News & Notes – 9/03/2022

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

Bookish News

• Judge thwarts Va. Republicans’ effort to limit book sales at Barnes & Noble (Washington Post)
• Val McDermid reveals ‘Queen of Crime’ legal threat from Agatha Christie estate (The Scotsman)
• IBPA Revises Hybrid Publisher Criteria (Publishers Weekly)
• Amazon, B&N Buying Cutbacks Unnerve Publishers, Authors (Shelf Awareness) This is why independent bookstores are so important. If you can, please consider buying your physical books at your local independent bookstore or through Bookshop.org . (And if your local shop doesn’t have the book you want, they’ll probably order it for you.)
• Southwest Booksellers Deal with Torrential Rains, Flash Floods (Shelf Awareness)

Worth Reading/Viewing

• Windows, Mirrors and Glasses: Grace Lin on Seeing the World Through Diverse Books (Publishers Weekly) The author talks about her personal experiences and why it is so important – now more than ever – to support and demand diverse books.
• ‘We Have Always Fought’: Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle and Slaves’ Narrative in fiction and life (Kameron Hurley, on A Dribble of Ink)
• What Working at a Used Bookstore Taught Me About Literary Rejection (Carl Levigne, Literary Hub)
• Why I Only Read Romance Books on My Phone (Neha Patel, Book Riot)

For Writers

• Beware of Sage & Sparrow; the new publisher isn’t all it claims to be. (Absolute Write blog)
• How to Get Published: A Book’s Journey From ‘Very Messy’ Draft to Best Seller (New York Times)
• How to Participate in NaNo Prep 101 (NaNoWriMo) It’s September, which means it’s almost time to start prepping if you want to get the most out of NaNoWriMo this year. Fortunately, the NaNoWriMo organization has a self-directed “course” to help you out! You can also check out this older post on How to Prepare for NaNoWriMo: Shaelin’s Top Tips. And this even older post: How to Prepare for NaNoWriMo. (And yes, I’m considering giving it a try this year. Maybe.)

Books, Movies, and TV

• Is The Rings of Power for Lord of the Rings Diehards or Casual Fans? Tolkien Devotee Jenna Kass and Fantasy Philistine Dylan Roth Recap the First Two Episodes of the New Series (Literary Hub)
• The surprising ancient roots of The Lord of the Rings (BBC)
• Setting the record straight on Tolkien’s dwarves. (Ian N. Mills, Twitter) Despite what a popular meme claims, Tolkien’s editor didn’t reject Fellowship over the plural of “dwarf,” and Tolkien didn’t write the O.E.D.
• Mary Pope Osborne Celebrates 30 Years of the Magic Tree House (Publishers Weekly)
• Art Doesn’t Care If You Like It: Gabrielle Bellot on The Sandman Adaptation (Literary Hub)

Lists

• The 50 Best Fictional Dragons, Ranked (Literary Hub) Mind you, I disagree entirely with the rankings, and I don’t think anyone should be ranking dragons when they haven’t personally read/seen the movie/played the game. So just treat this as a decent-but-incomplete list of dragons that includes examples from both popular culture and myths of various cultures.
• Speaking of which, it’s probably time for a reminder that I have a Dragon Books Master List on this blog.
• Cozy Book Recommendations. Rachel Hawkins (aka Erin Sterling) asked Twitter for “cozy” book recommendations in any genre. I’ve already added several to my TBR list.
• 2022 Holiday Books by BIPOC Authors. Helene Greer noticed that the lists of tradpub holiday books publishing in 2022 are very white, so she started this Twitter thread of holiday books by BIPOC authors. (Note that the tweet started with 2022 releases, but when other people chimed in, they often mentioned books published in prior years.)

Bookish Quote

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