Welcome to Buzz Worthy News where the stories are awesome and not at all well-written. Need your YA industry news? Never fear, Kate is here to give it all to you. Just, ya know, not in any kinda sophisticated sense or nothing.

In this week’s Buzz Worthy News: Completely horrible plagiarism story, Booktube vs Bloggers, GRRM has new show, Shatter Me to be a TV series, possible Princess Diaries 3 to be made and American Gods gets the green light and lots, lots 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 Tuesday post: Hot New Titles.

Controversies

Completely horrible person plagiarises another blogger, gets caught and then claims it was all an experiment

(Written by Kat)

So Anachronist13 plagiarised a bunch of people and when they were finally caught out they claimed it was all a social experiment.

“Still after a while I grew curious what can actually be done to people who copy and paste from your blog without giving due credit or any credit at all.”

Okay, sorry, I have to stop you there. Please, let me introduce you to the Scientific Method.

• Ask a Question
• Do Background Research
• Construct a Hypothesis
• Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment
  
• Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion
• Communicate Your Results

Please, before you even think of engaging in an “experiment” consider both the scientific method AND ethics. Because certainly, becoming a plagiarist yourself, was not the only way of discovering the effects of plagiarism.

That is both thoughtless and cruel. Particularly to the person victimised by Anachronist’s abhorrent behaviour. Behaviour that was far from ethical or thoughtful.

You can see the rest of this post here. And how thoughtless, cruel and it was to harm someone just for your own personal satisfaction. Then to write a blog post mocking their distress? Truly asshole territory there.

Book Bloggers Vs. BookTubers

(Written by Steph)

So in case you live under a rock or weren’t on twitter this past week, you may have missed what rocked the book blogging and booktube communities. I, myself, missed much of it until we were tagged in a loveathon tweet as a response to the tension between the two groups. But I’m pretty damn good at the internet and it wasn’t hard to find out what happened. Here’s the low down of the TL;DR crowd:

• Book Bloggers were talking amongst themselves on twitter aboutbooktubers. Comments include:
  • Implying that they don’t really review books
  • That they promote books they don’t like
  • That they get money from publishers
  • Other general, blanket statements
• Booktubers jumped in the twitter convo and were obviously not thrilled
• Book bloggers felt they were just voicing an opinion among friends and later clarified they were talking about a specific group of booktubers
• Book bloggers involved apologized

Enter Samantha from Thoughts on Tomes. She caught wind of the controversy and decided to make a discussion video about her thoughts.

Now, the video is kinda long and for our readers who may be at their work place and can’t watch Youtube, I will consolidate her main points below:

• She finds the rift between booktube and book bloggers ridiculous
• She has seen book bloggers speaking negatively about booktube in the past, mostly at or around BEA, so this instance was not the first
• The vast majority of booktubers don’t get paid from publishers and don’t receive ARCs
• Booktubers work just as hard as book bloggers
• Booktubers that are usually talked about by bloggers are the “big booktubers”
• Negative converstations about booktube by bloggers generalize the entire community in a negative light
• We are all book lovers
• You don’t have to watch sponsored videos if you are against them
• She feels publishers invest more in bloggers (ARCs and more) because they are more familiar with them
• She says it takes a lot less of a following on a blog to get noticed by pubs than on booktube
• It’s hurtful to hear that booktube reviews are not as intellectual or insightful as book bloggers
• If you’re going to talk negatively about someone, please do it privately

So here is my response to this controversy:

This doesn’t surprise me one bit and it’s been festering for a long time now. I’ve seen bloggers talk negatively about booktube and I’ve also seen some things that are not so awesome in the booktube community (but really, no community is perfect!). I’m not going to name the names of the book bloggers who were originally involved because 1) Some of their points have been voiced by others 2) At least one of the bloggers involved has received hate DM’s from this controversy.

The bookish community has grown so much over the years. Before, there was only blogging, and not as many at that. There wasn’t a lot of promo and pubs were just starting to open up to working with bloggers. Now there is blogging, booktube, bookstagram and booklr (bookish tumblr for you old folks). We have grown and are experiencing a lot of growing pains.

