News & Notes is a weekly Saturday post featuring book- and publishing-related news, links to interesting articles and opinion pieces, giveaways on this and other blogs, and other cool stuff.
Books & Ebooks in the News:
- Barnes & Noble is getting out of the tablet business. The company hopes to partner with electronics manufacturers, co-branding Nook Tablets but not developing or producing them itself. Bloomberg’s Matt Townsend thinks that may accelerate B&N’s breakup and the sell-off of the Nook Media division. B&N is selling off it’s Nook HD inventory, so keep an eye out for deals if you’re interested.
- B&N’s sales are also down by 7.4% for the 4th Quarter. (Jason Boog, GalleyCat)
- “Hatchette Group Acquires the Hyperion Adult Imprint”. Disney is selling most of its Hyperion adult titles to Hatchette. Disney will keep its children’s and YA book lines. (Jim Milliott, Publishers Weekly)
- The Kindle Worlds Store is now open, if you’re interested in buying fanfic set in any of the following worlds: Pretty Little Liars, The Vampire Diaries, Gossip Girl, The Foreworld Saga, Archer & Armstrong, Harbinger, Shadowman, Silo Saga, and XO Manowar.
- Libraries and publishers are teaming up to create “LibraryReads”, a book discovery program which will highlight 10 books each month. The books will be drawn from public librarians’ favorite books. Financial support for LibraryReads is coming from several major publishers, and the ABA is contributing back-office expertise. Any public librarian can submit suggestions, and any title is eligible. The program launches in fall 2013.
- “No Names, No Jackets — Finally Something New in Book Discovery” (Nate Hoffelder, The Digital Reader blog) No Names, No Jackets is a new site for book discovery, which lets you read a sample chapter in the genre of your choice.
- “Writer Caught Plagiarizing Tammara Webber and Jamie McGuire”. The plagiarism was first exposed by Jane Litte on Dear Author, where you can see comparisons between the originals and the plagiarized book. GalleyCat‘s article also includes a number of related Twitter posts recorded as the story unfolded. (Jason Boog, GalleyCat)
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“Top 10 E-book Best-Sellers; Week-Ending 6-23-13”. Inferno heads the list, as you might have guessed, and nine of the ten are from traditional publishers. But Abby Glines’ self-published Forever Too Far clocked in at number four. (Jeremy Greenfield, Mediashift at PBS.org)
Worth Reading:
.jpg/490px-Woman_Reading_(Kuroda_Seiki).jpg) |
| Kuroda Seiki, Woman Reading (ca, 1890) |
- “How Reading Makes Us More Human” (Karen Swallow Prior, The Atlantic) Thanks to my friend Anne G. for bringing this article to my attention!
- “Once Upon a Time” — blog post of quotes about fairy tales, accompanied by gorgeous illustrations by Kay Nielsen, curated by artist/writer/editor Teri Windling on her blog, Myth and Moor. Make sure you scroll down to the comments, where Jane Yolen has added a poem of her own.
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Get Your Geiger Counter Out (ebook royalties are back, and this time they’re toxic) – See more at: http://www.futurebook.net/content/get-your-geiger-counter-out-ebook-royalties-are-back-and-time-theyre-toxic#sthash.6MjW55hH.dpuf
“Get Your Geiger Counter Out (ebook royalties are out, and this time they’re toxic)” argues that traditional publishers need to wake up and rethink (low) ebook royalties before authors decided they don’t really need to go through a publisher. (Nick Harkaway, Futurebook blog)
- “If agents are selling publishers to authors, does that mean publishers should pay agents commission” is a misleading headline; the opinion piece actually argues that publishers need to make a much better case for their services, now that authors have a viable option that bypasses them. (Agent Orange blog, via Futurebook blog)
Get Your Geiger Counter Out (ebook royalties are back, and this time they’re toxic) – See more at: http://www.futurebook.net/content/get-your-geiger-counter-out-ebook-royalties-are-back-and-time-theyre-toxic#sthash.6MjW55hH.dpuf
For Writers & Bloggers:
- Camp NaNoWriMo starts July 1!
- Red House Books‘ Emily (a.k.a. WilowRaven) summarizes a BEA Blogger’s Conference presentation on extending your blog’s reach with social media. I learned about several sites and services I either didn’t know about or hadn’t considered in relation to blogging.
- With Google Reader disappearing on Monday, GirlXOXO‘s Tanya Patrice weighs Feedly vs. Bloglovin, and comes down on the side of Feedly. I like Bloglovin so far, but I’ll be taking a good look at Feedly, too.
