Khadijah Queen had already published a half dozen books of poetry when her latest, “Anodyne,” was released on Tin Press on Aug. 18, 2020.
“(It was) kind of in the thick of things,” wrote Queen, an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Colorado, via email this week. “As we were planning the release earlier in the spring, we had to make the decision to cancel in-person speaking engagements and release parties, then plan virtual ones.”
Queen had plenty of company in that. Many Colorado authors who saw their books published last year also watched their promotional profiles drop out of the sky, and often suffered poor sales as a result. That makes this year’s 30th annual Colorado Book Awards (CBA) more important than ever in promoting new, printed works to readers, said Queen, whose “Anodyne” is one of three works nominated for CBA’s 2021 poetry prize.
“I tend not to think as much about sales or profile, and leave that up to publicity folks and the publisher,” wrote Queen, who already has won several national awards for her work. “But again, I’m enthusiastic about awards like this one, which have the ability to promote poetry and literature written by living writers to the reading public.”
This year’s awards ceremony will again be virtual, said Abby Kerstetter, book program coordinator for Colorado Humanities & Center for the Book, which produces the awards. On the bright side, she said, the online finalist readings over the past few months have each drawn more attendees than the average bookstore reading.
“There’s been a tremendous boost in audience reach by having these programs online,” said Kerstetter, a 2020 winner for her poetry collection, “How to Dress a Fish.” “Sales have remained strong as people needed something to read while stuck indoors, and online readings can connect these authors to readers outside of the immediate Denver area.”
The 30th annual Colorado Book Awards winners will be announced live at 5 p.m. on Saturday, June 26, at facebook.com/cohumanities and via YouTube at bit.ly/3wQZ05H. All of the finalists’ and winners’ books are available for order online at BookBar (bookbardenver.com). This year’s event begins with a reading by author and professor emeritus Charles Wilkinson, who received the CBA Lifetime Achievement Award in History for 2021, and who was a past winner in 2000 and 2006.
As Kersetter noted, the pandemic wasn’t all bad for Colorado authors. Book sales — and borrowing — boomed in the United States last year while most of us were stuck at home, leading to an 8.2% rise in sales over the previous year. With 751 million books purchased, it was the best year for print book sales since 2010, according to data analysis from The NPD Group.
“With brick-and-mortar bookstores having a tough year resulting from mandatory closures, these figures represent a remarkable resurgence for print books,” wrote Kathie Rowzi, vice president of sales for Two Sides, which advocates for eco-conscious printing in the publishing industry, in a blog post.
Still, in-person author readings, bookstore tours and other promotional events were still sorely missed, said Colorado author Andrew Altschul, whose novel “The Gringa” was published on March 10, 2020 — just as the pandemic began sucking all attention away from daily concerns.
Publisher Melville House had already scheduled 15 promotional events across the country for “The Gringa,” a deeply interwoven tale of political and personal upheaval in Peru. All were canceled within days of the books release. Altschul is hoping “The Gringa’s” CBA nomination — in literary fiction — will compel readers to revisit a novel he poured his life into.
“I scrambled for months to replace them with every virtual event I could do,” said Altschul, an associate professor of English at Colorado State University. “Virtual readings have been a necessity in the past year, but they don’t sell books, when you get right down to it.”
The CBA awards prizes for literary fiction, biographies, poetry, history, mystery, young-adult titles and more, taking a broad view of Colorado’s book-publishing scene while fêting diverse authors and subject matter that helps define our state’s cultural identity.
To stay relevant and connected, CBA coordinator Kerstetter is looking to feature writing from past winners on Colorado Humanities’ website that discusses the impact of the awards on their careers. This year’s 190 CBA submissions — nearly double the amount of last year’s — were read by a group of 75 volunteer experts, academics and vetted readers, showing a literary scene teeming with ideas and energy, she said. But because it’s based on unsolicited submissions from publishers and authors, Kerstetter is also hoping to boost CBA’s diversity in the coming year.
“These are not conversations that are held lightly,” she said. “We’re looking for engaged readers who will give the work its due recognition and time and attention. This is a competition, and every author wants that gold sticker on their book instead of the silver.”
In the meantime, Colorado authors have stayed busy teaching, writing and helping other authors. CSU’s Altschul, for example, set up a pair of online reading series to promote the work of 30 authors whose books came out during the pandemic. The programs, coordinated through national bookstores and literary journals that Altschul helps edit, allowed him to him balance his own concerns with the larger literary world.
“There’s no level at which there’s a zero-sum game,” he said. “If somebody buys my book, they’re not going to miss somebody else’s book. What’s good for writers is good for writers, so solidarity and support has always been a joy for me. … Being a writer is isolating sometimes, so I’m able to build up this community I’m part of and feel less alone.”
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