News & Notes – 10/25/14

News & Notes is a weekly Saturday post featuring book- and publishing-related news, links to interesting articles and opinion pieces, and other cool stuff

Book News

• Economist Paul Krugman says “Amazon’s Monopsony is Not O.K.” (New York Times) For an opposing view, read Matthew Yglesias’s “Amazon is doing the world a favor by crushing book publishers“.  Frankly, I think they’re both going a bit far.
• Simon & Schuster & Amazon agree on new multi-year deal which reportedly gives S&S a fair bit of control over ebook prices. (CNET; also BBC and Business Insider).  The LA Times suggests that the deal follows the agency model, but no details have been released. The question now becomes, if S&S is happy with the deal (and they seem to be), why can’t Hachette and Amazon come to terms?
• New E-book Subscription Service Debuts in U.K. (Publishers Weekly)
• J. K. Rowling Shuts Down New Book Rumors. No, she’s not writing a “romantic novel.” (MTV News)
• Squirl is a proposed book discovery app that works through location. It will show you  passages from books about the places you visit, and perhaps steer you to a nearby bookstore where you can buy the book if you’re interested. It’s currently a Kickstarter project.

Worth Reading/Listening To

• Patrick Rothfuss was interviewed at NY Comic Con about his new book and his writing. The full 18-minute interview is on SoundCloud. Worth listening to even if you’re not a Rothfuss fan, especially for his advice to aspiring writers (live somewhere cheap!) (Beaks and Geeks)
• Landmark Study Examines Role of Tribal Libraries (Indian Country Today Media Network)
• Deborah Harkness talked about writing the All Souls Trilogy and her teaching and research with CNN’s Jill Martin Wrenn.
• Do We Read Differently At Different Ages? (Daniel Mendelsohn & Pankaj Mishra, New York Times Book Review)

For Writers & Bloggers

• 3 Ways to Increase Your Daily Word Count While Away From Your Computer (Jessica Strawser, Writers Digest blog)
• The NaNoWriMo site is up & running for Nov. 2014. Sign up now if you’re planning to do NaNoWriMo this year!
• Write or Die is software to help motivate you to write your daily word count. There’s a free web version and a for-purchase downloadable version. Robin recommends it!
• BookShelfery.com and CaffeinatedReviewer.com are hosting the Black Friday Book Bonanza Hop, so if you want your blog to participate in a great giveaway hop, check it out and sign up.
• Bloggiesta dates for 2015 have been announced. If you’re not familiar with it, Bloggiesta is a series of challenges to make your blog and blog design better.
• Too many NetGalley ARCs? Try the NetGalley November challenge.
  

Book & Movie Announcements

• Into the Woods has a new “exclusive look” trailer, and it looks pretty good. . . but why is there so little singing? (I wanted to embed the video, but so far, I can’t find an embeddable version.)

Awesome Lists

• My Book Club Read 200 Books. These Were Our Favorites (Huffington Post)
• The Childhood Homes of 20 Famous Authors (Flavorwire)
• 10 Children’s Books That Made Us. “Us” being the boomer generation. (Next Avenue)
• 50 Best Book to Movie Adaptations (Total Film) There are some good ones on here, but they missed a few, too. And it’s strictly a list for adults; there’s only one real children’s book in the bunch (Babe).
• 44 Great American Bookstores Every Book Lover Must Visit (BuzzFeed)

Really Cool / Just for Fun

Check out these cool tote bags from Out of Print!

Bookish Quote

That’s it for this week!

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