- Justin Swapp has collected links to free Scrivener templates on his blog. Most are for fiction writing, but there are two for nonfiction. Obviously, you would need Scrivener to take advantage of these, but it’s not expensive.
- Author Shannon Hale talks about how she combines writing and motherhood. She’s pretty frank about a) needing help and b) not being able to do everything (like housework.)
- “Literary Agents Share Manuscript Wish Lists” on Twitter. (Jason Boog, GalleyCat)
- Fanfic writers can now start writing and submitting to Kindle Worlds. Just be aware that the available “worlds” are pretty limited, and the terms aren’t necessarily in your favor.
Literary Losses:
- Richard Matheson, an influential science fiction and horror writer perhaps best known for his novels I Am Legend and Somewhere in Time, died Sunday, June 23, at the age of 87. Matheson wrote both fiction and screenplays. A number of his works, including I Am Legend, Somewhere in Time, the short story “Duel”, What Dreams May Come, and The Shrinking Man, were later turned into movies. He also wrote for television, penning screenplays for westerns, Star Trek, and The Twilight Zone. (Remember the episode starring William Shatner as the only airplane passenger who can see the demon on the wing?) The New York Times accorded him a lengthy obituary, and there is a very nice essay by Edward Champion on his Reluctant Habits blog. Wikipedia has a full list of his fiction, television, and film works.
Book Announcements:
- “Random House to Publish Novel Retellings of Shakespeare’s Plays”. I’m not sure how I feel about this, but they’ve managed to snag novelist Anne Tyler for the retelling of The Taming of the Shrew. The program will open in 2016 with novel versions of The Taming of The Shrew and The Winter’s Tale. (Jason Boog, GalleyCat)
- Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children will be coming to the big screen on July 31, 2015. The movie will be directed by Tim Burton, with a screenplay by Jane Goldman (X-Men: First Class). (Hollywood Reporter)
- Disney has cast Ed Oxenbould as the main character in its upcoming Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. He will star alongside Steve Carrell and Jennifer Garner. The movie is due out on October 10, 2014. (Mike Fleming, Jr., Deadline Hollywood)
Free & Bargain books:
- Don’t forget the free audiobook downloads from SYNC! You will need to download the Overdrive Media Console to be able to download the audiobooks. Here are this week’s and next week’s titles:
- June 27 to July 3: Rotters by Daniel Kraus (read by Kirby Heyborne; Listening Library) and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (read by Jim Weiss; Listening Library).
- July 4 to July 10: Carter Finally Gets It by Brent Crawford (read by Nick Podehl; Brilliance Audio) and She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith (read by a full cast; L. A. Theatre Works)
- Sony’s Reader Store has 24 hot titles for $1.99 each, including Divergent (Veronica Roth), City of Bones (Cassandra Clare), Shadow and Bone (Leigh Bardugo), The Wanderer (Robyn Carr), Angels and Demons (Dan Brown), Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card), and more. You don’t need a Sony Reader; any ePub reader will work (for instance, Kobo. I think Nook can read these, too.) The sale is only for Saturday, 6/29.
Awesome lists:
- “Nancy Pearl Scours the Shelves for Books You Might Have Missed” Five books worth checking out. (NPR Books)
Just for fun:
- What’s Your Reading Personality? A quiz from Book Browse. I am apparently a serial reader (though I think I’ve been branching out a bit recently!) What are you?
That’s it for this week!
I’m always on the lookout for interesting articles, lists, and links for News & Notes, so please let me know if you see (or write!) anything that might be good for this feature. You can leave me a comment or send me an email — my address is on the About/Review Policy/Contact page.
Greg
I liked the manuscript wish lists, very interesting. And the Feedly vs Bloglovin has got me thinking too…Thanks!
Lark @ The Bookwyrm's Hoard
Glad to be of service!
kimbacaffeinate
Thanks for sharing all the news, I look forward to this weekly post and wealth of information.
Lark @ The Bookwyrm's Hoard
I’m really glad when people tell me they like this feature! It’s fun to put together, but time-consuming, too, so it’s nice to know that folks are enjoying it. 🙂
Bea's Book Nook
As always, an excellent post. So much to think about.
Lark @ The Bookwyrm's Hoard
Thank you, Bea!
readerholicnotes
Good links! I found out I’m an all-rounder in the reading personality quiz. I hope you have a good week.
Lark @ The Bookwyrm's Hoard
I was surprised to end up as a serial reader; I thought I would be a bit of a mix of types. For a few questions, none of the choices quite fit, but it was a fun quiz! Have a great week.