News & Notes — 5/18/13

May 18, 2013 Star Trek, SYNC, writing 8

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

Books & Ebooks in the News:

    Photo by Spirit-Fire (via Flickr).  Used under CC BY 2.0 license.

     

    Worth Reading:

      Free & Bargain books:

       

       

      •  I just found out about SYNC, a service that posts free audiobook downloads (one per week throughout the summer) “to introduce the listening experience.”  Some are classics; some are relatively recent YA releases like The False Prince, Grave Mercy, and The Raven Boys.  You can see the complete list of this summer’s titles and dates here.  This would be a great way to pick up a few audiobooks to review!  Heads-up: you will need the Overdrive Media Console software to download the mp3 files to your computer, but they should be DRM-free when you get them.

      For Writers and Bloggers:

      Really Cool:   

      • If you’re a fan of Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles, a small game company in Texas is using Kickstarter to fund development and production of a set of The Name of the Wind playing cards. These will be regular playing cards, but with original art related to The Name of the Wind and, from the look of the card above, The Wise Man’s Fear.  The minimum donation gets you one limited-edition deck of cards (once they’re actually in production.)  If you’re into these books, the art so far is seriously cool.

      Awesome lists:

        Just for Fun:

        I’m always on the lookout for interesting articles, lists, and links for News & Notes, so please let me know if you see (or write!) anything that might be good for this feature.  You can leave me a comment or send me an email — my address is on the About/Review Policy/Contact page.

        8 Responses to “News & Notes — 5/18/13”

        1. Jan

          Lots of good news this week! The Pinterest site sounds great. And I’m thinking of moving my blog to WordPress, too! I also have a mention of the Sync site in my Sunday post tomorrow. I downloaded audio books from there last summer. My husband, daughter and I saw the new Star Trek movie today. It was very good. 🙂

          • Lark @ The Bookwyrm's Hoard

            I’ve marked my calendar to be sure to download all the Sync books I’m interested in. And I’m hoping to see the Star Trek movie next weekend, assuming next week the indexing goes better than it did this week.

        2. kimbacaffeinate

          Not sure if info on Nook is correct, they just updated the software on their Nook HD+ which I own and love by the way. They added chrome, google play and more. I now have the kindle app on it and it does everything a tablet would do.

          • Lark @ The Bookwyrm's Hoard

            I know they did, which is what made last week’s revelations about Microsoft’s purported bid rather surprising. I don’t think this story has played out all the way yet, though. The LA Times posted a piece a few days ago (which I missed — sorry!) which refutes the previous story, and Publishers Weekly is also now questioning it. Both are basing their stories on a story by Insider Monkey that uses an anonymous source. OTOH, I gather that when Tech Crunch broke the news that Microsfoft was considering a bid for Nook, they had documents to back up their claim. So the truth is not easy to sort out. It will be interesting to see which way things go.