We’re super-excited about Gene Luen Yang’s upcoming graphic novel diptych Boxers & Saints, because it’s wonderful!  This is the book that Gene has been working on since he finished American Born Chinese in 2006, which is why it’s five hundred pages long (!).

Now you can pre-order your own copy of Boxers & Saints through Gene’s local independent bookstore Green Apple Books.  Gene will sign and sketch in all the copies that are ordered through Green Apple.

What better way is there to support local bookstores AND great authors?

:01 ALA Events Schedule

We’re going to ALA next week!  We are excited about this.

First Second will be exhibiting with our parent company, Macmillan Children’s, in booth 2100/2200.  If you’re going to the show, stop by and say hi and check out the early copies of some of our fall books (Boxers & Saints!  Fairy Tale Comics!  Battling Boy!  Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant!  Adventures in Cartooning: Characters in Action!).

Here’s where we — and our authors — will be for the show.

Artists Alley

The following First Second authors will be exhibiting in Artists Alley at ALA this year:

Gene Yang and Thien Pham – Table 2457
Paul Pope – Table 2459
Faith Erin Hicks – Table 2357
Matt Kindt – Table 2360
Dave Roman – Table 2453

Friday, June 28^th

YALSA Pre-Conference w/ Gene Luen Yang
Time: 12:30 – 4:00pm
Location: McCormick Center / S106a
Authors on Online Media Panel / 2:00 – 2:30 w/ Gene Luen Yang

Signing with Dave Roman
Time: 5:30 – 6:00pm
Location: MacKids Booth 2100 – 2200

Saturday, June 29^th

Graphic Novel Stage / Spotlight on Gene Luen Yang
Time: 9:00 – 9:55am
Location: GN Stage

Saturday Supercast: TV to Comics & Back Again / with Gene Luen Yang and Dave Roman
Time: 11:00 – 11:55am
Location: GN Stage

Paul Pope Artists Alley Signing
Time: 11:00am – 1:00pm
Location: Artists Alley Booth 2459

Sunday, June 30^th

YALSA Coffee Klatch w/ Faith Erin Hicks, Gene Luen Yang and Paul Pope
Time: 8:45am – 10:00am
Location: McCormick Center Room S503b

Paul Pope Artists Alley Signing
Time: 11:00am – 1:00pm
Location: Artists Alley Booth 2459

Busting the Comics Code Panel w/ Gene Luen Yang
Time: 1:00 – 2:30pm
Location: MCP N128

Signing with Faith Erin Hicks and Matt Kindt
Time: 1:00 – 1:30
Location: MacKids Booth 2100 – 2200

Signing w/ Paul Pope and Gene Luen Yang
Time: 3:00 – 4:00
Location: MacKids Booth 2100 – 2200

Let’s Talk Comics Panel w/ Paul Pope
Time: 4:30 – 5:30pm
Location: MCP – N128

Monday, July 1^st

Gene Luen Yang Signing with Follett
Time: 10:00 – 11:00am
Location: Follett booth #626

Paul Pope Author Stage
Time: 11:00 – 11:55am
Location: Graphic Novel Stage

We’re looking forward to seeing all you librarians there!

Have you been enjoying our thrilling Adventures in Cartooning series, teaching yourself how to make comics with the joys of the knight and Edward, the Best Horse Ever, reading along through Adventures in Cartooning and Adventures in Cartooning Activity Book and Adventures in Cartooning: Christmas Special?

Of course you have!

Now (or, well, soon) you can enjoy the next volume of the Adventures in Cartooning series : Adventures in Cartooning: Characters in Action, which will teach you about creating unique and exciting characters of your very own.

We just got advance books in the office, and they look super.  We can’t wait for this one!

Here’s the cover — as you can see, filled to the brim with wondrous characters.

And the back cover (also full of characters, you will be unsurprised to find).

Here’s one of the interior pages of the start of the story.  It’s never a good sign when you’re  a bored knight . . . probably that means something absolutely CRAZY is going to happen!

Here’s one of the pages where the authors are talking about character creation.  It’s so cool what you can do with just a few simple shapes!

The Mighty Adventures in Cartooning books assemble!  If you don’t have one, here is the list for you to work off (while the books go off and save the day).

Adventures in Cartooning: Characters in Action will be on sale in October.

Are you excited about Jim Ottaviani and Maris Wicks’ spectacular nonfiction graphic novel biography, Primates: the Fearless Science of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birute Galdikas?

