First Draft Episode #265: Arthur Levine
August 11, 2020
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Arthur Levine is the legendary children’s book editor, including of series such as Harry Potter and The Golden Compass. He is founder of publishing house Levine Querido, and formerly President and Publisher at Arthur A. Levine Books at Scholastic, as well as author of picture books, most recently The Hanukkah Magic of Nate Gadol.
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This episode is brought to you by Revision Season. Revision Season is a seven-week virtual masterclass in revising your novel, led by Elana K. Arnold, author of Prince honor winner Damsel and National Book Award finalist What Girls Are Made Of, and more. I'm lucky enough to be taking Revision Season for the upcoming session, which begins September 20th. And Elana has already sent me my zero week packet, which comes along with a video lecture and a transcript of that lecture and three assignments I can do to be ready when the course begins.
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Welcome to First Draft with me, Sarah Enni. This week is a really special episode. I'm talking to legendary editor, Arthur Levine, founder of publishing house Levine Querido and formerly President and Publisher at Arthur A. Levine Books at Scholastic, as well as the author of picture books, most recently, The Hanukkah Magic of Nate Gadol.
I was so honored to speak with Arthur and we really dive in to get his perspective on the surprising skill-set that he uses most as an editor, how the corporatization of bookselling and publishing over the last two decades, as well as the advent of acquisitions meetings, have impacted children's literature. And how starting his own publishing company is kind of like a throwback to the earlier stages of his career.
Everything Arthur and I talk about in today's episode can be found in the show notes. First Draft participates in affiliate programs specifically with bookshop.org. So that means when you shop through the links on FirstDraftPod.com, it helps to support the show and independent bookstores at no additional cost to you. If you'd like to donate directly to First Draft either on a one-time or monthly basis, you can do that @paypal.me/FirstDraftPod.
A lot of Arthur and I's conversation today will make more sense if you've been listening to the episodes of Track Changes that have been appearing in your First Draft feed the last few months. The most recent episode was one that spotlights Inequality in Publishing. I use a lot of Arthur's perspective in that one to hone in on what are some of the inflection points where inequality is perpetuated in publishing, how bad has it gotten, and what can we do about it? And the upcoming episode of Track Changes is one that I think a lot of you might be interested in Marketing and Publicity, that's this Thursday.
I've also created the Track Changes newsletter where every Thursday, and sometimes Friday, I share more of the information that I gathered in researching for this project. It's a place where I'm kind of fleshing out these smaller details that there's just no room for in a podcast episode. But if you're someone who really wants to understand the publishing industry and get into the weeds with me on things like Barnes and Noble and imprints, it is something you might want to check out. You can sign up for a 30-day free trial of the newsletter and learn more about both Track Changes projects @FirstDraftPod.com/TrackChanges.
Okay. Now please sit back, relax, and enjoy my conversation with Arthur Levine.
Sarah Enni: All right, so hi, Arthur, how are you today?
Arthur Levine: Hi, Sarah. I'm good. Thank you.
Sarah Enni: Good. I'm so excited to chat. This is a really exciting conversation for me. You've done so many interesting things over your career, so I can't wait to dive in. But for my podcast, I really like to get some personal background and bio about the people I get to chat with. So I'd love to hear, first of all, all the way back to where you were born and raised.
Arthur Levine: I was born in Queens, New York in Jamaica, and I grew up in Elmont nearby. My mom still lives there. So that's where I spent the late sixties and the seventies.
Sarah Enni: How was reading and writing a part of growing up for you?
Arthur Levine: Wow. How was it not? I mean, so my mother was a teacher. I am the youngest of three children and my parents were readers. So there's books, magazines, you know, reading material always all over the house. And I showed what my mother would have called, would call, signs of reading readiness at a very early age. Like trying to decode written words, pretending to read and memorizing a text and turning the pages at the right moment.
And so my aunt and my mother taught me to read when I was in pre-kindergarten. Which was a blessing and a curse cause then I had to sit through school where other kids who hadn't had that benefit were learning for the first time and I was a little bored. Hence began my somewhat complicated relationship to the experience of school. But my relationship to reading was never complicated. It was always a joy. I loved books.
Sarah Enni: You went to postgraduate school to study publishing. I'd love to just ask, do you remember when you became aware that this was an industry, or a business, that you could do something for a job that had to do with books?
