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
- Early Holiday Cheer for Booksellers (Publishers Weekly)
- What’s Next for Simon & Schuster? (Publishers Weekly)
Worth Reading/Viewing
- Can U.S. Printers Make a Comeback? (Publishers Weekly)
- Why Book Blogs Still Matter In an Age of BookTok (Danika Ellis, Book Riot)
- ‘Could my book be as bad as I imagined?’: my verdict on the novel I wrote in a month (Tim Jonze, The Guardian)
- Writers Wrestle with Twitter: Do I Stay or Go (and Where?) (Jess deCourcy Hinds, Literary Hub)
For Anyone on Twitter
If you are trying to figure out where to go if Twitter implodes, and particularly if you’re curious about Mastodon, check out these articles (in addition to the one on writers and Twitter, above):
- Mastodon: Oh, the Possibilities! (Medium.com)
- What I’ve Learned About Mastodon This Month (David Alex Lamb)
- Mastodon For SFF Fans (WarpCore SF) – This is about 5 years out of date, but much of the information is still accurate.
- And here’s an old overview of Mastodon instances (servers) from GitHub. Some no longer exist, but many do.
For Sci-Fi and Fantasy Lovers
- Locus Magazine is seeking crowdfunding to continue their mission: to publish excellent short fiction in the SF/fantasy/horror/spec-fic fields, to cover publishing news in those fields, to recognize excellence through the Locus Awards, and to nurture new authors and publishing professionals through workshops and internships. Their award-winning magazine is well worth reading and subscribing to, and much of their online content is free. Unfortunately, print advertising is way down across all periodical publications, so Locus is reaching out to the SFFH community for help.
Books, Movies, and TV
- Goodreads Readers Choice Awards – The final round of voting ends tomorrow (Sunday.) Hurry up and cast your ballots for your favorite reads of 2022!
Cool, Fun, and Awesome
This TikTok/YouTube series about relationship between a writer and her fantasy heroine had me laughing out loud — and wishing there really was a book. Jill Bearup sends up a lot of the fantasy and romance tropes, but it’s such an affectionate, funny send-up that you know she secretly loves them. Watch it on YouTube, where the short TikToks have been aggregated into three longer videos of nearly 10 minutes each. I have embedded the first one above, but they actually keep getting better.
- The Fantasy Heroine vs. The Writer (Complete Series 1)
- The Fantasy Heroine vs. The Writer (Complete Series 2)
- The Fantasy Heroine vs. The Writer (Complete Series 3)
Lists
- Fantasy Books with Word-Based or Book-Based Magic Systems (Book Riot) An interesting list, but they left out one of the best: the Libriomancer series by Jim Hines. Libriomancers have a peculiar magical talent: they can physically reach into a page and pull out objects (as long as those objects fit through the dimensions of the page.) Imagine being able to have Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber, Lucy Pevensie’s healing cordial, or Harry Potter’s wand literally at your fingertips!
Wendy
I’m bookmarking this post and will read those articles about Mastadon. I just have hope that Twitter will survive, but just in case, I might want to move over there.
Wendy recently posted…Stacking the Shelves #67!
Nicole @ BookWyrm Knits
I’m still not sure I’m going to join Mastodon, but I’ve saved links of where some of the authors I follow are there in case I need it. On the other hand, I’ve found most of the artists I follow on Twitter over on Tumblr, so I’m good to go as far as that part is concerned.
I pitched in to the Locus fundraiser. I’m also a subscriber of theirs, which I hope helps too. They do good stuff.
Nicole @ BookWyrm Knits recently posted…Last Linkity of 2022