News Flash: It’s Banned Books Week here in the United States, you know: the land of the free- at least on paper.
As usual, there is plenty of media attention on the American Library Association’s annual event to highlight censorship efforts and I take bittersweet pride in reporting on the issue in my Banned Books Awareness column. Often I see my column sited in other articles and news organizations worldwide and, most proudly, in classroom literature assignments at both the grade school and collegiate level. Yesterday, though, I received an even bigger surprise when I opened an email from Noel King, a very respected and experienced reporter who’s covered some of the most incredible regions in the world. She currently writes for Marketplace, a website about business and the economy, and wanted to interview me for a story she was working on about how censorship efforts affect a book’s sales. Needless to say, I was glad to give some insight and called her.
While the conversation was short, it was fun and there were good laughs and insightful exchanges. Here’s the intro to her published story and a link to the entire thing. I hope you enjoy it as much as I had being involved in it.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Banned books week: How the blacklist can goose a book’s sales
by Noel King Thursday, September 26, 2013© American Public Media
This week is Banned Books Week — an annual event sponsored by the American Booksellers Association, the American Library Association, the PEN Center and several other groups — to draw attention to literature that has been banned.
“There’s no such thing as bad publicity,” says R. Wolf Baldassaro, who writes the Banned Books Awareness blog. “As soon as you say ‘you can’t do something,’ it makes people want to do it more.”