I think it’s great that we have so many new communities, but I also understand how bloggers can feel overwhelmed by the new changes and the struggle to keep up with changing trends. So when I visited New York in April, I started gathering my own info straight from publishers. I’ve mostly sat on this info and only shared it with bloggers I’m friends with because I wasn’t sure how to approach it. This seems a good time as any. Here are some things I learned about Booktube over the last year of observing and asking questions:

• Booktube is new and publishers are just starting to reach out to them, which makes sense, because some of them have a lot of reach.
• Some of them do get paid to do videos, but the vast majority of them do not
• The booktubers that do get paid work with the Marketing department and not Publicity. Bloggers mainly work with Publicity which is why you won’t really see any offers from them.
• Publishers probably would pay some book bloggers if more of them actually charged them. But at that time, you’d be working with Marketing and not necessarily Publicity. But our community seems to be against being paid for services rendered. Why is this?
• Some bloggers are a little miffed by The Panel at Book Blogger Con 2014, where bloggers were unintentionally insulted. This is where a lot of the tension has come from.
• I’ve met some of the “big booktubers” and they seem like nice folks
• Bloggers do work with publishers more than booktubers. If you went to any of the BEA parties this year or last, you could count on one hand how many booktubers were present. I wish this would change. But considering many of these parties are put together by the publicity departments, I can see why the guest list is the way it is.
• Bloggers get most of the ARCs; booktube is just starting to get ARCs
• There is an obvious generational gap between the communities. Many booktubers are a lot younger than bloggers and attract younger readers. Most bloggers I know are adult women and their readership is reflective of this.
• Publishers have not forgotten about bloggers and do value what we do even if they don’t show it as much. However, publishing is also a business and I think some of us can get our feelings hurt if we don’t remember this.
• Some booktubers treat their channel as more of a business than some bloggers, and their community is more open to sponsored content than blogging. I really wish this would change for bloggers because we are virtually a FREE community and I believe it sometimes bites us in the ass.  Specifically, when you see bloggers complaining about how under appreciated they feel for all they do. Paid content isn’t the devil, guys, and it doesn’t make you a sell out for accepting it.

All in all, I think we could really learn something from each other. The book blogging community has long since proved it’s a force to be reckoned with and can have a huge impact on sales. Booktube and other mediums are on the rise and are going through the same thing bloggers had to deal with at first with pubs. I do hope that once we all get over this awkward puberty phase, it’ll lead to some really awesome collaborations between platforms. We’re all great on our own, but we’d be fucking fantastic together.

/kumbayah speech

Entertainment News

George RR Martin Has New Shows In The Works (SRSLY???)

Well, I guess I should be happy The Winds Of Winter gets at LEAST a nod from Martin as he announces on his website that he is working on some other projects:

Life is impossibly busy right now. I am wrestling with the Son of Kong (that is, working on THE WINDS OF WINTER), trying to wrap up a final round of edits and revisions on the twenty-third Wild Cards book (HIGH STAKES), developing three new series concepts for HBO and Cinemax, hiring writers and directors for three short low-budget films I am hoping to produce based on some classic SF short stories (more on that in the months to come), making my way through the Hugo Packet to prepare to vote, looking forward to opening JURASSIC WORLD at the Cocteay and to hosting a ten-author special event for the release of Steve Stirling’s new “Emberverse” anthology, THE CHANGE.

In case you missed the TINY mention, it’s right here:

developing three new series concepts for HBO and Cinemax

Now, we already knew about Captain Cosmos, his show about a sci-fi writer.  But I admit I’m curious about the other 2.

BUT NOT CURIOUS ENOUGH TO LET YOU OFF THE HOOK FOR GETTING THAT 6TH BOOK OUT, GEORGE!!!

Source

Shatter Me Rights Bought By ABC

I can think of more than a few bookish people I know that were squeeing over this news today:

https://twitter.com/TaherehMafi/status/611624840060014592

Yes, that’s right Warner Fanatics (don’t anyone pretend there’s a #teamAdam group lurking around, becuz I know all of you too well), you will soon be able to shriek with delight or threaten to rage until the world ends over casting choices.  Good luck!

The series rights have been sold to ABC Signature Studios, an off-shoot of ABC Television that specializes in producing series to be sold on other cable platforms. In the past, they’ve sold titles to USA Network, TBS, ABC Family, and Lifetime.

So yay, right?  Am I right? (I have no idea, since I only read the first one where Warner is a CAD)

Source

Princess Diaries 3?!?!?!

OMG, how can this be true?  Like for realz, guys?

Walt Disney Pictures is officially moving forward with the third entry in the beloved PRINCESS DIARIES franchise. The original, which helped skyrocket Anne Hathaway to the forefront, was adapted from Meg Cabot’s 2000 novel of the same name.

For years, rumors have circled about Disney’s plans to release a third chapter, but series star Hathaway has refuted her involvement with a new sequel on multiple occasions. The plot of Princess Diaries 3 is being kept tight under lock and key, with sources telling me that the film may or may not include Hathaway, with an intention to launch a reboot of the franchise.

Hmmm… I will reserve my cynicism, but what is this gonna be about?  And who is gonna be in it??

