Episode #148: What do you do if people don’t like your book? with A.J. Sass
Welcome back to Kids Ask Authors! On today’s episode we answer a very insightful kid question, “What do you do if people don’t like your book?” with AJ Sass.
TRANSCRIPT:
Grace Lin
Hello, I'm Grace Lin, Children's book author and illustrator of many books including the middle grade novel When the Sea Turned to Silver, and the picture book A Big Mooncake for Little Star. Today I'm here with A.J. Sass, the author of middle grade novels such as Ana on the Edge and the upcoming Ellen Outside the Lines. Hi A.J.
A.J.
Hi Grace. Thanks so much for having me.
Grace Lin
Oh, thanks so much for coming on today's Kid Ask Authors podcast. I almost forgot the name of my own podcast.
A.J.
I know.
Grace Lin
Are you ready for today's kid question?
A.J.
Yes, I am.
Grace Lin
Okay. Today's question is from a kid named Liz. And Liz asks-
Liz
What do you do if people don't like your book?
Grace Lin
What do you do if people don't like your book?
A.J.
Oh wow. Well, thank you for the question, Liz. It's a fantastic question, and it's also something that as an author you kind of have to prepare yourself for because I don't think I've ever heard an author say that they've never received criticism from their book.
For me, gosh, when I'm thinking about this ... I'm an avid reader and I used to always go on sites like Goodreads to check reviews to see if I might be interested in reading certain books. And one of the first pieces of advice that I got as I was preparing to become an author was not to read your reviews so they didn't upset you if some people didn't like them. But I did not actually follow that advice. So I do check my reviews and most of them have been really positive, but there have been people who didn't like the book.
And I think the most important thing for me to remind myself, and what I do in a situation like this when someone maybe didn't connect with my book as much is, I remind myself about all the books that I've read as a kid and as an adult that maybe got rave reviews or bestsellers, or my friends recommended because they really love them, and for whatever reason, those books just didn't click with me. And there's nothing wrong with that.
I mean, the wonderful thing about the world of literature is that there's so many different options and reading is very subjective. So some of the stuff that I love my friends might not like. And some of the stuff my friends have on their favorite bookshelves is something that I just didn't click with.
So when I look at reviews for Anna On the Edge specifically, I remind myself a lot of times that maybe the book's not for everyone and it's connecting with the people that it needs to connect with, and it's just not always going to be someone's cup of tea. But that's just the reality of being an author and it's something you kind of have to deal with. So definitely trying my best in that respect.
Grace Lin
Yes, I remember someone telling me early on in my career, just remember, you are not a $20 bill. What does that mean? It's like everybody loves a $20 bill, but you are not one.
A.J.
That's really good advice.
Grace Lin
That you are not a $20 bill. That not everyone is going to like you, and not everyone's going to want you because you're not a $20 bill. And I was like, "Oh, that's a good point."
A.J.
And that's really relevant for a lot of different arenas in your life. I mean with friendship and stuff too. Not everyone you meet is someone you're going to be a BFF with, but that's not a bad thing necessarily.
Grace Lin
Yeah. But I do have to say it's hard because sometimes there's a good reason they don't like your book. Like, I wrote this book, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, and I love that book and a lot of people really love that book. But I did get some criticism about how in the book, the main character Min Lee, she works in the rice field and everybody in the village works in the rice field. And so they are all muddy and brown. And I put in the description how basically being brown was not a good thing because I was thinking about the mud. But that was very thoughtless because I had a lot of people who said, "Hey, you're saying that being brown is bad." And I had not even realized that. Like I said, I was so thoughtless and I was actually really glad that they told me that. And it took me a long, long time to realize that I could actually change my book.
A.J.
Right.
Grace Lin
And I actually had it changed fairly recently, even though I had that criticism a long, long time ago. But I'm glad that people told me that they didn't like my book because of that, because then I could change it. So there's good parts about being told that they don't like your book, but then there's also really bad parts. It's the thing about trying to learn what kind of criticism is good to accept, I think.
A.J.
Right, yeah. And balancing what that, or bouncing off of that, actually. I do think there's a differentiation you need to make between people who don't like aspects of your book, like you mentioned, and people who just maybe don't like your book because they don't like reading stories about queer kids or something, which is the totally other issue.
But I mean, a lot of the constructive feedback that I've gotten, the ones that I'm most interested in, are from readers who share various aspects of the identity with the characters that I write. So for example, and Ana on the Edge, Anna is Jewish and non-binary. And I had some feedback that was kind of food for thought for me because I do have other people within the space and the identities that my characters have read this before it goes to publication in the hopes that I can catch things that I myself might have missed during the drafting process.