Here’s where you can get excited about it in person, with illustrator Maris Wicks!

(photo by Kara Allyson.  This is — unhelpfully in this particular case — not a photo of assets, but a photo of book edges.  Sorry about that.)

It’s a lot of work to make books, so sometimes it’s nice to have newsworthy, shareable moments that you can work up to in the road to publication!

Here’s the first shareable moment: when authors announce their book.

Now I should first note – I’m talking about a specific point in the process of authors announcing their books.  When an author first signs up a project with a publisher, oftentimes there’s an announcement in some industry forums like Publishers Marketplace – an excellent forum from which news of an author’s book being published may get picked up in some other online media.  This announcement will run something like, ‘Editor So-and-So has acquired a book from Author So-and-So for Publishing House So-and-So; it is projected to be scheduled at This Year, Agent So-and-So was the agent on the deal.’

That is great!  However, that is not a book announcement – that is a book deal announcement.

What’s the difference?  A book announcement contains a lot more information, and is closer to the publication date of the book.

A book announcement may contain: the actual final publication date for the book; the final book cover; a Q&A with the author; at least a paragraph of content about what the book is about.  It is also highly newsworthy — check out this book announcement on Wired, and this one on EW.

To create these newsworthy, shareable moments of book announcements, it’s good for authors to hold back in talking about their upcoming books.  That doesn’t mean that an author should never talk about their book ever — it is perfectly fine to talk to friends and family and people in real life (after ascertaining they are not journalists trying to write stories about upcoming books).

It’s also perfectly fine to talk to the internet — but in a more limited way.  Putting up panels, talking about the creative process — those things are all fine.  Basically, what authors should avoid is putting up something that reads as, ‘The Tell-All Interview from Author X about Their New Book — With Pictures!’

And that becomes the first asset a book can have — its very existence can be parlayed into a news story.

(Of course there are other assets too – excerpts and sometimes book trailers and interviews and all of that jazz.  It tends to be useful to think about structure and timing for all of these things as well, so you can get the optimum reach for each separate thing that you’ve worked so hard to assemble.)

THOUGH NO STRANGER TO COMICS, Boaz Yakin is better known to the world of movies. My first introduction to him was through Fresh. One of my favorite movies.

Since then, Yakin has written and directed many films with the likes of Denzel Washington, Renée Zellweger and Jason Stratham, working on blockbusters and indy pictures both.

Our first collaboration was with his script for Marathon, another kind of epic—the ancient Greek kind—with art by the remarkable Joe Infurnari. Yakin took us back to the days of Eucles, the runner who saved Athens from the Persian invasion. Kirkus Reviews noted: “Marathon chronicles at once a glorious win for the underdogs and an awe-inspiring personal achievement.”

With Jerusalem, Yakin lept many centuries ahead, to Palestine in the 1940s and through the creation of the state of Israel. This 400 page family saga is a transporting experience. The artwork is by Nick Bertozzi, whom I consider to be one of the most talented American graphic novelists alive today. I remember first reading the script, mesmerized by this sprawling Jewish family inspired by Yakin’s own, at a hinge-point in history.

History springs back to life here, but more than that—very high grade writing and artistry will immerse you in a great STORY in ways only the best graphic novels do. Do get yourself a copy of Jerusalem. You’ll treasure it.

in the media:

Jerusalem is a NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

“This is most powerful for investing a massive and complex issue with real human emotion.” —Booklist, starred review

After finishing up American Born Chinese, Gene Luen Yang sat down for six years and wrote and drew a new graphic novel — Boxers & Saints.  This book is the story of the two sides of China’s Boxer Rebellion, and it is wonderful and moving and multi-faceted.

MTV Geek just debuted the book trailer for Boxers & Saints — click this link to get a sneak peek inside the pages of this sensational graphic novel!

Boxers & Saints will be in stores in September 10th.  It looks amazing — we can’t wait until then!

We spent this past weekend at BEA, talking to booksellers and librarians about two of our upcoming fall titles — Paul Pope’s Battling Boy and Gene Luen Yang’s Boxers & Saints.  (Here’s the short version of that: they’re both awesome!  You should read them when they come out in the fall.)

Here are pictures!

We kicked off the day on Thursday with a Battling Boy signing.  Paul had a marker that actually wrote on the cover of the galley!

Gene also did a signing for Boxers & Saints — you can see his line here!