Arthur Levine: Well, the way it worked in my family was the default was you were supposed to become a doctor. And barring that, you're supposed to go to a good college. So everything up till college, your responsibility was to get there. Was to get the grades, to excel, and then you get yourself into college. And then while you're at college, you get an excellent education. So I did all that. And then I got to my senior year and thought, "Whoa, okay, poetry not gonna pay your rent. How are you going to pay your rent?"
So I just started looking. I think I literally, it was as banal as I went to the career office and saw that you had some pamphlet or flyer that said, "Well, if you like to read, publishing might be something you would consider." So I said, "Okay, what the heck?" And I got an internship my senior year with a literary agent, and then I went to the Radcliffe Publishing Procedures course. And these solidified this idea that it might be a place that would connect my passion with a paycheck of some sort.
And I think I did not realize what I really needed in order to be a good editor until a decade later. I'd been doing it for a decade and I thought, "Oh, you know what? Actually these things are all helpful, but it's this set of skills actually." Honestly, it's the set of skills that you use for friendship. I'm an intimacy junkie. So publishing is good for me because working with somebody on writing that they care deeply about is a very intimate endeavor.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, I love that. It's so interesting that you got started with a glimpse into an agency, and working at the agent background. But did you always know that editing was where you wanted to end up?
Arthur Levine: Well, it started with the typical ignorance that most people have, that there is anything else in publishing. But that is actually something that was very helpful about the Radcliffe course, which is now the Columbia course. I got to hear about many other different, super crucial, important parts of publishing. Like finance, and sub-rights, and sales and marketing, and publicity. And those things all interested me to some extent, but they don't use my central skill set.
Sarah Enni: I heard that you got your first job at G.P. Putnam's Sons. I read that you answered an ad in the New York Times to get that job.
Arthur Levine: New York Times ad isn't that crazy?
Sarah Enni: That's kind of wild.
Arthur Levine: Again, but this is my life. I'm not a person who has ever gotten things by some crazy bit of magic, you know? Informational interviews. I did those. Where I would call people I knew or had a tangential contact with, or I'd met at the Radcliffe course and say, "Even though you don't have a job, can you talk to me?" But that never got me a job. I even wrote Susan Hirschmann (editor and founder of Greenwillow Books) and I had read an article where she said she wrote Ursula Nordstrom and said, "Can I sweep your floors? I'll do anything to work with you." And she got it. That's how Susan Hirschmann got to work for Ursula Nordstrom at Harper.
So I wrote to Susan Hirschmann and said, "I'll do anything to work for Greenwillow. May I sweep your floors?" But I guess it was a different time. I didn't have lucky timing. I'm a guy. There's a lot of things that didn't work in the same way and I did not get a job as Susan Hirschmann. But I applied for this job at Putnam. And it turned out that Margaret Frith had gone to the same publishing course as I did, many years before. So she saw that and she liked that. So she interviewed me and we got along very well.
Sarah Enni: Did you always know that you were interested in children's and working in kid's books?
Arthur Levine: Yes. By the time I left the Radcliffe Publishing course, I knew. I had an inkling. People were always giving me picture books. My mother is an artist. I had a feeling for art. And as we talked about earlier, a real interest in poetry and poetic use of language. And if you put those two together, you have picture books. But I was also interested in other forms, you know? Fiction, nonfiction. Children's books has a remarkable spread of different kinds of books that we publish. Each one with its own requirements, like poetic forms, like sestinas, and things like that, sonnets. You have your easy-to-read, you have your chapter book, you have your middle-grade, you have your young adult novel and you have picture books of all kinds. So I knew that.
And one of the things that Radcliffe did is many times they would send all the students out into bookstores and say, "Notice where you wind up. Notice what section you're at. That's probably the section, that's probably what you want to be working on." So that was good.
So that convinced me. And in my exit interview, the head of the course said, "What are you gonna try to do?" And I said, "I really want to be a children's book editor." And he said to me, "Don't do that. You'll never get a job. There's only a handful of jobs and people never leave them. So don't be a children's book editor." I said, "Thank you very much."
Sarah Enni: But I do want to ask about your experience of moving up. From what I could tell you went from Putnam Sons to Dial to Knopf Books for Young People. And then as you say, on to Scholastic.
Arthur Levine: It was actually Putnam, Dial, Putnam. And then Knopf and then Scholastic. But when I'm writing it out, I usually simplify things.
