Rob Buchanan is the sales coordinator in the marketing department. 

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to J. R. R. Tolkien. The first adult books I ever read were The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I know The Hobbit is technically a children’s book, but since it led me to The Lord of the Rings books, and goes well with them, I am including it here. These are the books that began a lifelong love of fantasy books. After reading those books I spent countless hours at the local library, hunting for new books to read. I can’t remember a lot of the books I read at that time, since it has been twenty-five to thirty years since I read them, but some left a lasting impression.

Our library had a number of metal spinning racks and I distinctly remember finding almost all of the Horseclans books by Robert Adams in them. These aren’t traditional fantasy books because they are set in a world many years after an apocalypse. I don’t recall there being any magic, but there was an occasional bit of high technology thrown in. I can’t remember which of the eighteen volumes the library didn’t have, but I still remember the frustration I felt at not being able to read the entire series. I recall the books taking place over a long period of time, following a group of immortals and the people they were guiding. This allowed the author to have a large cast of characters, since of course the immortals outlived everyone as the years passed. Every once in a while I think about going back and getting the series so I can read them again and see if they are as good as I remember. They are old enough that they aren’t in the library any longer, but a quick search of Amazon shows that they are all available, in one form or another.

Continue reading “People Make Publishing: Thanks to J. R. R. Tolkien”

“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.” ―John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars

I work in book publishing and I love to read books. This should come as no surprise. Most people who know this about me probably think that I’ve been a book worm my whole life; why else would I seek a position in the book publishing world? That, however, couldn’t be further from the truth.

When I was younger I hated reading. You couldn’t pay me enough money to sit down with a book and read just for fun. I would only read if I had to for school. I was much too busy watching Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Rugrats, Boy Meets World and all the other great shows of the 1990s. Who had time for reading?

Then, in September 1998 something miraculous happened. J.K. Rowling wrote the story of a young boy named Harry Potter. All of a sudden reading had a whole new meaning. It didn’t have to be work; I could read for fun! The Harry Potter series transported me into an imaginary world. In this world, I learned to love and care about the characters. I read these stories and instantly wanted to know more. I locked myself in my room for hours just reading away, exploring the grounds at Hogwarts, and I wasn’t alone. The Harry Potter series is one of the best-selling series in history, with more than 450 million copies sold.

Continue reading “The Marketeers Club: The Zeal of Reading a YA Book”

Tish Fobben is the direct response manager at the University of Nebraska Press. 

A recent Shelf Awareness newsletter headline caught my eye, “RIF Survey: Reading Important, but Not a Top Summer Priority.” Shelf Awareness reported “a new survey commissioned by Reading is Fundamental and Macy’s found that 17% of parents believe reading is a top summer priority and that children spend nearly three times the hours playing video games or watching TV than reading during summer vacation. . . . While summer reading may not be the top priority, 83% of respondents still considered it extremely/very important to them that their child reads this summer.”

I recognize the disconnect between “very important” and a “high priority” in my own life. I just don’t expect to see it in other’s. Books have a lot of competition out there and I have been repeatedly shocked (and insulted, I’m afraid) by how compelling a TV program, computer game, or Nook app is for our five-year-old daughter, in comparison to, say, a conversation with me.  

But as a book publisher and the parent of a young child, I have to believe that reading is fundamental. (And I do.) I’ve heard experts recommend that parents model reading during the day (since children are typically in bed before their parents settle down for their own reading). Although most parents of a young child can only fantasize about the luxury of reading during the day—there is nothing as powerful (or contagious) as behavior, good or bad. Since the summer solstice I resolved to “get caught reading” by my daughter. (The days are getting shorter now—there’s no daylight left to waste!) Reading during the day goes against my longtime, frustrating tendency to save the pleasure of reading until my bedtime, at which point I doze off after a few paragraphs—thus making an “extremely important goal” a low priority.

Continue reading “The Marketeers Club: Reading is fundamental—but struggling to become a priority”