News & Notes is a weekly Saturday post featuring book- and publishing-related news, links to interesting articles and opinion pieces, and other cool stuff.
NOTE on paywalls: Publisher’s Weekly and The Guardian may require you to sign up for a free account in order to read their content. Both The New York Times and the Washington Post have paywalls, but allow a small number of free articles per month.
Literary Losses
NAME, short bio
Obituaries and tributes: The Guardian; Los Angeles Times; NPR. Bibliography and Biography: Goodreads; Wikipedia
Bookish News
- Fragments of a rare Merlin manuscript from c. 1300 have been discovered and digitised in a ground-breaking three-year project at Cambridge University Library (University of Cambridge)
- US authors’ copyright lawsuits against OpenAI and Microsoft combined in New York with newspaper actions (The Guardian)
- IMLS Staff Furloughed, Prompting Questions from ‘Disappointed’ Board as the Trump administration seeks to eliminate the Institute of Museum and Library Services (Publishers Weekly)
- Publishers Ask Congress to Defend Libraries as Federal Library Grant Funding Ends (Publishers Weekly)
- US government blocks Canadian access to border-straddling library (Reuters; also The Guardian)
- South Carolina Postpones Vote on Banning 10 Books Statewide (Book Riot)
- Ohio’s Republican Budget Proposal Destroys Library Funding, Restricts LGBTQ+ Books, Targets Library Trustee Terms (Book Riot)
Worth Reading/Viewing
- How Tariffs Will Impact Book Costs for Readers (Book Riot) This post is dated Feb. 20, so the specific tariff rates cited are outdated, but the general information remains true.
- The Rise of Romance Bookstores (Smart Bitches, Trashy Books: guest post by Lady Jane of Romancing the Data) — with links to directory and map!
For Writers & Bloggers
- NaNoWriMo is shutting down. According to an email I and other NaNoWriMo writers received this week, directing us to this 27-minute video, the NaNoWriMo organization and website is shutting down. The video expresses the viewpoint of the interim executive director; it’s a clear explanation, but also a justification of what she and the Board have done since a major crisis in November 2023. The comments below the video include a number of dissenting opinions about how things were handled by the organization. Regardless of the reasons, the loss NaNoWriMo is a loss to the writing community, although I’m sure the idea and practice of writing 50K words in a month (and even choosing November as that month) will continue. My local-area formerly-NaNoWriMo Discord group plans to continue but is discussing a different month. Personally, I’m inclined to stick to November when I do NaNoWriMo at all, for sentimental reasons if nothing else. (You can also read about the shut-down on Literary Hub.)
- If you’re a writer looking for alternatives to NaNoWriMo, my first suggestion is to check out 4theWords, a writing gamification site that is fantastic for making yourself write. The monthly subscription is low, and it is is so worth it. They also do several special events a year, including one in November. My second suggestion is to check out the NaNoWriMo subreddit’s MegaThread 3.0 for NaNo Alternatives, Writing Discords & Resources, which has a ton of writing resources and groups.
Free Fiction Online
- “Charm and Chimeras”, written cooperatively by Jen Lynning, Jacquelyn Benson, Stephanie Burgis, Colleen Cowley, AJ Lancaster, Anne Renwick, and S.C. Greyson, and published on the FaRoFeb website. Each author wrote up to 300 words, continuing the story from where the previous author left off. It’s light and fun; I enjoyed it.
Bookish Quote
Leave a Reply