Sarah Enni: I haven't gotten to speak to too many editors and certainly not people who have formed their own publishing houses. But before we talk about actually creating your own publishing company, what's the difference between being a senior editor and then actually getting the opportunity to go to Scholastic and create your own imprint? How were you kind of able to stretch in each of those positions?
Arthur Levine: Let's talk about this theoretically.
Sarah Enni: Okay. Sure.
Arthur Levine: Being a senior editor in a way is a nice, maybe the best, editorial job there is, if you're in the right place. Because your only focus is on the books that you acquire and edit. And yes, you're gonna help... if you're working in a corporation, you're gonna have to constantly be greasing palms and bribing... not literally. But, you know, working behind the scenes. Hopefully the head of the department is gonna be taking on most of that work.
So the idea of having an imprint is that the company that establishes the imprint, agrees that this is what the imprint is about and uses that as a way of marketing a certain kind of book that they then get behind. Particularly agents and authors get to know that imprint for that kind of book. And then it draws those kinds of projects to them.
So at the time, in 1996, Scholastic had been very well known for Goosebumps and The Babysitter's Club, and all of these wonderful series. The Magic School Bus, Clifford The Big Red Dog, but what they weren't known for so much was literary fiction and award winning picture books. I was. So the idea is, "Let's get this guy to come over." And agents and artists and authors will say, "Oh, I normally think of Scholastic as this way. But now here's an opportunity to submit this kind of book." So I think that is theoretically the difference. You're your own imprint. You're heading up an effort that, hopefully, matches up with what the company wants to be doing.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, I love that. Let's talk about the change in children's publishing. When you got the chance to go over, I mean, you've been in children's publishing your entire career. You've seen so much change. I'd love to hear not only how you've seen it change and what changes stand out to you, but also how you think you've had a hand in that through having your own imprint at Scholastics.
Arthur Levine: Hmm. Yeah, I see myself as being affected by, rather than affecting. But yes, so I started in the industry in 1984 and I definitely have seen waves of, different waves, that have affected publishing. In 1984, that was kind of the beginning of when many librarians, who were extremely knowledgeable and passionate about children's books, started to open their own "children's only" bookstores.
So the mid and late eighties was the first wave of independent booksellers who just really were about quality and about their mission to get behind and talk about and sell quality books was there. And the market opened up for children's publishers who, before then, had always been selling to bookstores, that was not new, but the market became bigger.
Whereas all of that quality publishing would have been directed to libraries, mostly, now there'd be a good portion that would also be directed to independents and that could be published successfully. So that made a big change in the eighties. And then in the nineties, there were a couple of things that I noticed. On the positive side, there was that first wave that I was part of, that was called multiculturalism.
And that was, I think, a movement motivated by teachers and librarians to try to broaden the range of cultures that were being presented in children's books. And therefore they created a market for it. I think one of the themes, if I ever wrote my autobiography or just a book about children's publishing, is that the sad fact is that while the industry is full of people who are thoughtful about things like race and sexuality and religion and ability, the publishing, the quote, "the industry" doesn't... is a hundred percent neutral.
The industry is driven by their perception of profit. And I'm really mostly talking about corporations here. Corporations don't, they don't care one way or the other because corporations are not people. So multiculturalism presented this opportunity that, "Oh, look, if you publish this kind of book, it will have a market. So therefore, corporations, you should publish this kind of book." You could not say that that was an equivalent of today's movement, but it was something. I have to bounce around.
Maybe the other big movement I would cite, off the top of my head in this conversation, was the rise of chain bookstores.
Sarah Enni: Right, right.
Arthur Levine: Now, there had always been chains. That was always part of it. But starting in the nineties, they got more and more and more powerful, their buying power. And remember how I just said, publishers, corporations, are drawn like animals to food. Corporations are drawn by perceived profit. So now you have big chains placing the biggest orders and their percentage of the pie gets bigger and bigger. And that also centers power in the person within the corporate publisher who sells to those places. And this, mid-nineties, is when the phenomenon of acquisitions meetings starts.
Sarah Enni: Interesting. Okay.
Arthur Levine: People don't seem to really talk about this. But for me, I'm trying to choose my words carefully.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Take your time.
Arthur Levine: This was like a little rip in the scene of what publishing had been that gradually was torn open. So when I started, for better or for worse, and there were a lot of problems. Particularly the huge racial imbalance was absolutely there and has barely gotten any better. But some things, like this, were better in my opinion.
