So I'm in this class - Book Publishing and Librarianship - and we're supposed to take a book published prior to 1987 and do a paper/presentation on its initial publication: how the author came to write the book, how it was reviewed/received, how many copies were printed and so forth. I chose SYWTBAW because I love the book and I've been looking for an excuse to reread (from the beginning! and getting in all the books that I haven't read yet.) But now I'm realizing just how fortunate I was in my choice. Diane Duane is a wonderfully generous author and much of this information is to be had freely on the Young Wizards web site. It's been a great help to me, especially the pages for the Collectors' Resources and the YW Publication History.

My professor doesn't expect us to be able to answer everything, but I have quite a lot: more than enough to write my paper at this point. One thing I am still wondering about is the editing process: whether there were any big changes to the manuscript itself when it went through Delacorte. Also why Delacorte Press was the company through which the book was published. Are there any threads you guys can suggest that would be helpful for this? I've also checked some of the chat transcripts.

No way do I want to email DD at this time, it sounds like she has more than enough on her plate. 8(

I don't have any memory of this kind of thing being discussed (but my memory is, you know, far from perfect, so.) but that sounds like such an interesting project, I hope it goes well! My only factoid about the books' printing is to note that some of the later editions have had minor details changed to update the books - Joanne's TV went from colour to widescreen, IIRC. Anyway, not really relevant to what you're looking at, so. (I did try to find the thread where this was discussed in case it had anything related, but it looks like it's long since been archived, so.)

Hey, Lauderdale, could you post the paper when you're done with it? It would be useful to have it all pulled together in one place.

Garret Fitzgerald: I surely will. 8)

Birdhead: Actually, that detail about changes to later editions is very interesting. I actually have multiple editions of the book on hand at the moment, so I'll have to go scrounging myself. Thanks!

Well! I finished my paper in the wee hours of the morning and presented my findings this afternoon. I know my presentation went over well - for one thing, I took half the time of the girl who went before me, but I got all of the info covered. Waiting to get my professor's comments back before I post it. I really want to see what she says as she uses to be an editor at Houghton Mifflin and I think she will have some good insights.

(Now on to my Children's Literature paper on Bill Peet's "The Whingdingdilly"...)

Congrats on finishing your paper!! *closes eyes and crosses fingers* Hope you get a good grade... and I hope you'll still hang around from time to time! Can't wait to see your project.

Ok, my paper! First off, my apologies for not posting this here sooner, but I felt weird doing it while school was still in session. Um, I have NO idea what the reasoning was behind that, but classes are done now and I feel comfortable putting it up. Formatting's changed a little since I didn't go through underlining/bolding anything after cut-n-paste. Any errors are as they were when I turned them into my professor.


Assignment 1


Diane Duane was already a published author when she wrote So You Want to Be a Wizard. Her professional writing career had begun 1976, working as an assistant to television and science fiction writer David Gerrold. She went freelance in 1978 and saw the publication of her first novel, The Door into Fire, as a mass-market paperback fantasy in 1979 (“Duane-Smyth” 55). While her work as a television screenwriter continued, Duane was also mulling over ideas for her next book.

One impetus for writing So You Want to Be a Wizard (referred to hereafter as SYWTBAW) was indignation. She had recently become annoyed with the work of another, unnamed, author in the young adult fantasy vein, whose characters, Duane felt, had devolved from “involved, intelligent, strong kids” into “witless, resourceless dorks…I got very steamed about this, and started to think about how a young adult fantasy could treat its characters with, at the very least, more respect for kids’ essential smarts and strength” (Duane “Afterword” 282). Personal preferences and a competitive streak also played a part. Duane’s work has often been compared with Madeleine L’Engle’s for its spiritual qualities and balance of science and magic. Responding to L’Engle’s death, Duane acknowledges,
Unquestionably she was an influence on me, though perhaps not in the way people might think. I read her first few books, and while in a general way I liked what she was doing, I had personal niggles about the way she was doing it. Certainly there were things about A Wrinkle in Time and A Swiftly Tilting Planet that made me think, Hmmm…I’m not so sure about this. If I was going to do something of this sort, I’d do it this way […] and the result, somewhat later, was So You Want to Be a Wizard. (Duane “Madeleine L’Engle” 1)

