One of the topics of discussion at BEA this year was Randi Zuckerberg’s book deal with HarperCollins. She’s the sister of facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
When Randi Zuckerberg decided to become a writer, she didn’t shy away from the challenge. She signed to do not one but two books with HarperCollins—Dot, a picture book for children with illustrations by Joe Berger, and Dot Complicated, a nonfiction book for adults. Both are set for a November 5 release.
“It’s like I decided to run a marathon before I ran my first 10k,” Zuckerberg says. She didn’t plan on being a debut author twice over, at least not at first.
I don’t think that time frame is all that bad. But for a first time writer I can see how it could be a little intimidating. She may or may not realize this, but she’s on the right track. And kudos to HarperCollins for setting this deadline and getting this book out just in time for the holidays. A few years back there would have been a year or more release date. Someone at HarperCollins is doing their job well, and it sounds like summer Fridays in trad publishing might be nearing an end. There used to be this saying that publishing is the slowest industry in the world, but I don’t think that’s realistic now.
From the way it sounds both books will revolve around kids, parents, and dealing with social media in a family setting. She’s even launched a web site, here.
For our society, it’s like the wild, wild west – social norms and etiquette are changing constantly as we get used to life with smartphones, 24/7 access to one another, and more emails than one person could ever humanly respond to.
I’ve been comparing the Internet to the wild, wild west for a long time. I wrote this post in September of 2012. I just hope she gets into some of the more serious issues, like sockpuppetry, catfishing, and doc dropping. Or how do we handle an online attack from someone who is mentally unbalanced, but not everyone knows this? And what about the legal ramifications? Defamation? These are the things we’re dealing with all the time online (kids included) and no one ever seems to address them…unless it’s a politician who has experienced some sort of online personal attack that opens his or her eyes for the first time, or something very serious happens. I’ve signed up for the newsletter, so it should be interesting to see how she approaches this. I’ll be posting more in the future.
Big Books of the Show
Here’s a link to some of the big books coming out. This one looks interesting.
Martha Grimes has a nonfiction account of mother-son alcoholism, written with her son, Ken Grimes, Double Double (Scribner).