That the way that it worked, for the most part, was that an editor would fall in love with a project and then would go to his or her publisher and that publisher would say, "I agree, let's do this." Boom! And it would happen. And then the company would figure out the best way to sell and market the book to make that book a success. You don't think that... You're not under the impression that that's what happens for the most part, are you?
Sarah Enni: No. And I really just want to reassure you that I've been in the middle of doing this podcast series about how publishing works. So I'm in the middle of talking to people about acquisitions meetings and marketing and how much all of this is being driven. So I'm obsessed with hearing about this. So yes, please continue.
Arthur Levine: Okay. So now, at an acquisitions meeting, what it is, is the editor is a supplicant. So the editor may find a book that they love, but in their mind, I'm not even gonna say the back of their mind. If they're effective at their job, it's gonna be actually very present. They're thinking, "Can I get this through?" And I just did air quotes. "Can I get it through the acquisitions meeting?"
And so you might have people reading something that they love, but they think, "Well, I can never get this through. So I'm not gonna bother." Again, remember the thing I said about perceived opportunity. So these are not things that are objectively true, that a book will not succeed. As we all know, nobody can tell when a book will succeed or not succeed.
Instead we fall back on our flawed and mostly unexamined sense of what has happened. So yes, that happened. "Oh yeah, look, we had a book like that and it didn't do well." Well now wait a minute. Did we ever stop and have a meeting where we said, "Why didn't that do well? What happened? Was it the book? Was it the cover? Was it the lack of marketing and publicity?"
There's a lot of reasons a book doesn't do well. There's actually a lot of reasons a book does do well. You know, it's kind of, more often, publishers is as clueless about why a book did well as we are about why it didn't do well. So I think, you know, and racism really comes in here. Because that's part of the block, racism, homophobia, antisemitism. Even in a room of Jews, you can have people saying, "Well... you think that you can really sell 7,500 copies of that book? Is there that much of a Jewish market?"
Or people say, "Ah, I don't think you can sell a book with that cover." And all kinds of coded stuff. And I think there's a lot of... I don't know how I got onto this! How did I get into all of this?
Sarah Enni: I don't know, but I love this though.
Arthur Levine: But it's the acquisitions meeting. That is the heart of it because it's everybody gathered together where there is an incentive to be safe. There's an incentive to be conservative. And there's an incentive to suppress. Because if you say, if you're at a meeting and you say, "I don't think that we can sell 10,000, I think we can only sell 5,000." Well, just statistically, you're gonna be right more often than not that you'll sell five rather than 10.
But if you go into it thinking you're going to sell five, you'll almost surely only sell five, or lower. Or you won't get the book. So, it's self-fulfilling prophecy. Whereas, you said, "Oh, I only thought we could sell five." And the book sells close to that instead of 10, then look, you're a hero anyway. Whereas if you said, "No, we can do 10!" And you sell six, people are like, "Well, weren't you the one who said we could sell ten?"
So people are dis-incentivized to go out of their comfort zone. I think, in all my years in publishing, the most common word I heard was comfort. "I'm comfortable with that. Hmm, I'd be more comfortable at this lower projected rate of sale. I might be more comfortable with this lower advance." Whatever. Yes, of course. You know, if comfort is the idea, then it produces a certain number of results.
And it's different than when you have one editor and one publisher, it's an outgrowth, it was an outgrowth, of the change in how books are sold. And that's the danger of having any one player dominate. Then that player's opinions and demands become what everybody does.
As opposed to, you know, and I'm old enough I can say "the good old days." But the days I described before, where there were a plethora of independents and you could count on if you could get support from... they all had different ideas, they didn't have one monolithic idea of what they liked. You know?
Often an indie would not love the book you wanted them to love, but that's okay cause that was only one buyer. You get a diversity of booksellers, you get a diversity of books. And you can tell this is too long a conversation for, when I say, "Look, you gotta support your local independents because the future of not only equitable inclusive literature, but all literature, hangs on this. We must be able to find our readers in a variety of ways, with a variety of people, who have a variety of skills at reaching a variety of different people.
Sarah Enni: And now we're getting really into the weeds, and I'm not even gonna bother to talk about Amazon cause I think we can all agree on what we feel about that. But I was just doing research into James Daunt's approach for Barnes and Noble and how he is kind of trying to make it a little bit more regional. And it seems like he sort of is a book lover and maybe gets it a little bit. What do you think about that?