SYWTBAW took its name from the “So you want to be a…” career series Duane had read as a child (Duane “Afterword” 283). Once the title came to her other ideas quickly followed. A midrash compendium suggested the idea of an elemental text, The Book of Night With Moon, which has been stolen and must be recovered by Duane’s two young protagonists (284). “A very weird dream produced the pigeon-eating fire hydrant” and the sinister alternate Manhattan through which Kit and Nita journey (ibid). Nita is named for a nurse with whom Duane once worked, while real-life screenwriter associate Tom Swale shows up in the book as a Senior Wizard and mentor to the two children (ibid).

Duane’s Acknowledgement at the start of the book pays tribute to her own mentor (and provides some sense of the time it took to produce the initial manuscript):
David Gerrold is responsible for the creation of several images found in this book […] He’s also responsible for beating the writer with a club until the words came out right—a matter of several year’s nonstop exertion. (Duane SYWTBAW vii)
She has alluded elsewhere to “early problems with characterization” that Gerrold forced her to address, though she does not say what they were (Duane “Afterword” 285).

Duane’s previous book had been published by Dell Publishing Company, which would also publish SYWTBAW under the Delacorte Press imprint. The manuscript went to Duane’s editor, Olga Litowinsky (ibid). Litowinsky had a solid career in the business: she had worked for Viking, Macmillan and Scribners, and she was at that time executive editor at both Delacorte Press and Dell (“SCWI Bulletin” 1). This indicates a level of fairly high regard for Duane’s work, considering that it was a second novel and that Litowinsky was an extremely busy editor and businessperson. In 1982, Delacorte commissioned a young David Wiesner, later a two-time Caldecott award-winner for his own children’s books, to do the jacket illustration for SYWTBAW (YN.com “YW publication history” 1). The jacket was designed by Richard Oriolo and the book was designed by Judith Neuman (Duane SYWTBAW iv). It was published as a hardcover in October 1983 (ISBN 0-385-29305-04), with a small print run of 1500 copies (YN.com “Collectors’ resources” 2). This first edition was 226 pages with a sale price of $14.95.

SYWTBAW met with mixed reviews. The Center for Children’s Books Bulletin referred to the second half of the book as “intricate and protracted,” with “long and often repetitive sequences” (106). Diane Yates, writing in VOYA (The Voice of Youth Advocates) implied that it was essentially derivative:
This type of fantasy, where someone from our world ventures into another magical world, was used in C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series and by Alan Garner in Elidor. This very expensive book is not on a par with those classics of the genre. (342)
Others were more positive. The Book Report noted that SYWTBAW had “many elements familiar to readers of the genre” but also mentioned its “fresh elements and humor” (32). School Library Journal (SLJ) and The Horn Book Magazine lavished praise on SYWTBAW. SLJ reviewer Elizabeth Bruce liked Duane’s characterization and her way of easing suspense with humor (74). Horn Book reviewer Ann Flowers found several of Duane’s concepts particularly powerful, calling SYWTBAW an “outstanding, original work, whose title fails to do it justice” (716).

Most of the books in this first run were sold to libraries (YN.com “Collectors’ resources” 1), and sales were evidently slower than expected. This was attributed to the cover:
While the first hardcover edition of about 1500 copies eventually completely sold out, the feeling at Delacorte at that point was that Wiesner’s color palette was “too subdued,” and that sales would be helped by a cover with livelier colors (YN.com “YW publication history” 1)
Truthfully, the cover for SYWTBAW’s first edition is not one of Wiesner’s better efforts. The image is of Kit and Nita emerging from, or perhaps descending into, a street grate while being menaced by the Starsnuffer, who sits astride a skull-faced horse flanked with werewolf-like creatures called perytons. It should be a powerful image but is rendered in monochromatic, washed-out grays and browns that nullify the inherent drama of the composition. Pricing could have been another sales factor, though. Two children’s books of comparable length published at the time, Roald Dahl’s The Witches through Farrar, Strauss and Giroux in October and Eleanor Estes’ The Moffat Museum through Harcourt in November, were both priced at $10.95 (Bruce 74). That is four dollars less than SYWTBAW. VOYA’s Yates had a point when she called the book expensive.

