Buzz Worthy News 11th June 2012

Buzz Worthy News

The universe continues it’s barbaric crusade against some of our favourite and most beloved authors, science attempts to rid me of a great way to ignore my kids, J.K. Rowling is causing us to salivate over a Playstation game, Kobo dips it’s flirtatious toes into the self-pubbed world.  All this and much, much more in this week’s Buzz Worthy News.

For last week’s cover reveals and this week’s new YA releases, check out our weekly Friday post, Hot New Titles.

Book World News

17 Year Old Sarah Turbin won John Green’s Cover Contest for An Abundance of Katherines.

“Green said the cover “embraced the nerdiness of the book,” and he shared this piece of advice on book design: “I think it has to look good in print; it has to look good blown-up; it has to look good on a screen and it has to look good one-inch tall.””

Green held the cover contest for a new cover of his 2006 Printz Honor winner.  Penguin books supposedly gave away 150 signed copies at BEA.  Steph and I wouldn’t know… we didn’t get to go.  *Weeps silently*

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The Paladin Prophecy, a trilogy by Twin Peaks creator, Mark Frost, has been bought by Reliance Entertainment and Kintop Pictures.  The first book of the trilogy is being published by Random House in September 2012, but the adaptation has a hopeful expected release date of 2014.

The literary series chronicles Will West, a teenager who initially tries to hide his “unusual abilities” before entering “a complex world of secret societies and supernatural conflicts.”

Reliance will develop the screenplay of the first book with Frost, a best-selling author whose other screenwriting credits include “Fantastic Four” and numerous episodes of “Hill Street Blues.” Frost will also executive produce.

This is the same creator as Fantastic Four.  I don’t know how to feel about that…

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Image from Sundance Channel

In the universe’s ongoing attempt to purge is wrath on us book lovers, another awesome author passed away this week.  Ray Bradbury, author of ‘The Martian Chronicles’, ‘Farenheit 451’ and many, many more books, passed away at the age of 91.

“The only figure comparable to mention would be [Robert A.] Heinlein and then later [Arthur C.] Clarke,” said Gregory Benford, a UC Irvine physics professor who is also a Nebula award-winning science fiction writer. “But Bradbury, in the ’40s and ’50s, became the name brand.”

He offered a set of metaphors and life puzzles to ponder for the rocket age and beyond, and has influenced a wide swath of popular culture–from children’s writer R.L. Stine and singer Elton John (who penned his hit “Rocket Man” as an homage), to architect Jon Jerde who enlisted Bradbury to consider and offer suggestions about reimagining public spaces.

Does anybody else feeling like setting up a taskforce to guard J.K. Rowling from bodily harm?

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Barry Unsworth also passed away this week at the age of 81 in Italy.

Barry Unsworth penned 17 novels.  His most famous, Sacred Hunger, won the Booker prize in 1992, and dealt with the slave trade.

“Barry was a wonderful writer and this is a great loss,” said publishing director Jocasta Hamilton. “Barry’s work was characterised by a willingness to tackle big subjects with great humanity. His writing brought enormous pleasure as well as being thought-provoking and illuminating. We are incredibly proud to have had the opportunity to publish his last novel, The Quality of Mercy, which has been shortlisted for the Walter Scott prize. Many of us met him in 2010 and were as charmed in person as we had been thrilled by his novels.”

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J.K. Rowling wrote new content for the Playstation Harry Potter Game, Book of Spells.

Suffering from EXTREME WANT.  Even though I am a diehard Xbox gamer and haven’t owned a Playstation since the 90’s.

Written by Miranda Goshawk over two hundred years ago, the Book of Spells can be found in the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts library. This advanced textbook will assist students on their journey to becoming an accomplished witch or wizard. Read, discover, learn and practice spells such as Incendio, Wingardium Leviosa and Expelliarmus, as well as discover mischievous notes, spells and humorous anecdotal facts scribbled into the margins by previous Hogwarts students. J.K. Rowling has written a conundrum that leads you through the experience, providing insight into the values a witch or wizard has to learn, and inviting you to journey through the book to unlock new content, rewarding successful students along the way.

J.K. Rowling, you saucy minx, what are you trying to do to me?  Ugh!  How much do Playstations cost?

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Kobo is dipping it toes into the self-pubbed world with free reading on open devices.

“Unlike competitive self-publishing tools, Kobo allows authors to set their book price to ‘FREE’ at any time without restrictive exclusive agreements, in addition Kobo pays 10% higher royalties on sales in many growing international markets and allows authors much more freedom on pricing. The company’s focus on Social Reading will also give authors the opportunity to connect with readers through its Kobo Author Notes program enabling writers to provide commentary within the book for readers to enjoy as well as through Kobo’s free apps, integrated with Facebook Timeline.”

Sounds good but does it sound too good to be true?  Kobo’s new figures show a lot of growth but they’ll now be competing with Smashwords who recently projected it would double this year’s profit to a cool 12 million dollars.  This may not sound like much but Smashwords does make a concerted effort to keep the profit margins way down.

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Damn science is at it again, ruining my ability to be a negligent parent!  The Guardian reports that researchers at the Joan Ganz Cooney center have published a study about their research involving the use of interactive ebooks on children and young readers.

“Researchers at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center in New York worked with 32 pairs of parents and their three to six-year-old children for the small study, Print Books vs Ebooks, which gave each family a print book and either a basic ebook or an enhanced ebook version of the same title. Enhanced ebooks were found to distract children from the story, and their bells and whistles prevented children from remembering as many narrative details.”

What are you trying to do to me, science?  That was my last recourse of guilt-free, negligent parenting.  “Oh hey, Kids, mummy needs five minutes to recoup her sanity.  Here, read this interactive book and shut up, okay?” Kids are reading, mummy gets to rock backwards and forwards muttering obscenities without being interrupted – EVERYONE WINS.

This study is insanely small, the researchers hope to repeat it with a larger sample size.   This is my public plea requesting that they don’t.

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Scandalous Scandals

Breath deep, stretch your shoulders and enjoy a moment in which you can realize that there’s nothing to report this week.  There were a couple of kerfuffles with repeat offenders, but I think everyone will agree that these people need neither further encouragement or continued press from their actions.  Thus we will no longer cover them here.

Photo from iSucceed

Just think about it.  Apart from a couple of recalcitrant turds blazing the reviewer-abusing trail, we here at Cuddlebuggery couldn’t find a single other instance of drama in the book reviewing world.  Celebrate, drink, consider this as a possible sign of the apocalypse but DEFINITELY enjoy it while it lasts.