Authors and Booksellers Celebrated at ABA’s 13th Annual Awards Luncheon

On Thursday afternoon at the American Booksellers Association’s 13^th annual Celebration of Bookselling & Author Awards Luncheon at BookExpo America, booksellers were joined by publishers and many of the authors whose works have made an impact on indie bookstores and their customers. ABA Board member Matthew Norcross, co-owner of McLean and Eakin Booksellers in Petoskey, Michigan, welcomed everyone and then introduced the winners and honorees of the 2013 Indies Choice Book Awards and the E.B. White Read-Aloud Awards.

Norcross noted that the commitment and enthusiasm of booksellers remains undiminished, and the pride of independents has never been stronger. “The focus on our well-earned market share in the eyes of the industry has been sharpened,” he said, “and today, more than ever, we have a place at the table that cannot be denied.”

Norcross explained that the luncheon serves to highlight “the binding force that connects authors and consumers,” and the authors being recognized “have served to give us the tools to potentially change the lives of the people who enter our stores each and every day.  For that, we are immensely grateful.”

Norcross then invited the award winners and honorees to share a few words with the audience.

Author Mac Barnett, who along with illustrator Jon Klassen, took home the E.B. White Read-Aloud Picture Book Award for Extra Yarn (Balzer + Bray), praised independent booksellers for what they do. “I would not have a career if it wasn’t for independent stores,” he said. “The kinds of books that I loved as a kid were stories that involved secret doors; a door that you would find that was going to take you to another world.” Moe’s Books in Berkeley, California, he said, served as a secret door for him, that took him to another world.

Klassen also said that bookstores make up a critical part of his existence. He explained how, on a book tour in London with a rare bit of free time, he found himself seeking out yet another bookstore. “It hasn’t gotten old,” Klassen said. “We still want to crane our necks to see spines everywhere we go.”

Peter Brown, the illustrator of Creepy Carrots! by Aaron Reynolds (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers), was an E.B. White Read-Aloud Picture Book honoree. Brown spoke about the amazing experiences he’s had while on his author tours at independent bookstores. “Every time I walk into a new bookstore, even one that I’ve never been to before in my life, I know that the store is filled with friendly people. I haven’t even met these people, and I know I’m walking into a store full of friends,” he said.

“Like everyone else, I can’t thank indie booksellers enough, not only for giving me a livelihood but also for keeping literature alive in our country,” said Silas House, an honor recipient in the E.B. White Read-Aloud Middle Reader category for Same Sun Here (Candlewick Press). Focusing on the friendship between two young people who are dismissed because of their thick accents, House’s story is one that he hopes will unite parents, readers, and children all over the country in attempting to impersonate his Southern drawl, he said with a laugh.

The E.B. White Read-Aloud Middle Reader Award was given to R.J. Palacio, for Wonder (Knopf Books for Young Readers). Palacio –– a.k.a. Raquel Jaramillo –– admitted that she has worked in publishing her entire adult career and has attended the past 21 BEAs, yet she remains just as excited and proud to be a part of this industry.

“I must admit, though being part of the rank and file of publishers has been great… being up here is pretty nice too,” Palacio said.

“I know enough about publishing to know that a book about a child with a severe craniofacial difference would be kind of a tough sell. It didn’t seem –– at least when I was writing it –– that it would be a commercially viable book. And I thank you all for proving me wrong.”

David Levithan, whose Every Day (Knopf Books for Young Readers) was named an honor book in the Young Adult category, revealed his predicament arising from having visited and loved so many independent bookstores. “The hardest question to be asked is no longer, ‘What’s your favorite book?’ or ‘Who’s your favorite author?’ but ‘What’s your hometown bookstore?’ I just don’t know the answer anymore,” he said. “I feel just as at home all over the country.”

Levithan discussed the importance of bookstores in particular for teens in local communities, noting that teens find a safe place in bookstores, more so than at the mall, school, or even at home. “The only limitation of a book is that it is not an actual physical place,” he said to the booksellers in attendance. “You are the manifestation of these books. You are the physical place that these kids can go… Thank you for providing that.”

John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars (Dutton Juvenile) was named the winner of the Young Adult Indies Choice Award. Though Green could not be in attendance (his wife was having their second child any day now), he spoke to the audience via a video, available here.