SYWTBAW was not a break-out success on initial publication, but was reprinted with a number of different covers over the next eight years, as were its sequels Deep Wizardry and High Wizardry. The better part of Duane’s income probably came from her novels for the Star Trek and Spiderman franchises, as well as her television scripts. Then, in 1992, Delacorte downsized dramatically after a change of management at Dell. Diane Duane was one of many authors to be let go and her Young Wizards trilogy gradually went out of print (Duane “Afterword” 286). A turnaround came in 1994 when fellow Delacorte refugee Jane Yolen started Harcourt’s Magic Carpet imprint in 1994, which began publishing the Young Wizard books almost immediately (ibid). Not long after, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books created a booming market for children’s and YA fantasy books, particularly those of the “student wizard” variety. Unsurprisingly, Duane’s once quiet books are now doing very well indeed.

Duane has published eight installments in the Young Wizard series to date, and her ninth, A Wizard of Mars, is scheduled for publication in late 2008. What’s more, in January of 2007 she announced that she had completed the first draft of a SYWTBAW screenplay for a “nameless Hollywood production entity” (Duane “SYWTBAW movie” 1). She continues to field questions about a possible movie, though she stresses that nothing has been finalized. SYWTBAW’s success story is far from over.



Bibliography


Bruce, Elizabeth. Rev. of So You Want to Be a Wizard by Diane Duane. School Library Journal
30 (January 1984): 74.

Center for Children’s Books Bulletin. Rev. of So You Want to Be a Wizard by Diane Duane.
February 1984: 106.

“Diane (Elizabeth) Duane.” Contemporary Authors Online (2004). Gale. Beatley Library,
Boston, MA. 12 September 2007 <http://0galenet.galegroup.com>.

Duane, Diane. “Afterword to the Twentieth Anniversary Edition.” So You Want To Be A
Wizard: Twentieth Anniversary Edition. Orlando: Harcourt Inc., 2003. 279-291.

----. “Madeleine L'Engle is gone.” Weblog Entry. Word Salad II. 9 September 2007. 3
October 2007 <http://dduane.livejournal.com/123930.html>.

----. So You Want To Be A Wizard. New York: Delacorte Press, 1983.

----. “The “So You Want to Be a Wizard” movie: background and FAQ.” Weblog Entry.
Word Salad II. 18 January 2007. 3 October 2007 <http://dduane.livejournal.com/123930.html>.

“Duane, Diane (Elizabeth).” Something About the Author 145 (2004): 49-56.

“Duane-Smyth, Diane (Elizabeth).” Something About the Author 58 (1989): 54-58.

Flowers, Ann A. Rev. of So You Want to Be a Wizard by Diane Duane. The Horn Book
Magazine 59 (December 1983): 716.

Ruland, Karen. Rev. of So You Want to Be a Wizard by Diane Duane. The Book Report
February 1984: 32-33.

"SCWI Bulletin: In this issue..." The Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators.
2003. 30 September 2007 <http://www.scbwi.org/pubs/bulletin/bull_archives/sept_oct_03/remembering.htm>.

Yates, Diane G. Rev. of So You Want to Be a Wizard by Diane Duane. Voice of Youth
Advocates February 1984: 342.

YoungWizards.com. “Collectors’ resources | YoungWizards.com.” YoungWizards.com. 2007.
26 September 2007 <http://www.youngwizards.com/Diane-Duane-Bibliography-Filmography/>.

----. “Diane Duane’s bibliography / filmography | YoungWizards.com.” YoungWizards.com. 2007. 29 September 2007 <http://www.youngwizards.com/Diane-Duane-Bibliography-Filmography/>.

----. “Diane Duane’s biography | YoungWizards.com.” YoungWizards.com. 2007. 29 September 2007 <http://www.youngwizards.com/Diane-Duane-Biography/>.

----. “YW publication history: Dell editions: David Wiesner | YoungWizards.com.” YoungWizards.com. 2007. 25 September 2007 <http://www.youngwizards.com/YW-Publication-History-3-Dell-Editions-David-Wiesner>.

Wow that's really cool! I didn't Tom Swale was an actual person! Do you know if you got a good grade on this? I think you should because that's a really well written paper. There was so many things I didn't know about. Good job!