But someone brought up the fact that Ana referred to he/him and she/her pronouns as boy pronouns and girl pronouns, and how that's not necessarily accurate because some non-binary folks who use he/him or she/her are not boys or girls. And that was something that I really took to heart because I hope to write in the future more non-binary characters. And in this specific instance, this is just Ana is learning about non-binary identity and this is the way that she frames things. And indeed she uses she pronouns herself at this point in her life and is non-binary.
So, I was like, "Point taken." That that's a really good thing that I hadn't actually thought about at the time, but it's something that I hope that I can get to address in future works too, that maybe the character's identity is a little bit more developed or they more understand what being non-binary is, whereas Ana was just learning. So I really love feedback like that because it hopefully will help me grow as a writer in future books.
Grace Lin
And it shows how much they're paying attention to your book too.
A.J.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly.
Grace Lin
In some ways it's kind of a compliment to how much they want it to be the way they want to see it. You know?
A.J.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Grace Lin
But it's also tough as an author because we're human, we make mistakes.
A.J.
Yeah, of course.
Grace Lin
And we just do the best we can.
A.J.
Yep. Yeah, for sure. And I mean, I very much wanted to get it right too, because I know I should put "get it right" in quotation marks because I don't know if you can ever really encompass everyone's identities within a specific marginalized group, because we're also very different even when we share similarities to our identities.
But it was something that I was very concerned about as being an author who was publishing in the middle grade space and very few other books with non-binary main characters had yet been published, that I didn't convey that this is the only way to be non-binary. So that was something that I was already thinking about when that got brought up. And yeah, I really, really appreciated the feedback and I'm hoping I can incorporate that into future books.
Grace Lin
I can see how that's very, very complicated. When I first started publishing my books, there are very few Asian authors publishing. And so it was very similar where people would be upset because my Asian experience did not exactly reflect their Asian experience. And it was tough because, of course, one story can't cover everyone.
A.J.
Right. Yeah. I mean, that's the hope and the push, I think, with a lot of these initiatives, like we need diverse books, is that this burden ... I don't know if it's burden is the right word. But this responsibility I suppose, is not just put on one sole author to convey all aspects of a specific identity because that's unrealistic. And we just need more stories told from various perspectives within these identities, I think.
Grace Lin
Yeah. So, I hope that kids read all of these books and they realize that one book isn't going to tell the whole story. And so you have to read lots and lots of books.
A.J.
Yes, yes. All the books you can read.
Grace Lin
Some of them you'll love, and some of them you probably won't like.
A.J.
Yep. And that's okay. That's entirely fine.
Grace Lin
Exactly. Well, thank you so much A.J. For answering Liz's question. And Liz, thank you so much for asking such a good one.
A.J.
Yes, thank you Liz.
Liz
Bye.
Today’s KID BOOK REVIEW comes from Abhinav! The review is about the book, Ana on the Edge by A.J. Sass.
The book Ana on the Edge is about Ana who wants to be a boy, sometimes a girl the other time. Ana likes figure skating and won the juvenile nationals. Later in the story, Ana progresses to intermediate and finds out that she or he is non-binary. Ana's mom is tight on money and the bill she has to pay for the choreographer, costume and training are very expensive. Soon, Ana becomes an assistant coach in exchange for unlimited ice time. There, Ana meets a boy who thinks that he or she is boy. They soon become friends, but Ana does not reveal that she is non-binary. Will the friendship end when he finds out that his friend is not a boy? I would recommend this book to people who like stories about broken friendships being remade.
Thank you Abhinav!
More about today’s authors:
A. J. Sass (he/they) is an author whose narrative interests lie at the intersection of identity, neurodiversity, and allyship. His debut novel, Ana on the Edge, was a 2020 Booklist Editors’ Choice, an ALA 2021 Rainbow Book List Top 10 for Young Readers, and a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selection. He is also the author of Ellen Outside the Lines, which is a School Library Journal Best Book of 2022 and a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selection, the co-author of Camp QUILTBAG (Algonquin, 2023), and a contributor to the This Is Our Rainbow (Knopf, 2021), Allies (DK/PRH, 2021), and On All Other Nights (Abrams, 2024) anthologies. When he’s not writing, A. J. figure skates and travels as much as possible. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his partner and two cats who act like dogs. Find him online: @matokah on Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram, as well as at sassinsf.com.
Grace Lin, a NY Times bestselling author/ illustrator, won the Newbery Honor for Where the Mountain Meets the Moon and her picture book, A Big Mooncake for Little Star, was awarded the Caldecott Honor. Grace is an occasional commentator for New England Public Radio , a video essayist for PBS NewsHour (here & here), and the speaker of the popular TEDx talk, The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child’s Bookshelf. She is the co-host of the podcast Book Friends Forever, a kidlit podcast about friendship and publishing (geared for adults). Find her facebook, instagram , twitter ( @pacylin) or sign up for her author newsletter HERE.
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