Arthur Levine: You know, one thing I have learned is to not mention specific booksellers or publishers. I'm not doing that. But I am, yes, I'm rooting for him. I'm rooting for James Daunt. I'm rooting for B&N. B&N isn't the bad guy anymore.
Sarah Enni: Right. Right. Yeah.
Arthur Levine: Especially if, as in Waterstones, there is more local control of what they buy and shelve and feature. Then that's much more like an independent bookseller model. It's not just the one person deciding for the whole country.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, just speaking for myself, a lot of my friends kind of came up when YA had its huge post-Twilight surge. And many of them had those phone calls where it was like, "The person at Barnes and Noble doesn't like your cover so we're going back." And it was just like, "Oh my gosh!" It's just such a wild, about five years of being like, "Wow! This one person seems to be impacting a lot of intellectual, cultural, intake." Which is kind of wild.
Arthur Levine: That leads back to another committee process problem that has evolved in corporate publishing, which is this art management. The cover meetings that happen across the industry. And that's where the one buyer says, "You know, the books that are selling have black backgrounds and girls in diaphanous dresses with the head cut off." And then the next season you're in the store and you literally see a wall of black backgrounds and girls in diaphanous dresses, and you don't want to buy anything because it all looks the same.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, as you just said, and all that. And what we're talking about, just to kind of make it a little bit abstract, is where art and commerce collide and how we negotiate that, or struggle to negotiate that. And I've been asking editors about this a lot, because I find it's a tension that exists with authors of course, but it's an extreme balance that I think you have to make as a publisher. I don't know, I'd love to hear what thoughts you're having, especially as you're now launching your own company. So how are you thinking about that?
Arthur Levine: I think both things are present in publishing, obviously. And for me, the challenging part of that is that it's art on a deadline. Like, "Yes. You need to produce this magnificent work of imagination and emotion and effort, but I need that first draft in three weeks." I'm making that up. So that's art and that's the problematic part.
I personally don't believe at all in this, it's a false dichotomy. Art and commerce are not in conflict. I think that if you, I know it would be Pollyanna-ish for me to say, "The best books sell the best." But you know, what is best? One person's best... As long as you, the publisher and the editor, think your book is the best, then that's what's important. And the author.
I believe that if we try just to have the highest goal, like just to shoot high, to try to make it the best, the most interesting. That, to me, is what makes it a successful cover. Because I always go back to what's the job? Well, what's the job of the cover? It's just to catch your eye either to click on it or to reach for it and pick it up. What makes one do that?
For me, the more interesting, the more beautiful the image, the more likely I am to pick it up or to click on it. So there's no conflict between, "Oh, I could make this beautiful cover, but I could make an uglier cover. And that would, for some reason, do better." Or I could acquire and edit a book that is really beautifully written and emotionally true and gripping but, "No, it's not gonna sell as well as a book that's badly written." I mean, I can't even make that sentence, I barely could push that sentence out of my mouth. It doesn't make any sense to me at all. And it definitely has not been my experience over, you know, since 1984, whatever. You do the math.
Sarah Enni: There's a quote that I read from you that's, "I do still believe after all this time, that those who give in to cynicism about what will bring them success are ultimately doomed, if not to fail, then to court mediocrity." And that kind of sounds like...
Arthur Levine: I agree with that guy.
[Both laughing]
Sarah Enni: Yeah. That really stood out to me.
Arthur Levine: I want to work with him.
Sarah Enni: You are! Good job. I want to talk about starting your own publishing company and then specifically Nate Gadol. We'll kind of wrap up with that beautiful upcoming book. What was it that started making you think you wanted to branch out and start your own company? Or when did you start thinking about that?
Arthur Levine: You know, I've been thinking about it for years. But I think it really has to do with everything that we've been talking about. I really felt that the only way that I could genuinely provide a different model would be to start a company myself. And have it not be a corporation, you know? And I've only ever worked for corporations so I also wanted to see, "Oh, what will this be like?"
So in many ways my editorial process is now much more similar to what it was when I worked for Margaret Frith at Putnam. And when I was the editor-in-chief at Putnam. It's a shared mission and an aesthetic and the editors and I find books and we buy them, we make them, and we try to make them really, really well. Which, thanks to Chronicle, we can do.
What I'm really excited about, and passionate about, is when you find a voice from a community that hasn't had enough voice. And that, in and of itself, is super energizing and exciting for me. And I also don't have to worry that... I know that I will always have that value cause I always have, that's the way I read. That's what excites me.
