Quote of the week:
“The artist is nothing without the gift. The gift is nothing without the work.” – Emile Zola
The Independent Book Publishers Association is the largest publishing trade association in the United States. It represents university, small, and mid-sized presses. Every year, the Independent Book Publishers Association has a competition to recognize books in a wide variety of categories with gold, silver, and bronze medals. This prestigious award is known to those in the know as the IPPY.
Well, I got one. My book, Winning and Losing the Nuclear Peace: The Rise, Demise, and Revival of Arms Control, was awarded the gold medal in the category of world history. Stanford University Press and its Director, Alan Harvey, owned the categories of world and U.S. history in the 2022 award cycle.
Ego hovers over the key pad. Writers crave readers and recognition. It’s in our nature to listen closely for echoes and pine for reviews. Positive feedback is great. Even negative feedback is OK, at least for me, because those folks are a target audience. Feedback is better than a resounding silence.
Especially when you write a book in which you have invested a great deal of time and psychic energy. A book’s gestation period can be very long, and then comes the actual writing. In retrospect, the gestation period of Winning and Losing the Nuclear Peace began when I started writing posts on armscontrolwonk.com in 2009. The actual writing and editing took two years. Given these time lines, the craving for readership and recognition is greater, even knowing that this book will not reach a wide audience.
For those of us who write for a university press, or a small or mid-sized press, or if you self publish, an IPPY is a godsend. Among the framed book covers along one wall of my writing shed hangs a royalty check from Palgrave Macmillan. The amount is for one nickel. I’ll gratefully find a place on that wall for my IPPY gold medal.
