Grammar Girl, Reno’s own publishing success story, is celebrating the printing of her second book, ‘The Grammar Devotional: Daily Tips for Successful Writing From Grammar Girl’, and is currently on a nationwide tour promoting the book. Mignon Fogarty’s first book, ‘Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing’, was published in July 2008, and briefly made the New York Times Best Seller List. Grammar Girl’s success is a telling story about the major changes that are occurring in the world of writing.
A few years ago Fogarty, with degrees in English and Science, edited documents for scientists, and presented a podcast on science (podcasts are short audio clips available on the internet on a regular basis). While editing, she kept seeing the same grammar boo-boos committed over and over, and a light bulb went on: Why not do a podcast providing easy tips to help people with their grammar? While working on the idea in a coffee shop in Santa Cruz she scribbled out the name Grammar Girl on a napkin, and in July of 2006 the Grammar Girl podcasts were born.
Grammar Girl was an instant success. It shot up the itunes charts, and within six weeks it was in the top ten listings of podcasts in America. ‘It really took me by surprise,’ Mignon told me when I interviewed her at Grassroots Books in Reno.
‘Next thing I knew I was getting calls and emails from the press.’ She credits word of mouth from teachers and writers for the podcast’s popularity.
When you spend time with Mignon and read her book, however, you quickly realize it is also about her style and personality.
She reminds me of a combination of a sweet elementary school teacher and that perky girl in high school who was in charge of everything. She is just fun to talk to, and as one reviewer said, she just seems so utterly, wonderfully normal.
Unfortunately, we are more accustomed to the ‘Eat, Shoots and Leaves’ style of grammar lessons: I picture a severe women holding a ruler behind her back, hair pulled tight in a bun, attempting to drill the pablum into my poor excuse for a brain, imploring me to ‘Listen up dummy. There are rules of grammar that we taught you in grade school. Use them. Do I have to go through all of them again? Let’s start with the adverbs.’ Grammar Girl on the other hand is enthusiastic and does her best to make grammar fun, not stodgy. Grammar? Fun? Now there’s a new concept.
In November of 2006, The Wall Street Journal made Grammar Girl the ‘Web Pick of The Day. ‘Publishers began calling me to sign a book deal.’ She laughed and said, ‘It was completely unfair, I have friends who are writers, I feel bad that I was so lucky.’
One big fan of Grammar Girl podcasts was the sister of a producer for the Oprah Winfrey Show. When this woman heard that there was going to be a segment on the show focused on trying to improve Oprah’s grammar, she contacted her sister and told her they had to get Grammar Girl for the show. Just a week later, Fogarty was whisked off to Chicago to spend a terrifying four minutes on the Oprah Show. She might have been a nervous wreck, but she had been on the Oprah Show, the Pearly Gates of Literary Success.
While she had signed a book deal two months before Oprah, the book was nowhere near being published. Now Fogarty and her publishers knew they had to take advantage of the appearance on Oprah and get something out right away. Fogarty rushed out an hour-long audio book, working like crazy to finish it on the plane on the way home from Oprah. It was completed by the time the grammar episode aired a week later. Not only was it published in time to take advantage of the Oprah effect, but she had created quite a stir in the publishing world by going from idea to finished product in two weeks.
The book version of Grammar Girl came out a year later, in July of 2008. With the flames of sales fanned by the success of the podcast and the appearance on Oprah, it sold well. ‘Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips’ is an in-depth explanation of how to use grammar. Her latest book, ‘The Grammar Devotional,’ is more like a grammar-tip-a-day calendar, but in book format. The tips are quick and short, most about 100 words. Fogarty says it is a refresher, a way to easily remind you about some of the basics. I asked her, ‘Sort of a back-of-the-toilet sort of book?’ She laughed and said, ‘Whatever sells it!’
Fogarty’s current book tour includes stops in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, Chicago, Boulder, Cincinnati, and Washington, D.C. where she will present a lecture on grammar to the Social Security Administration. Ummm…good luck with that.
In Reno she will be signing books at Sundance Books on Dec. 5 starting at 11 a.m., and Grassroots Books on Dec. 13 beginning at 2 p.m. You can also get free PDFs of some of the tips and sign up for her grammar newsletters at grammar.quickanddirtytips.com
~ Discuss this article with the author, email thauserman@moonshineink.com. Tim Hauserman wrote ‘Cross-Country Skiing in the Sierra and Monsters in the Woods: Backpacking with Children.’ While page 30 of ‘Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips’ says it’s OK to say ‘I am good’ instead of ‘I am well,’ his daughters still correct him every time he says it.
