into Dallas/Fort Worth from a trip abroad. Felipe, who is Brazilian by birth, was an Australian citizen who had lived primarily in Bali but traveled frequently to the USA because of his gemstone-import business. He and Gilbert were renting a house in Philadelphia. He had to leave the country every three months, then apply for a new 90-day U.S. visa upon each return, which raised red flags.

Felipe was interrogated for six hours by "Officer Tom" from Homeland Security. Before sending Felipe back to Australia, the officer (who is thanked on the last page of Committed) told the frightened couple that the only way they'd be able to live in the USA was to get married.

Committed is more than just a bureaucratic odyssey that concludes in February 2007 with the pair being married by Frenchtown's mayor. Gilbert examines marriage and divorce around the world through a historical/sociological prism. She also shares her own family's history, focusing on her parents' marriage of 40 years and her grandmother's life as a mother of seven.

"It's a journey of the heart and the mind," Gilbert says. "To be honest, it is not an advice book on how to have a happy marriage."

Committed is Gilbert's second go-round on the topic. She had written nearly 500 pages, but as she was about to send the manuscript to her publisher, "a sickening feeling that it wasn't any good" gripped her.

She was trying for the breezy tone of EPL. But five years had passed. "I'm quite a different person now, and we all know trying for girlish charm into middle age can be a little tragic."

'A giving tree'

Once a devoted New Yorker, Gilbert is no longer EPL's footloose freelance writer but a married woman putting down emotional and financial roots in this New Jersey town. "EPL has turned into a giving tree," she says. "Thanks to EPL, I can help people. It's been a great boon creatively and financially."

She chose Frenchtown to be closer to family.

For Committed, Gilbert spent a lot of time reading and thinking about marriage — "institutionalized intimacy," as she puts it. Her research convinced her that creating an extended community is vital for any marriage, hers included.

Her new husband, for example, needs his privacy. So Frenchtown won't be hosting a literary variation on Jon & Kate starring Liz and Felipe. Not even an invite from The Oprah Winfrey Show could lure him into the spotlight.

Felipe, who is 17 years older than Gilbert, operates Two Buttons, the couple's Asian import shop, in Frenchtown. He has two adult children from his first marriage. Gilbert says her decision not to have children has helped foster an easy relationship with Felipe's kids.

In EPL, her growing doubts about having a baby with her first husband, Michael Cooper, left her sobbing on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night.

Her willingness to detail her ambivalence about marriage, love, career and children is one reason Gilbert connects with readers. "I'm a bridge between Gail Collins' When Everything Changed (a history of feminism) and Sex and the City," she says.

Her biggest fear for Committed: "It will be filed away under chick lit." Gilbert finds it ironic that she sometimes gets that dismissive label, considering she began her career writing for men's magazines.

Before EPL, she had published a collection of short stories, a well-received 2000 novel called Stern Men and a biography of naturalist Eustace Conway. She is working on a new novel.

EPL is not the first piece of writing Gilbert has sold to the movies: Coyote Ugly was based on a GQ article she wrote about bartending in New York City. Gilbert isn't involved in the movie version of EPL (the screenplay is co-written by Glee's Ryan Murphy, who also is directing).

Despite its millions of fans, EPL is not without its detractors. Alynda Wheat, who a couple of years ago wrote a "Loathe It" piece about EPL for Entertainment Weekly, belongs to a not-insubstantial group who find the book's popularity mystifying.

"Not only did (Gilbert) end this marriage to a perfectly lovely man and take a year off — a vacation most people can only dream of — she got paid hugely for it," says Wheat, who calls EPL "self-centered."

"And now she gets to be played by Julia Roberts!"

She has no plans to read Committed; Wheat says she's more interested in the memoir Gilbert's ex-husband is writing.

No looking back

On that topic, Gilbert says, "it will be what it will be." Ask her about the accusation that EPL is self-indulgent, and she shrugs: "If people didn't like it, I'm sorry to hear that."

Underneath Gilbert's charm, there's real New England flint (she grew up on a Connecticut Christmas tree farm). Forget the starving-artist cliché; Gilbert proudly points out that she has been contributing to her retirement fund since she worked as a waitress after graduating from NYU. In Committed, she describes how she and Felipe hammered out their prenup.

"I'm not the type of person to end up like Nicolas Cage or Mike Tyson," she says. "I was raised by parents whose greatest fear is that their daughters would be dependent on anyone or anything."

Standing in the middle of the Two Buttons shop, Gilbert makes it clear that she's not dependent on Committed scaling the heights of EPL.