Sarah Enni: I didn't offer you the chance. I'd love to have you kind of just explain what Levine Querido is, what it stands for. Kind of give us the spiel for it, if you don't mind.
Arthur Levine: Sure. We have a motto, which is our mission, and it's, "Levine Querido beloved books, beautifully made, giving voice to a world of talent." That's our whole spiel in a nutshell. And there are these two lists, the Arthur A. Levine list, which is dedicated to books written in English centering on previously underrepresented voices. Indigenous writers, people with disabilities, minority of religions, folks who have not gotten the chance to have a platform sufficiently, and historically and systemically.
So it's one of the ways I just hoped to flip things. Just as I hope to have like, "You know what? Editorial first. The book, the quality, the art... first. Then the marketing and the sales."I also wanted to say, "I want to find the great books in these places." And so that's what I'm trying to do with the Arthur A. Levine list.
The M. Querido List is named after Emmanuel Querido, who was a Portuguese, a Dutch Jew of Portuguese descent. And those books are culling from books from around the world in many different languages, from many different cultures. And choosing some of the very best of them that we think American readers should have a chance to experience, and translating them. And that is really exciting.
And I think that that is connected to my Arthur A. Levine list. I mean, the idea that great books would only come from white people and, you know, certain European nations is just leaving out a tremendous resource of great art and literature. So I'm just wanting to open a door for that.
Sarah Enni: I want to just give you the chance, if you'd like to, to talk about your first slate. Fall 2020 is the official launch, I think.
Arthur Levine: Yeah.
Sarah Enni: Do you want to give us the rundown?
Arthur Levine: I will almost get tongue tied. Our first three books are, the first book is Daniel Nayeri's Everything Sad is Untrue: A True Story. Which has already gotten six-starred reviews, and is just the most brilliant combination of poetic storytelling and earthy humor. And it's a contemporary kid in an Oklahoma classroom and it's stories of ancient Persia. And it all comes together to tell the story of this one refugee kid and his experience. And it's remarkable and can be read in hundreds of different ways through different lenses. And I'm so, so proud of it.
You know, I'm proud of all of our books. Also in August is Elatso, a debut novel by Darcie Little Badger who is a Lipan Apache author. And her book is a kind of hybrid mystery, contemporary, fantasy story that is just gorgeously rooted in the protagonist's Lipan Apache culture. And it's also incredibly suspenseful.
The first few pages of the book are this girl's cousin being killed and his ghost coming to her and saying, "I've been killed and this is who did it, but no one will believe you." And partly because she's an indigenous person and she has to prove the murder whilst defending against vampires.
[Both laughing].
Sarah Enni: Love it!
Arthur Levine: Yeah, it's kind of incredible. And it's got gorgeous illustrations by Rovina Cai. The Wanderer by Peter Van Den Ende, which is from the Dutch publisher Querido. And it's his debut book. We sent it to Shaun Tan, who gave us a little rave review to put on the back of it, which is incredible. And it's a wordless story of a little paper boat that sets off on an incredible adventure. And the pictures are like incredibly detailed graphite, black and white pictures. It as if Escher did a picture book. And every spread is a wonder. Each time you turn the page, you go [gasps], "Oh my God!" So there's that.
And we go from there to this sweet tender picture book by Martha Brockenbrough illustrated by Gabriel Alborozo called This Old Dog. And it's just this surprising, lovely tale of an old dog who's been kind of left behind by his family, a little bit. As it's hips start hurting and the family gets really busy and everything has to move fast, fast, fast, and he can't really keep up.
And then the little girl, who had been born during the course of the book, takes her first steps. And the dog and the little child make this strong connection because she too has to go slowly. She too wants to stop and look at things and smell things. And it's a beautiful story about the bond between the young and the old.
Sarah Enni: I love that.
Arthur Levine: Yeah, I could. I mean, if you give me an hour, I could talk about every single book on our list. I probably shouldn't do that. Go to LevineQuerido.com.
Sarah Enni: Yes. And I will link to all those books you mentioned, and we'll have all that fun stuff in the show notes. But yeah, I wanted to make sure that you got to...it's so exciting. Fall 2020, it's all beginning so it's really cool. I think this is your 10th picture book. Does that sound right?
Arthur Levine: I would have said eight, but I'm not, I don't know. Eight to ten... fine.
