Comments on: Unsung YA

By: Heather Z.

Heather Z. — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 02:23:52 +0000

This is so wonderful. “Unsung books” are what my reviews are entirely about. I love that this meme has circulated so widely. And I agree with your last statement. If a book I write only impacts a few, but it makes a difference, that makes it all worthwhile.

By: Mitali Perkins

Mitali Perkins — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:22:42 +0000

What you said, except I think of my books by main character, which makes me see them as my imaginary children. Harder to bear cuts and low sales my way, so maybe I’ll shift to your view and treat my books as good female friends.

By: SF Signal

SF Signal — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 06:31:22 +0000

SF Tidbits for 1/26/10…

Interviews/ProfilesThe Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy Podcast interviews Marjorie M. Liu.The Agony Column interviews Jasper Fforde (podcast).The Big Adios interviews Paul G. Tremblay.The World SF News Blog interviews Wu Yan.The Force interviews Paul S. Ke…

By: Wherein 73 Bloggers Sing the Praises of the Unsung - YAnnabe

Wherein 73 Bloggers Sing the Praises of the Unsung - YAnnabe — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 03:07:59 +0000

[...] night, 73 bloggers had posted their own Unsung YA Heroes lists. Not to mention all the tweeters and authors and English teachers chiming [...]

By: Sam Downing

Sam Downing — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 02:14:12 +0000

Interesting: you think of your books as female! Is that because they have female protags? If you wrote a book from a male perspective, would it become a male book?

PS Happy Australia Day!

By: rockinlibrarian

rockinlibrarian — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 23:00:42 +0000

My impression of “unsung,” when I was looking at this, was “books you rarely hear about,” regardless of sales. You COULD hear a lot about a book because of critical acclaim OR because it’s a best-seller, but either way, you’re still hearing about it. It’s the ones where YOU love it but you can’t figure out why nobody else is talking about it that I feel are truly unsung. That’s what I would have written my list about, if I don’t have about five other topics I want to blog about this week and no time to blog in.

By: Kelly

Kelly — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:03:37 +0000

I would have commented sooner, but I had to pick myself up off the floor first. Because, holy crap! Justine Larbalestier blogged about my little Unsung YA Heroes project!

Truly, that’s like the neophyte book blogger’s equivalent of making a bestseller list.

I would hope that, ultimately, a project like this would impact sales–or at least library circulation–of these great titles. I’ve always wondered if authors have any way to quantify the library readers of their books, but using LibraryThing was an attempt to get at that aspect from my end of things.

But my completely idealistic end goal is really to reach the kids (and adults) who read 1 or 2 bestsellers a year, and that’s it. They’re missing out on all the great things a reading habit that encompasses more than Twilight or John Grisham can bring you in life–all the things you called out above.

We’re planning to do the Unsung project once a year and take a whole week to do it–The Week of the Unsung? We’ll do a different genre each day of the week. But maybe we need to reach out to more than just other genres. Maybe we need a way to reach out to those bestseller readers and match them up with another great book they’ve never heard of but that will rock their world.

And to determine which books are truly unsung–which books have been in the fewest hands–I’m thinking we could come up with some sort of calculation taking into account metrics from book-categorizing sites like LibraryThing and Goodreads, Amazon sales rank, etc.

Just babbling now, but thanks for putting these ideas in my head to germinate!

By: Tamara

Tamara — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 13:43:19 +0000

way awesome! I love finding out about new YA books, especially the underdog.

By: Sarah Rees Brennan

Sarah Rees Brennan — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 12:26:29 +0000

*nods* Very true. I keep hearing of Demon’s Lexicon as much-sung! Which is very pleasing, and I also very much appreciate all the reviews and emails about it. But one does sometimes sniffle at the, you know, actual sales figures.

Critically Acclaimed Writers What Deserve to Be Much More Sung Of: I believe we have both been discussing Margaret Mahy lately.

Elizabeth Wein needs more singing! So does Sherwood Smith.

By: Zeborah

Zeborah — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 06:22:37 +0000

Alas, what you say has the ring of plausibility.

By: Justine

Justine — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 06:04:16 +0000

Zeborah: It’s because the book ate your soul that you have no will to live.

By: Zeborah

Zeborah — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 05:58:29 +0000

Not that books eat anything other than souls.

Don’t forget will to live. They eat that too.