Thanks! I got an A on it - it was my first assignment for the class. I think I'm going to get an A on my last assignment as well, which was also on SYWTBAW. That last assignment was definitely the hardest because I've been building toward it this entire semester. This is the description:

"How will your book be published in 2007? The final paper will discuss all the details. You will present your final project in class in a fifteen-minute lecture. Elements of final paper, 15-18 pages long, will include:

1. Biography of author. Everything that can be found about how author came to write the book, how they found an editor or publisher. Most of this material will be covered in your first assignment.
2. Details about the publishing house – and the particular editor -- chosen for the book in 2007.
3. Editorial letter to author, outlining your response to the book. Discuss significant changes to the manuscript.
4. Will there be illustrative material, photographs, drawings, charts, maps? What will these be?
5. How will it be designed? What book of the last few years might it look like?
6. What will the profit and loss sheet look like for this particular book?
7. What will the cover look like; who is the cover artist?
8. What will be the print run be and price of the book?
9. How will your house market and advertise the book?
10. What advance quotes or endorsements do you have for this book?
11. Overall projections for the book
12. Trenchant selling line
13. Bibliography of sources"

Basically I was supposed to pretend, not that the book was being republished, but that it was being published now for the first time. So this essay was a mix of fact and fiction: real author and real book, obviously, and a real editor and a real publishing house and imprint, but different dates, entirely different marketing strategy, at one point I'm pretending to be the editor (in the editorial letter to the author) etc.

I'm not posting my last assignment here because,

A) I don't want to accidentally spread misinformation.
B) I don't want people, particularly the real people mentioned in the paper, to get annoyed because the information is false. Like, "Hey, why is she saying I work for Harcourt?" or "I never said that" or "This book was written YEARS before Harry Potter, what is she talking about?"

If you've read the description and are interested, I can send it to you. I just don't want it floating around on the Internet causing mischief. Plus I'm waiting to see what comments I get back on it. I think an A, knock on wood: I put a LOT of work into it, and the presentation that I gave as the editor, pitching the book to the sales staff, went well.

Wow. That seems pretty cool, and pretty hard. If I had that project, even I would have to stop being a procrastinator. I would suggest in it to make a map of Manhattan, and then do an exact copy with the different names, for dark Manhattan. You might want to put that in if you haven't submitted it yet, or haven't thought of the idea on your own.

I didn't know all that stuff that you included in your first paper. Wow. That was really well written. The second assignment sounds hard, but i;m sure you got an A.

Wow. Vashmata, I like that suggestion about the two maps. I already gave this in, but yeah, that would be a COOL idea.

One thing that I did do was make promotional "Freds": basically I and a friend made a bunch of fluffy white pom-pom things. I handed them out during my sales pitch, mainly as a joke, but my sales staff (ie. my fellow classmates) liked them so much that I ended up incorporating them in my paper as bookstore freebies to promote the book.

We still had a bunch of Freds left afterward, so another friend turned them into ceiling ornaments for our hall Christmas party. Now everyone says "Hi Fred" as they pass through the building...

I gave the suggestion about maps, because whenever I read an adventure book, or a fantasy book, I like to know exactly where the characters are, but I've only seen one author use a map properly: Brian Jacques, in the Redwall series.
That was funny, the Fred thing. Think you can post a pic of what it looks like?

Ah... mapmaking. Following in DD's footsteps as a cartographer. Dunno if you guys knew this, but that map at the front of DW is DD's handiwork. And her biography does mention that she once drew a map of Zelazny's Amber...

I really like the maps because they give you a sense for where the character is and the setting as well. Although I guess this has the setback of not requiring the use of your imagination very much. Sometimes I make a (rough) map of how I see the story to try to estimate the distances and where the characters are in relation to thingd, etc. Although I havn't done it for the YW books, because it would be WAY to dificult. I didn't know DD did mapmaking. And the Fred thing was pretty funny, although I doubt that it was as funny to people who had never read the YW series. Or possibly more...

Nicely done, Lauderdale: there were a couple of details in there I hadn't picked up yet. I'd like to whap that VOYA reviewer upside the head, though: by that standard, pretty much all fiction is derivative.