Sarah Enni: Sure! For the wheelhouse. Do you mind, let's start with having you pitch this story for us.
Arthur Levine: I should probably develop a pitch. I don't know if I could pitch the story, but I'll try. It is something that I wrote because I noticed that while Christians, in particular, have all kinds of wonderful stories that are not about Christmas, but are related to Christmas, like Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. You know, these are not about Jesus being born and coming to the world, but they're wonderful. And they're traditionally told around Christmas.
And if you're Jewish, there's very, very little mythology to go for. And so I invented my own mythology and it features this spirit named Nate Gadol, and he has this ability to make anything last, as long as the person needs it. So it's not a big showy power, but it came in handy when the Hanukkah candles needed to stay lit for eight nights and it's come in handy for people throughout the centuries, as they needed a little bit more breath or they needed a flower to last a little bit longer to cheer somebody up who was sick.
And it's about how he creates a lovely moment for this Jewish family that happens to take place around the time in America that Jews started giving presents for Hanukkah. So an even shorter way of pitching this would be to say, it's a mythology about the beginning of gift giving at Hanukkah.
Sarah Enni: I love that.
Arthur Levine: Yeah. And it's filled with gold! Candlewick put all sorts of gold. You know, gold foil, not just on the cover, but on the inside. It's really beautiful production. Kevin Hawkes... I am lucky enough that Kevin did the illustrations which are so beautiful.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. It looks like a really gorgeous book and Candlewick always does such a great job.
Arthur Levine: They sure do! Karen Lotz... thank you! Shout out to Karen Lotz.
Sarah Enni: I like to wrap up just with a quick piece of advice. It's hard to be like, "Can you give advice for someone who wants to create their own publishing company?" But what about someone right now who is maybe interested in becoming a part of the publishing industry? What would you have as a piece of advice for them?
Arthur Levine: At what part of the publishing industry? The publishing side? The writing side? What side?
Sarah Enni: Oh, the publishing side since I get to speak to authors a lot more often than I get to speak to editors. So I'd love to hear about that.
Arthur Levine: I think that actually the best piece of advice I got and that I give to both writers, artists and prospective publishing folks, is to start paying attention to the books that you love and get a notebook and make a bunch of lists and keep track of who is publishing the books that you love. And at the end of a couple of months, do you say if you're a picture of a person, "Yeah!" You know, as I did. "Greenwillow. I've got five Greenwillow books."
Like now it would be, "Anne Schwartz, she can do no wrong. Candlewick! Candlewick, where every book is gorgeous." You know? Same thing with middle-grade. These are the people who share my taste. These are the people who are doing books that if I was working on them, I'd feel proud. And that would carry me through the difficult parts at entry level.
Cause there are parts that suck, you know? And the only way I think you make it through is if you say, "Okay, this part of it sucks, but I can't believe how great it is that I am helping make these particular books. I'm really proud of them."
So I'd make those lists. And then when I was ready to start informational interviewing, I would try to find out who were the editors. Like if you want to be an editor, who worked on them? And write to them and say, "Do you have time to talk to me? There's all these books that you did that I really love."
I mean, frankly, it could be the same with sales or marketing or finance. Boy, I wonder when the last time a person in finance got a letter to say, "You know, how did you afford to have both foil and headbands and tail bands and spot varnish on this cover? That's remarkable." I'd love to hear how you helped make those books stay profitable." Think how compelling that would be. How could you not give that person a job if you are a finance person?
Sarah Enni: Right. Or at least get a coffee with them.
Arthur Levine: "I would really love to see your spreadsheets! They must be amazing."
Sarah Enni: Yeah. I mean, one thing I've learned in this job is that people care about what they do and they want to talk about it. So if you can approach them with respect, it goes a long way.
Arthur Levine: For sure.
Sarah Enni: Oh my gosh. What a joy thank you for this conversation. This was so wonderful.
Arthur Levine: Thanks.
Thank you so much to Arthur. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @ArthurALevine1, and Levine Querido @LevineQuerido on both as well. You can follow me @Sarah Enni (Twitter and Instagram) and the show @FirstDraftPod (Twitter and Instagram).
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If you have any writing or creativity questions that me and a future guest can answer in an upcoming mailbag episode call and leave that question at (818) 533-1998. Or you can record yourself asking the question and email it to me [at] mailbag [at] First Draft Pod.com.
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