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
- Canada’s Indigo Books and Music plans 3-5 stores in the US. (Financial Post) The stores carry a wider mix of items than large-format bookstores like Barnes & Noble, with a “high proportion of gifts, baby and lifestyle items.”
- The 2017 World Fantasy Awards were announced (The Portalist) With links to buy/read the winning works.
- NAIBA Comes Out Against Direct Sales by publishers to customers, institutions. (Publishers Weekly)
- Survey finds more than half of people in book trade have experienced sexual harassment (The Guardian)
Worth Reading/Viewing
- Pirated ebooks threaten the future of book series (The Guardian) Please don’t pirate books.
- “Unbury the Future”: Martha Wells’ Full Speech from the 2017 World Fantasy Awards. (Tor.com) It turns out there women and POC authors in the earliest days of SFF… but their history has largely been erased, much like that of female and POC filmmakers in the early days of Hollywood, women and non-white scientists, and so on.
- Why The Name of the Wind Still Resonates 10 Years Later (Martin Cahill, Tor.com) A brilliant review that highlights all the things I love about this book/series. (Incidentally, there’s a new 10th anniversary edition, so if you love fantasy and haven’t read the book yet, I highly recommend it.)
- How many of us still read a book in bed? (Howard Jacobson, The Guardian) *raises hand* I do!
Free Fiction Online
Note: All links are to legal fiction, offered free by the author or publisher. I will never knowingly link to pirated material.
2017 World Fantasy Award nominees for short fiction. (Caveat: I have only read “Das Steingeschöpf” and “Seasons of Glass and Iron.”)
- “Das Steingeschöpf“ by G.V. Anderson (winner)
- “Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies” by Brooke Bolander
- “Seasons of Glass and Iron” by Amal El-Mohtar
- “Little Widow” by Maria Dahvana Headley
- “The Fall Shall Further the Flight in Me” by Rachael K. Jones
For Writers and Bloggers
- Kazuo Ishiguro: “Write What You Know” Is the Stupidest Thing I’ve Ever Heard… and other thoughts on writing by Ishiguro. Literary Hub has pulled together a number of lengthy quotes drawn from various interviews with and essays by Ishiguro. One interesting tidbit: Once a year, the author does a four-week “Crash” that sounds very like NaNoWriMo.
Book & Movie Announcements
- Amazon, Netflix in bidding war for ‘The Lord of the Rings’ television series. (The Telegraph) Warner, which owns the rights and produced the blockbuster trilogy by Peter Jackson, and the Tolkien estate are reported to be in talks with both companies. Over the last several years, both Amazon and Netflix began creating original content, but a LOTR television series would give the winning company a show with huge international appeal, potentially larger than Game of Thrones. (Also Variety.) Deadline has more, including a hint that rights to some characters may not be included in the deal.
- In Star Wars news:
- Rian Johnson to Launch All-New Star Wars Trilogy (Tor.com) The trilogy would focus on “new characters from a corner of the galaxy that Star Wars lore has never before explored.”
- Disney Developing Live-Action Star Wars Series for New Streaming Service (Tor.com) The show will be available exclusively through Disney’s planned streaming channel.
- Robert Munch’s The Paper Bag Princess will be adapted as a movie by Universal Pictures, with Elizabeth Banks and Margot Robbie producing. (Hollywood Reporter)
Awesome Lists
Bookish Quote
That’s it for this week!
