News & Notes – 7/04/15

July 4, 2015 News & Notes 10

News & Notes

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

 

Worth Reading

 

Great Blog Posts

 

For Writers & Bloggers

 

Book & Movie Announcements

  • Neil Gaiman to Write [Some] Episodes of ‘American Gods’ (Variety)
  • Tamora Pierce confirms graphic novel of First Test, the first book in the Protector of the Small quartet. On her Facebook page, the writer announced, “The editor has cleared it: We can announce that the script for the FIRST TEST graphic novel is finished, and that the project is moving forward, publication date TBA!”

 

Really Cool / Just for Fun

Fan-designed

 

Bookish Quote

Ursula K. LeGuin quote

 

That’s it for this week!

 

10 Responses to “News & Notes – 7/04/15”

  1. Katherine @ I Wish I Lived in a Library

    Great links! The title on the one about Scribd cutting back on romances made me laugh and I’m so curious about Go Set a Watchman and the explanation of tea. I’m excited about the resurgence in Golden Age mysteries. Hopefully that will make some hard to find titles available.
    Katherine @ I Wish I Lived in a Library recently posted…My Favorite Summer FoodsMy Profile

    • Lark_Bookwyrm

      I wondered if Scribd and other services were going to run into trouble with that. Romance readers tend to plow through a lot of books! As for the Golden Age mysteries, I’ve been noticing a lot of titles being re-issued as ebooks. Open Road Media has done some, particularly Catherine Aird (not Golden Age but she just as well could be) and some of the lesser-known British authors. And someone has reissued almost all the Campion mysteries by Margery Allingham, again as ebooks. I think publishers and estates are catching on: there’s a lot less financial risk in ebooks, so it makes financial sense to bring back older “classic” titles and authors.

    • Lark_Bookwyrm

      They could have, indeed. And they also probably should have done a little more market research ahead of time. Any romance reader could have told them that a lot of romance readers plow through 6-20 books per month.

  2. R_Hunt @ View From My Home

    Lol @ the article about romance readers. I’m not a huge one myself but I know how addictive and fun they can be for some people. It seems they handled this wrong though.

    I liked the EL James twitter fiasco (if you can’t handle the heat get out of the kitchen…or… if you can’t imagine how many people didn’t enjoy your version of “sexy” degrading of women, now you know Ms. James).

    I did enjoy the tea article. I’ve read books where the characters have tea in the afternoon and also have tea at dinnertime, or serve the children their “tea” and then have their own more formal dinner.

    Thanks for sharing all these fun articles!
    R_Hunt @ View From My Home recently posted…Weekly Wrap-Up, Even Though I Was “Gone”My Profile

    • Lark_Bookwyrm

      Glad you enjoyed the links, Rita!

      Two of the stories this week seemed to involve miscalculations. Scribd clearly misjudged the reading appetite (and capacity) of romance readers. And I can’t imagine what E.L. James’s publicist was thinking. I know the books are immensely popular, but they’re also immensely unpopular, and many of the people who don’t like them are passionate and vocal about why. Opening her up to public criticism like that was a really bad idea. Buzzfeed actually didn’t show some of the crueler tweets, which is why I went with that article over some others I saw. On the one hand, it’s book news so I felt I should include it, but on the other hand, I didn’t want to be party to bashing the author as a person any more than I could avoid by posting an article. It’s reasonable to criticize the work itself, but some people got very, very nasty toward her personally, and that’s neither kind nor courteous. She’s a human being with feelings; I think a lot of tweeters forgot that.

      • R_Hunt @ View From My Home

        Good reply!

        I would not read any Fifty Shades books, just not my personal genre, and my eldest daughter wanted to see what the hype was about last year, but put it down with an “ugh” after a few chapters.

        However, I don’t believe in censorship of books, so whoever wants to read them… go for it, and hope you enjoy them, truly I do. I made my somewhat snide comment to point out that Ms. James must understand that there are folks who are miffed by her series and will say so since her plot is controversial.

        Freedom of speech, appropriate for July 4th. That being said, those comments are downright cruel and they shouldn’t have crossed the line that they did. She gave many people a fun time reading her books and she made money doing it. Nothing wrong there. I don’t like her books’ plot, but would never make such a comment to someone who was able to follow her dreams and become a famous author. How would we all feel if in her shoes?? Someone dropped the ball by allowing this “Q & A” to take place. I originally thought it was her idea, but if it wasn’t… then, oops.

        Thanks for the give and take, Lark.
        R_Hunt @ View From My Home recently posted…Weekly Wrap-Up, Even Though I Was “Gone”My Profile