The first book I abridged two summers ago, Little Women, has been on sale now since May. It’s kind of exciting to have not one but two ISBNs associated with a product of my blood, sweat and arthritic fingers. If only they would get the author correct—on Amazon it’s listed as Lucy Corvino, the illustrator, who has an important role in the production of the book for sure, but isn’t the author per se.
A couple of days ago our editor, Frankie, sent us all a note that the Wall Street Journal was publishing an article about the series. Unfortunately, the WSJ has a pay-to-read policy so I couldn’t read it until Bookslut posted a link to the article. Oh, it’s kind of cool to have a mention on Bookslut, but Jessica Crispin said something totally catty:
Wouldn’t you love to have that job? “So, what do you do for a living?” “I dumb down the world’s classic literature for the young and the stupid.”
Ahem, Ms. Crispin, I do have that job, and I’ll have you know that we didn’t think we were dumbing down the books at all. In fact, it was a hell of a lot of work to ensure that the shorter, abridged versions of all three books I’ve written now are not only similar in both tone and manner to the original, but also conserve the integrity of the classic. I think all of us that wrote them felt the same way. Perhaps the reading public agrees, as I step down from my high horse by noting, the 10 books have now sold over 500,000 copies. Not too shabby for “dumbed down” content.