With a sunny but determined smile, she says, "I have no expectation that any of my future books will succeed like EPL." And she seems just fine with that.

On his website, Stephen King launched a serial novel, The Plant, the first experiment in digital self-publishing by a brand-name author. Readers were asked for $1 for downloading each 5,000-word installment about a vampire vine that takes over a publishing firm.

His experiment ended midplot; fewer than half the readers had paid.

King now says it wasn't "the delivery system" but a problem as old as writing itself. He ran out of inspiration, which "happens quite often with writers, but the world usually doesn't know."

Still, it raised staggering questions in 2000: Who needs publishers, bookstores or even books when a writer has a website?

In 2009, King's best sellers still are published the traditional way, although Under the Dome, released in November, is out as an e-book today. The sky hasn't fallen, but for books, it has been a transformative decade roiled by anxiety and possibilities. New powers emerged: Google, which plans to digitize 20 million books, and Amazon, which continued to change bookselling.

The word reader took on new meaning in devices such as the iPhone, Sony E-Reader, Kindle and Nook, not to be confused with the Vook, a one-screen blend of book and video.

Human readers made it a big decade for novels about wizards, vampires and a Harvard symbologist. Two series for kids with "crossover" appeal to grown-ups —J.K. Rowling 's Harry Potter and Stephenie Meyer 's Twilight— swept nine of the top 10 spots on USA TODAY's best-selling books of the decade. Dan Brown 's The Da Vinci Code is No. 2.

Rowling was a best seller before 2000, when third book Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban sold a record 3 million copies its first weekend.

By 2007's release of the finale, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, speculation about Harry's death (unfounded) rose to levels not seen since Charles Dickens ' 19th-century serials. A record 8.3 million copies sold in a day.

In 2007, Meyer, a Mormon stay-at-home mom, began an unprecedented dominance of the best-seller list with her Twilight series about a chaste teen romance starring a vampire. Last year, she sold 22 million books.

Brown hit it big in 2003 with Da Vinci, a thriller mixing fact and fiction. It made best sellers out of Brown's three earlier novels. His latest, The Lost Symbol, has sold 4 million copies since September.

Rowling, Meyer and Brown had help from Hollywood, but their books were blockbusters in their own right: "They opened as big or bigger than the most anticipated movies, with pre-orders and opening-night parties, which spilled over to other books," says Michael Cader, founder of Publishers Lunch, a digital newsletter. Each sold "quantities of hardcovers once unimaginable."

But publishers complain of flat sales overall — even before the recession. E-books, the fastest-growing segment, are in their infancy, 3% of sales. Prices, rights and delaying e-books to protect hardcover sales are in dispute.

"Hard bargains will have to be struck," says Sara Nelson, books editor of O magazine, "but in the end, readers will win. Over time, the more readers you can create and nurture, the better ... no matter what the format."

It was a decade for memoirs, including Elizabeth Gilbert 's Eat, Pray, Love (No. 25). But after James Frey 's A Million Little Pieces (No. 45) turned out to be part fiction, he was publicly scolded by Oprah Winfrey.

Oprah's Book Club turned 34 titles into best sellers, but waned, making only one selection this year. Her show ends in 2011. But authors found outlets on cable shows hosted by Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Glenn Beck, who wrote their own best sellers.

Metropolitan newspapers reduced book reviews or moved them online. After 76 years, Kirkus Reviews closes next week.

But countless blogs and websites are now devoted to books. "More books are getting attention, but at the same time, enthusiasm for one title is tougher to cultivate," says Carol Fitzgerald, president of the Book Report Network of websites.

The number of bookstores peaked and is in "irreversible decline," Cader says. That troubles publishers such as Grove/Atlantic's Morgan Entrekin, who says, "Bookstores are such wonderful places. We need them. They offer community in a world that is becoming more fragmented."

Fitzgerald worries about the implications of a recent price war between Amazon and Wal-Mart : "Books as loss leaders, priced like bulk paper towels, says something about what we think of culture in this country."

Still, as the National Endowment for the Arts ' David Kipen puts it, "Any decade with two new Thomas Pynchon novels and an uptick in national reading numbers can't be all bad."

A 2004 report warned that literary reading was fading away, but a 2009 update found reading on the rise for the first time in 25 years; the biggest increase was among readers 18 to 24.

Asked about 2019, King sees 40% of fiction and 25% of non-fiction sales as e-books, but their "essentially ephemeral nature will probably keep them from biting any deeper, even when delivery quality improves." Overall book sales "will decline slightly or remain steady." These days, that sounds like good news.

Contributing: Anthony DeBarros