Source

American Gods Gets Greenlight

Well, rumors have been flying for quite a while over Neil Gaiman’s book possibly getting a Starz remake and I’m happy to say, it’s official!

Starz is moving forward with plans for a series adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s 2001 novel “American Gods,” to be shepherded by Bryan Fuller and Michael Green.

Fuller and Green are writing the adaptation and will serve as showrunners and exec producers. Gaiman will also exec produce for FremantleMedia North America.

Starz said series production would be begin once producers land their leading man for the role of  Shadow Moon in the saga about a war between traditional gods from mythology and contemporary, materialistic deities. Shadow Moon is an ex-con and bodyguard for Mr. Wednesday, an older god in the guise of a conman.

As Mr. Gaiman himself states:

“I am thrilled, ‎scared, delighted, nervous and a ball of glorious anticipation. The team that is going to bring the world of ‘American Gods’ to the screen has been assembled like the master criminals in a caper movie: I’m relieved and confident that my baby is in good hands. Now we finally move to the exciting business that fans have been doing for the last dozen years: casting our Shadow, our Wednesday, our Laura.”

YAY! (Now I just need to read it. ha!)

Source

Bradley Cooper & Itamar Moses To Adapt Hyperion

Back when I was still earning my chops in the world of sci-fi reading, I ran across this novel in a library book sale and picked it up for 25 cents.  It was called Hyperion and it freaking blew me away.  Imagine my delight at hearing that SyFy channel is going to adapt it.

The NBCUniversal-owned cable network announced Wednesday that it is teaming with Bradley Cooper, Oscar winner Graham King (The Departed, Argo) and Todd Phillips (The Hangover) to adapt Dan Simmons‘ Hyperion as an event series.

Set on the eve of Armageddon with the entire galaxy at war, Hyperion is the story of seven pilgrims who set forth on a voyage to seek the answers to the unsolved riddles of their lives. Each carries a desperate hope and a terrible secret — while one may hold the fate of humanity in his hands.

Published in 1989, the novel is the first book in the Hyperion Cantos series and won the prestigious Hugo Award.

Boardwalk Empire‘s Itamar Moses will pen the script and serve as a co-executive producer on the drama from Universal Cable Productions.

Eeep!  I hope they knock this one out of the park!

Source

Amazon Changes Its Royalty System (Yay?)

So, I guess Amazon has finally heard all the bitching and moaning about the abysmal royalties associated with it’s Kindle Unlimited service.  They’ve made some significant changes in their mode of deciding royalties:

Beginning July 1, Amazon will no longer pay royalties on books that were downloaded and read at least 10 percent through the program. Instead they will only pay royalties on pages that are actually read. “We’re making this switch in response to great feedback we received from authors who asked us to better align payout with the length of books and how much customers read,” Amazon explains on the KDP site. “Under the new payment method, you’ll be paid for each page individual customers read of your book, the first time they read it.”

Of course, right out of the gate, everyone is complaining about this way of calculating royalties, too.  It’s almost like a big company that wants to make a lot of money keeps figuring out ways to get more.  Go figure.

Now authors are likely to make less money each time the book’s borrowed, unless his or her readers complete a considerable chunk of the text (or even–gasp–read the whole thing).

• The author of a 100 page book that was borrowed and read completely 100 times would earn $1,000 ($10 million multiplied by 10,000 pages for this author divided by 100,000,000 total pages).

Author C. E. Kilgore points out, correctly, that this estimate per page is bonkers. It’s unlikely that most authors will make $10 a page. The average KU author makes $1.40 per KU borrow, and is about to make less.

Kindle Unlimited authors are more likely to make a fraction of a penny per page.

My poor brain can’t keep up!

So, an author who has been making a pretty decent earning with their 25page short erotica KU books, by publishing two or three per month and getting $1.40 /KU Borrow for them – well, now they are going to be getting 25cents per KU borrow. That is how extremely significant this payout change is. 

On the other hand, an author of a 250 page fantasy book who was getting 1.40 / KU borrow (instead of $2.70/sale if they were selling for 3.99 at 70% royalty) will now get $2.50 per KU borrow. BUT, that’s only if the reader reads all 250 pages. If the reader stops at page 50, then the author will get 50cents. In the old payout system, that 50 page mark would have been beyond the 10% requirement, and the author would have earned $1.40.

I’ve got it now.  Amazon is tired of paying $1.40 to people who wrote a 25 page novella.  And it’s also tired of authors with longer books jumping ship because they think that $1.40 is ridiculous payment for 80,000 word book. Gotcha.

Still, I can’t see how this is going to work out great for anyone but a few.

Sources HERE and HERE

Interesting Links

21 JK Rowling Reactions For Everyday Situations

Analyzing White Characters In Books