“It pains me to admit to you that the quality of YA books these days has little to do with authors, and in the end, more to do with the independent bookstores and libraries that created our genre and then stood up for it again and again, building a space for it in the marketplace. So we all are deeply, deeply in your debt.”

Richard Russo, author of the Adult Nonfiction honoree Elsewhere: A Memoir (Knopf), drew a laugh from the audience when he said, “We all give testimony to how much we love independent booksellers. Well, I breed independent booksellers.” Russo was referring to his daughter, Emily Russo, who works at Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn, New York.

The End of Your Life Book Club (Knopf) author Will Schwalbe, whose title was an honor recipient in Adult Nonfiction, thanked booksellers for finding the means to pass on the message of his story to customers. “Books can help us through our most difficult times,” he said. “Books can give us a way of talking about things that are most difficult to talk about, and also something to talk about when we don’t want to talk about those things.”

The winner of the Adult Nonfiction Indies Choice Award was Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, by Cheryl Strayed (Knopf). Accepting the award on her behalf was her editor, Robin Desser, who read a letter from Strayed. “I am deeply grateful for what you’ve done for my book in your stores across the nation,” Strayed wrote. “Since Wild’s publication in March of last year, I am repeatedly struck by the creativity, intelligence, and insight that you, independent booksellers, bring to bookstores in America…I wrote the book, but you helped me find an audience for it.”

The winner of the Adult Debut Indies Choice Award for The Snow Child (Little, Brown and Company), Eowyn Ivey, herself a bookseller, could not attend the Celebration due to a prior commitment to visit independent bookshops in Alaska. In a video, she told booksellers, “I know how hard you work, how passionate you’ve got to be about what you do, and how many wonderful books you come across, and so it means all the more to me.” Watch Ivey’s video here.

Louise Erdrich, owner of Birchbark Books in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and author of The Round House (HarperCollins), won the Adult Fiction Indies Choice Award.  In a video, she told booksellers: “We know what it’s like to handsell books. We know that you don’t want to give your customer a book that won’t bring them back to your store. You don’t want someone going out and saying, ‘Oh that algorithm that Amazon chose a book for me with was so much better.’” Watch Erdich’s video here.

Terry Tempest Williams, a nominee for the Indie Champion Award, said that she was recently asked by her students, “Who are your people?”

“You are my people,” she said. “Independent booksellers supporting independent writers who inspire independent readers.” Williams shared a story that she said made her feel “hopeful in this broken world.” On the night of September 11, 2001, Williams was at Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C., with the store’s founders, Barbara Meade and the late Carla Cohen, who lit candles and held the space in silence.

“As we were holding that silence, a gentleman came in from the street and he walked up and said, ‘I’m Muslim and I’m afraid.’ And it was Barbara who took him into her arms and said, ‘You are safe here.’

“As long as independent bookstores have their doors open, we will be safe,” said Williams. “You are our refuge.”

John Green, who was also named the winner of the 2013 Indie Champion Award, provided a second video to accept his award. In it, he explained the he is often held up as an example of someone who is changing the publishing paradigm with his active online presence, which allows him to speak directly to his audience. Some, Green said, predict that “in the future everyone is going to be like me and no one will stand between author and reader except possibly an e-commerce site that takes just a tiny little percentage of every transaction.

“Yeah, that’s bullsh*t,” he said, adding that he wouldn’t have any books to his name without editors, agents, copywriters, programmers, and people who know how to build servers.

“We must strike down the insidious lie that a book is the creation of an individual soul laboring in isolation. We must strike it down because it threatens the overall quality and breadth of American literature.

“I am not in the widget selling business, I’m not in the profit-maximization business; I’m in the book business. The idea sharing, consciousness-expanding, storytelling business. And I am not going to get out of that business. So f*ck Ayn Rand, and f*ck any company that profits from peddling the lie of mere individualism. We built this together. And we’re going to keep building this together.” Watch Green’s video here.

Also honored at the lunch were the four inductees to the 2013 Picture Book Hall of Fame: Bread and Jam for Frances, by Russell Hoban, illustrated by Lillian Hoban (HarperCollins); Caps for Sale, by Esphyr Slobokina (HarperCollins); Harold and the Purple Crayon, by Crockett Johnson (HarperCollins); and The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, by Jon Scieszka, illustrated by Lane Smith (Viking Juvenile).

After the Celebration, 16 of the authors in attendance joined indie booksellers in the ABA lounge, where they signed copies of their books. —Elizabeth Knapp and Sydney Jarrard