What did the Newbery ever do for me?
There's been a lot of talk in trade publications and the blogosphere lately about the "decline" of the Newbery award. I'm not going to weigh in with an opinion, but some have suggested that the Newbery doesn't inspire the same respect or buying power as it used to and I want to address that from personal experience.
The day before I got the Newbery call in 2006, princess academy had a sales rank in the 40,000s on amazon.com. (The lower the sales rank, the better.) The sales rank had been on steadily putting on digits over the past several months. After the announcement, it dropped to the double digits, and ever since, I've noticed that all of my books have maintained a relatively low sales rank. Amazon sales rank can't accurately show how well a book is selling, but as Nathan Hale once told me, "It's all I got."
The next week princess academy jumped on the New York Times best seller list, where it stayed for seven weeks. Once in paperback, it returned to the NYT list and remained for over six months, and spent time all three of the four major best seller lists. The only book of mine to appear on any best seller list is the one with the shiny silver sticker. It has outsold my other six books combined and then some. You may argue that it is the best or most commercially appealing of my books and that's why it's done so well. But among people who have read all my books, the goose girl is by far the majority favorite. It's the Newbery Honor book, not the fan favorite, that outsells the rest.
Besides sales of the awarded book, this honor has affected me personally and professionally in a profound way. Wherever I go as an author, people introduce me as a "Newbery Honor author" (or quite often, as a Newbery Medalist or Newbery Award winner, which isn't true, but we don't need to nitpick). I have felt that title legitimize me. Winning the award shined a light on me and all my books that three years later hasn't faded a bit. For the layperson, even if they don't know what the Newbery is exactly, I've found they recognize the name and believe it is a significant honor.
Whatever your opinion of the quality or accessibility of the recent winners, I think the power of the Newbery is still very real. It is one of the most recognizable awards in all of literature. For me and my publishing career, it has done a whole whole lot. I still can't talk about it without crying. Cheers to the valiant librarians* who are deliberating this weekend on the winners. A few authors are going to get life-changing calls early Monday morning, and I think they'll find, as I have, that the word Newbery casts a magic spell over them and their books. As a jewel in the crown of children's literature, it's still very shiny.
*Just so you don't think I'm sucking up in hopes of getting a call, rapunzel's revenge, the only book I published this year, isn't eligible for a Newbery because it depends on pictures to tell the story.