News at a glance: Jamie Bamber (Battle Star Galactica) narrates The Bane Chronicles, the first 3D book cover, Zola purchases Bookish, The Peanut Gang is back with Simon & Schuster, #PitMad happened, KidLit authors play write or dare, our first look at Outlander and more!
Buzz Worthy News is Cuddlebuggery’s weekly news post bringing you all the best information about the book and blogging world, particularly for the venn diagram of people who overlap between the two. For new releases and cover reveals of all the best Young Adult fiction, check out our Sunday post: Hot New Titles.
***A note to our readers: Kat and I are currently experimenting with changing Buzz around (title, format, posting day), so please excuse us as we get everything sorted out!
Wanna watch the news instead of reading it?
A few stories we mentioned in our video are listed below. Want to read Buzz instead? Check out our YA Roundup feature at Tor.com.
Formula for best seller has been found
Science, is there anything she can’t do, that saucy minx? A group of scientists have worked out an algorithm to determine what book will be a best seller and the elements are a mix of surprising and predictable.
The book has to avoid the use of cliches and use a whole lot less verbs if it wants to have a shot, apparently. The algorithm, using statistical stylometry to analyse writing and style in order to compile data that the scientists could use to predict the popularity of a novel. They tested it by running Project Gutenberg titles through the algorithm and found it had an 84% success rate.
“They found several trends that were often found in successful books, including heavy use of conjunctions such as “and” and “but” and large numbers of nouns and adjectives.
Less successful work tended to include more verbs and adverbs and relied on words that explicitly describe actions and emotions such as “wanted”, “took” or “promised”, while more successful books favoured verbs that describe thought processes such as “recognised” or “remembered”.”
Statisticians, man, is there anything they can’t do? I mean, other than bake me a pie.
Award Winning Crime Novelist a total Murderer
Alaric Hunt, author of Cuts Through Bone, won the prestigious Private Eye Writer of America award for debut crime novelists. However, when journalists went to contact the author about the prize, they discovered that Hunt is serving a thirty year sentence with no chance of parole.
“He’s not available. He’s in an institution,” his cousin, Jade Reed, confided in a publisher who called about the prize winning author.
“Will he be out soon?” came the reply. After a pause, Ms Reed said: “Well, he’s there indefinitely.” SOURCE
Alaric and his brother, Jason, were arrested and convicted for murdering 23 year old Joyce Austin. Jason Hunt lit a fire in order to misdirect emergency services while they robbed a jewellery store. As a result of that, Joyce Austin died of smoke inhalation.
However, Cuts Through Bone is not about this crime and is apparently completely unconnected to it. Cuts Through Bone is about a military veteran who is wrongfully accused of murdering his girlfriend. A middle-aged detective and a girl team up to solve the case.
Natalie M.
I love the #PitMad idea! Gives writers another way to pitch their ideas to publishers and agents. But it’ll definitely stretch their writing abilities, since they have to cram everything they want to say in the space of a 140 character tweet which includes spaces. Sort of reminds me of me overshooting the word limit for an essay, and spending another hour raking my hand through my disheveled hair and desperately trying to cut down 2567 words to 2000.
P.S. I think I like it better when you grouped all the BuzzWorthy news on Cuddlebuggery instead of directing readers to another site. Just my opinion 🙂
Steph Sinclair
I’m impressed by authors who can manage to squeeze their book into 140 characters. I struggle with that for my random thoughts. The dilemma of which word to delete to fit a tweet is maddening.
Thanks for your feedback on the format. We’ll try something else for next week. 😀
E.Maree
Cuddlebuggery ladies, I love ya, but I’m not digging this new format so much. After reading the ‘news at a glance’ I scrolled down looking for the Bane Chronicles update and the 3D book cover… when I couldn’t find anything, I scrolled back up to check I hadn’t missed anything. I got confused and thought maybe the ‘news at a glance’ section had links to separate posts, but all the links were unrelated to the story. So I wondered if maybe all the news was in vlog format now…?
It was only on the third read I noticed the small line under the video linking to the Tor news. I’d suggest moving that line to a position of prominence, at the start of the post or clearly highlighted it after ‘news at a glance’.
E.Maree
I do really like the way the Tor format includes bestseller’s lists, book deals, releases and cover reveals now, though. That’s awesome.
Steph Sinclair
Sorry about that! I’ll change that so it’s less confusing. We have a another idea for next week that might work out better.
Mel@thedailyprophecy
I’m so excited for The Outlander. I love the look of the trailer 🙂 She does look like the Claire in my head, so that’s a good sign!