by Andrew Limbong, host of NPR's Book of the Day podcast
Hey newsletter readers! You all shared some really touching memories last week concerning our favorite teen detective, Nancy Drew. Some of your emails below. As always, the inbox is bookoftheday@npr.org. And if you want to hear the latest author interviews from across NPR, subscribe to NPR’s Book of the Day podcast. Here’s this week’s letter!
What losing Book World means for the books world
We’re all friends here, so let’s not feign some cold journalistic indifference, OK? Earlier this month, when the Washington Post kneecapped its arts coverage and shut down its storied Book World section, as part of wider layoffs, it was … concerning. Book World was a wonderful place for reviews and recommendations that was the envy of, uh, at least one books reporter. A lot of ink has been spilled on what this means for the wider books media world. But what does it mean for the average reader? How much of the book-reading audience gets its information from legacy media?
Luke Medina/NPR
“It’s not as big of a piece of the pie as people would like to think,” says Kathleen Schmidt, a longtime publishing strategist and writer of the great newsletter Publishing Confidential. As someone who loves book reviews and has pitched Book World plenty of times, Schmidt was sad to see it go. But not surprised. “Book coverage is not a money maker for media. That’s the sad truth.” For years, Schmidt has pivoted toward more niche outlets for her authors – newsletters, podcasts, etc. It’s harder on the author who has to do more interviews, but the authors who can get away with not doing a full-court publicity push are few and far between.
So what are we left with? A few legacy media companies (hi!!). A broader network of newsletters and podcasts. There’s, of course, BookTok, BookTube, Bookstagram, Book (insert-next-thing-here). And then there’s the avenue that predates all of that. The thing Schmidt says has always been the main way to sell books. Word of mouth.
I suspect we’ve got a few Book World fans in the audience. Let us know what you’ll miss about it, what voids it leaves in your book media diet. But also, if you weren’t a fan, if you’d place yourself in the more general reader camp, what kind of book coverage are you interested in? Let us know – bookoftheday@npr.org.
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TBR Pile
Speaking of losing book media entities, the great Michael Silverblatt died recently. He was the host of the fantastic KCRW show Bookworm. I put together an appreciation of him and the show for All Things Considered.
In the children’s book The One About the Blackbird, a kid and his grandfather bond over a certain Beatles song. It’s a tearjerker, folks. Writer Melanie Florence and illustrator Matt James talk about putting it together for NPR’s series Picture This.
A scene from Melanie Florence and Matt James' The One About the Blackbird. Illustrations by Matt James
Mailbag!
Last week, I pointed you all to the Nancy Drew archive at the Open Library. Let’s take a trip down memory lane!
James G. wrote: “My sixth grade teacher in the mid-1950s read to us every day after lunch. The first book she read was Carolyn Keene’s The Mystery of the Tolling Bell. This was my introduction both to mysteries and Nancy Drew and I became hooked. … My quest to read more and more of these books drew me into our smalltown public library where I probably drove the librarian crazy wanting to know when they’d get the newest books in the series, but scouring the shelves introduced me to other genres and wonderful writers I might not otherwise have encountered and nurturing what became a lifelong reading habit.”
Mary R. wrote: “I read Nancy Drew voraciously in fourth and fifth grade. I had maybe two or three of them myself and kept track of what I'd read by putting a dot by each of the titles on the list on the back of one of my books. Alas, I no longer have them, and strangely or not, I'm definitely not a mystery reader today.”
Larry wrote: “I love the NPR Books email. I always read something interesting. But I have to ask a favor. Lauren K. wrote a letter that was included in the Mailbag about Wuthering Heights. And she mentions the Pat Benatar song ‘Wuthering Heights.’ You gotta do Kate Bush a solid and let everyone know that Benetar's version is a cover of Kate's song. Which she wrote when she was 18, by the way.”
See you next week!
P.S., if a friend sent you this newsletter and you want to sign up, the place to do it is npr.org/newsletter/books. :)
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