Then we headed off to a panel about ‘The New Graphic Novel.’  Moderated by Calvin Reid, the panel discussion between Faith Erin Hicks, Paul Pope, and Gene Luen Yang was great.  If you were not there: you were missing out on the inside scoop on today’s graphic literature!

Gene!

Faith!

Paul!

The next day, we headed over to the Macmillan booth for a Battling Boy signing with Paul.

Paul: “This is so different from Comic-Con — most of these people aren’t guys in their thirties or forties!”

Here’s the line-up for the Battling Boy signing — and you can also see the giant poster of the book on the side of the booth!

Then we headed downstairs to have tea with Gene Luen Yang and some booksellers.

(These are the booksellers — they are listening to Gene explain the Boxer Rebellion!)

The end!

Thanks, Gene and Paul and booksellers!  We had a wonderful time.

(this is the cover blurb for our upcoming graphic novel TEMPLAR, by Jordan Mechner, LeUyen Pham, and Alex Puvilland)

Have you ever gone into a bookstore or comic book store and picked up a graphic novel and found that there was a quote from someone you recognized on the cover?

Maybe it said, ‘Even if at this moment you have ten choices about what to do next with your life, you should read this book.” — Your Favorite Author.

That is a cover blurb!

Cover blurbs are extremely useful because they provide another reason for readers to pick up a book.  If a reader is like, ‘This cover is interestingly designed . . . I’ve heard of this author and maybe read a book of theirs that I liked . . . the internet told me good things about this book . . . one of my friends recommended it to me as well” and is somehow still not convinced to buy the book, perhaps that final piece of data that is, “someone else besides my friend likes this book too!” will be enough to tip that reader over the edge into deciding to pick up and read/buy the book.

Because what cover blurbs do is provide another voice.  Obviously, everything you see on the cover of the book has filtered through the author and a publisher — they’re not going to make choices like, ‘Boys in middle-school hate pastel pink books; I think we should make this middle-school book about football with two boy main characters pastel pink!’  Authors and publishers are doing all they can with the title, art, copy, effects, etc. to convince readers to pick up the book.  But that’s all from the publisher and author, who (consumers are able to realize) have a financial incentive in convincing readers that they should pick up a book.

A blurb (even though it is put on a cover assembled by the publisher; publishers probably aren’t going to put terrible blurbs on their cover) is from an outside source.  Even though that source can be influenced by the publisher or the author, that blurb-providing person is still independent — they’re probably not going to give a book a blurb that says, ‘Best thing ever!’ if they actually think it’s the worst.

So for a reader, blurbs are corroboration that they’re making the right reading choice.

It’s been a while since we did a round-up of places where you can find us on the internet, so here we go!

In case any of you are confused about where you are reading this: the first place you can find us is on this blog!  It is at www.firstsecondbooks.com, and it is full of weekly pieces about the books we’re publishing, things we’re doing or thinking about, and conventions that we’re involved in.  Sometimes there are pictures!

We’re also on Twitter.  We talk about publishing and sometimes interesting media things that are occurring for our authors and announce give-aways and take pictures of interesting food that we’re eating.  You can follow us there at @01FirstSecond.

We’ve got a Facebook account as well.  That’s new for us this year, so it’s still a work in progress.  On Facebook you’ll find information about shortly-upcoming events, pictures of authors or events or interesting book-related things, recaps of recent :01 book-related media, and sometimes behind-the-scenes glimpses into what we’re working on in our offices.  You can find us (and like us, hopefully!) on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/FirstSecondBooks.

And we’re on Goodreads.  For those of you less familiar with this very specific social network, Goodreads is an online social home specifically for readers.  We use this account to talk about what we’re reading and what we like, and also talk about how the books that we’re publishing are wonderful.  Here’s the URL for that: http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/3181817-first-second-books.

We’ve also got a YouTube channel.  That’s less frequently updated than the other places — because we don’t have videos all that often — but it still has some fun things to watch.  You can find all our videos at: http://www.youtube.com/user/FirstSecondBooks.

Are you looking for less news-y, more information-y pages about First Second?  Check out the website that our parent company, Macmillan hosts for us at http://us.macmillan.com/firstsecond.aspx.  That’s got a page about every book we’re publishing with useful information like publication date, price, page count, book summary, and an excerpt.  It’s also got short author bios, which are also useful!

And that’s the roll-call!