{"id":2793,"date":"2011-02-12T11:06:05","date_gmt":"2011-02-12T18:06:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2011\/02\/from-the-days-of-nancy-drew-and-the-hardy-boys\/"},"modified":"2011-02-21T11:13:21","modified_gmt":"2011-02-21T18:13:21","slug":"from-the-days-of-nancy-drew-and-the-hardy-boys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2011\/02\/12\/from-the-days-of-nancy-drew-and-the-hardy-boys\/","title":{"rendered":"From The Days Of Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys"},"content":{"rendered":"

from Daemon’s Books<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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The Business Behind Young Adult Novels<\/h1>\n

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Many of us were SHOCKED this week to learn that\u00a0Vampire Diaries<\/strong>\u00a0author L. J. Smith\u00a0has been fired<\/a>\u00a0from writing forthcoming books in her popular series. How can an author possibly be fired from writing her own books? Well, it turns out that Alloy Entertainment, a book packager, actually owns the rights to the\u00a0Vampire Diaries<\/strong>\u00a0as well as a few other of the hottest franchises in Young Adult literature like\u00a0Gossip Girl<\/strong>,\u00a0The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants<\/strong>, and\u00a0Pretty Little Liars<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

So what do Alloy and other book packagers do? In a nutshell: they develop ideas, hire writers, and sell the finished products to publishers. A 2009 article in\u00a0The New Yorker<\/em>, \u201cThe Gossip Mill<\/a>,\u201d outlined the process at Alloy, whose target audience is young women and girls. They have weekly meetings where ideas are pitched, often reworking successful adult stories for younger audiences (examples cited in the article: a reverse of the movie\u00a0Taken<\/strong>\u00a0where a teenage girl has to rescue her kidnapped parents and a suggestion for \u201cShaun of the Dead<\/strong>\u00a0for tweens.\u201d). If they decide to go forward with a pitch, an editor will flesh out the idea before asking a writer to create a sample chapter. If they like the writer\u2019s work, s\/he will be put on contract to write the first act of the book, although plotting is a collaboration between the writer and editors at Alloy. The first act and a mockup of a potential book cover are then pitched to publishers. The process is described as being similar to the way a TV show is developed and written.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a new practice; packaging books for teens goes back to the days of\u00a0Nancy Drew<\/strong>, the\u00a0Hardy Boys<\/strong>, and even those 80s staples, the\u00a0Sweet Valley High<\/strong>\u00a0books (fun fact:\u00a0Gossip Girl<\/strong>\u00a0author Cecily von Ziegesar wrote some of the SVH books). More recently, James Frey and his so-called \u201cfiction factory,\u201d Full Fathom Five, have made headlines as the creators of the YA book\u00a0I Am Number Four<\/strong>. The movie based on the book was produced by Steven Spielberg and Michael Bay, and will be in theaters next week.<\/p>\n

[ click to continue reading at Daemon’s Books<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from Daemon’s Books The Business Behind Young Adult Novels Many of us were SHOCKED this week to learn that\u00a0Vampire Diaries\u00a0author L. J. Smith\u00a0has been fired\u00a0from writing forthcoming books in her popular series. How can an author possibly be fired from writing her own books? Well, it turns out that Alloy Entertainment, a book packager, actually […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-news","category-projects"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2793\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}