Cybils

Welcome, Scottsdale Business + Life

If you're coming here from Scottsdale Business + Life magazine, welcome aboard! I'm grateful to editor Elizabeth Hughes for her flattering profile of me. (See page 22.) Please feel free to learn more about us, whether you're visiting us for business or pleasure.

As for our regular readers ... squeee! I've been profiled in a magazine. Enjoy!

RIFfing with Cybils

I'm a big fan of Reading is Fundamental, and not just because I've met leader Carol Rasco and she's as amazing as you'd expect. She's one part missionary, one part Southern Belle and about 50 parts Energizer Bunny. RIF puts books in the hands of kids who really need them, kids like me when I was wee. I have some happy memories of the bookmobiles they no longer do (when I am Queen of the Universe, I will have to fix this. I picture fleets of bookmobiles for every corner of the globe).

But I'm not queen of anything. Even the dust bunnies smirk at my feeble attempts to coax them from under the sofa. But Carol and RIF need our help and I'm determined to give this a try. RIF lost all its federal funding and now must rely 100% on donations. I'm not in a position to write a check but they're more than happy to accept gently used books.

Which brings me to my new project: RIFfing with Cybils

Here's how it works: If you were a Round 1 panelist, you probably have a few review copies that have stacked up. Need a place to donate them? Here's an interactive map with RIF offices around the country. Find the one nearest you and if it's convenient, drop off a load of gently used books.

If you don't live nearby but can afford fourth class postage, they're happy to accept your donations any way they can get them. Or have a friend who commutes to the area drop them off. Make a special trip one day. Or round up books from friends and all of you split the media mail postage. The donations are tax deductible, of course.

I'll be reminding us all once a week about this. Please email me at anne (at) inlandempress (dot) com if you do participate and I'll be sure to list you and the RIF office to which you donated (but not the total number of books -- unless you'd like to add that. Some people don't want their donations detailed and I totally respect that).

If you're not a Round 1 judge or any sort of judge and you'd just like to help a great cause, feel free! I'll list you too when I do our roundup of donors.

I'm going to keep on this folks, so you'd better get busy. I want to hear some good news from bloggers around the country that you're busy packing up those gently used books for a generation of kids who are going without.

Charitably,

Anne Levy, Cybils Admin.

Teens and Literature, circa 1964

I've been lucky enough to work with writing coach extraordinaire Bruce McAllister. But before he became the go-to guy for struggling writers, he was a precocious teen who thought he knew everything. Or at least, more than his English teacher, who kept force-feeding him exercises in finding symbolism in works of Lit-rah-toor. He decided to ask the Great Authors himself if they intended all that symbolic stuff or just what.

And they answered, by the score. John Updike, Jack Kerouac, Ray Bradbury and many others took the time to write back, believe it or not.

Behold, the long-forgotten results, newly rediscovered by the Paris Review, no less. His survey is starting to go viral and I'm late to the party (I've been sitting on this only a few days, but that's far too long in Internetland), but here's BoingBoing and The Guardian.

Enjoy.

NPR gives us a mention

Many thanks to Apps organizer Mary Ann Scheuer for mentioning us during her interview with NPR's "Here & Now." The show also links to us on their site. If you're coming from NPR, welcome! Browse last year's finalists and winners and this year's nominations (listed by genre in the sidebar). Join us Jan. 1st for this year's announcement of finalists.

Here's that link again.

No such thing as a free hobby

A disturbing article about William Morrow's not-so-nice letter to bloggers. Basically, they imposed new restrictions on their review copies and initially demanded the books be reviewed within one month. They later retracted the deadline, but the memo still says it's a blogger's "job" to review the books they send. Not hobby, labor of love or avocation. Job.

Note our own Pam Coughlin is quoted. In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that book blogging led to my own freelance reviews for the LA Times for a brief time. I haven't reviewed for them in several years, however.

If this represents the first of many such missives from publishers, it won't be good news for individual book bloggers or for Cybils. While I understand that the mountains of review copies do get expensive for publishers, and times are indeed tough, I think they should really be focusing their efforts on tracking the number of blog reviews of a specific title and their effects on sales. It can be done. We've done it when we announce the winners and then watch as Amazon rankings spike for a few days. And they naturally have access to more precise sales data than we do.

That would help publishers figure out which reviewers might have had an influence, and work better and more efficiently with us. I also think it's better when they send us a checklist so we can select books rather than sending their entire frontlist. Of course, many already do this, but I recall HarperCollins being one of the more egregious senders-of-everything when I was still doing Book Buds.

Would love to know your thoughts on this.

BEA Librarian blog love

Many thanks to Julie Jurgens, this year's pick to be librarian blogger for Book Expo America. She's done a really fun write-up of Cybils, including her own insights from judging last year. Julie will join us again in January to judge teen Science Fiction & Fantasy. Welcome back, Julie!

SLJ finds us APPealing

It's a pun, get it? Our APP award is APPealing. Hahaha!

Oh, never mind.

School Library Journal gives us a nice shout-out.

Here's the link.

Latte & NPR

I hope everyone's having a wonderful summer and getting ready for the next Cybils season. We'll be losing Sarah Stevenson as our editor, but for good reason. She's out promoting her novel, "The Latte Rebellion."

It's getting some great buzz out there, including this interview on NPR. Check it out.

Cybils 2010 Bling for Your Blog

We're back! And we're all very excited about this year's awards--the books...the bloggers...the fame and fortune...oh, wait. Maybe we do it for the love. And, okay, getting to read a ton of awesome books is a great side benefit. Whatever your reason for loving the Cybils, we want YOU to help us by showing your love.

That's right, we've got Cybils logos. Three sizes of 'em, in fact, in this year's nifty new color scheme. To download your chosen size (note: actual logos are larger than they appear!), simply right-click the size you want and select Save As. Feel free to use these to publicize the Cybils as much as you want. No, really. And stay tuned for an announcement of your favorite Cybils swag from our CafePress store!

500 x 283 pixels:

288 x 163 pixels:

180 x 102 pixels (great for sidebars!):

How did I miss this?

Look what kind of love BlogHer's Sassymonkey is giving us. She posted a couple weeks ago about us:

For many people February 14 is just Valentine's Day. For book bloggers it's something else altogether -- it's the day the Cybils winners are announced! What are the Cybils? They just happen to be one of the best book awards out there.

And then she goes on to quote from bloggers -- both participants and authors -- who say cool things about us. 

Many thanks, Sass!