Buzz Worthy News 2nd July 2012

2 July, 2012 Buzz Worthy News 32 comments

Buzz Worthy News

This week includes a YA novel written by Fifty Shades of Grey, E.L James’ husband, JK Rowling being awesome, Amazon taking over the world and some truly Scandalous Scandals including ARCgate/Bunheadgate and much, much more.

Buzz Worthy News is Cuddlebuggery’s weekly Monday featuring all the latest book world news and blogging community’s Scandalous Scandals.  For weekly YA releases and cover reveals check out our weekly Friday post, Hot New Titles.

Book World News

Image from The Bookseller

E.L. James’ husband Niall Leonard is writing a young adult that is being continually described as “gritty” no matter how many times I ask them to stop. The novel has been picked up by Random House Children’s Books.  It’s apparently:

“A “gritty” crime thriller about a London teen who’s being accused of murdering his stepfather.”

And when talking about why he started writing the novel:

“Crusher is a story I have wanted to write for years and it finally all came together last November when my wife encouraged me to take part in the Nanowrimo novel-writing event.”

I was wondering why I was so depressed today.  I guess this is it.

SOURCE

Dorchester goes up for bidding in August and apparently Amazon has thrown down the gauntlet wanting to buy it.

Dorchester’s catalogue focuses mainly on genre fiction.  This isn’t the first publisher that Amazon has acquired since it started publishing for itself.  In addition to its six imprints, Amazon acquired Avalon books and Marshall Cavendish books.  Next stop: The world.

What does this mean for titles currently with Dorchester?

“In practice Amazon, or any firm that outbids Amazon in an auction to be conducted in August, will tender amendments to authors and agents transferring rights to the new entity, in exchange for which back royalties will be paid in full. The acquiring firm will then convert the books to e-books (a number of them have been converted already) and release them in e-book format. The original covers are among the assets to be acquired; our understanding is that Dorchester owned them outright and no rights clearance will have to be undertaken.”

Hey, have we mentioned that we’re with the Amazon Affiliates Program?  So totally buy from Amazon!  Err… after clicking a link on this site to theirs so that we get commission.

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During Rowling’s weekly attempts to make us either scream with joy or weep beautifully with overzealous emotion, it has been made known that she helped a fan cope with being bullied at school.

NO CRYING YET!

Sacia Flowers wrote to JK Rowling about how Harry Potter helped her deal with being bullied at school.

“Being picked on most of my life, I never had many friends due to my own insecurities and fear of loss, but through the most difficult times in my life, Harry was my best friend when I needed him most and he lent me his world in which to escape my own grief and hurt, and for this I thank you from the deepest part of my heart.”

You are still absolutely NOT allowed to cry.  Who is Sacia Flowers?

“In September of 2006, following a desperately sad childhood that saw both drug-addicted parents murdered and the care of her younger siblings left in her hands, 16-year-old Sacia Flowers decided to write to J. K. Rowling.”

Okay, one sad tear is allowed to slip down your cheek.  But that’s it!

Rowling reflects on the similarities in her own childhood experiences and finishes the letter with the following line:

“It is an honour to me to know that somebody like you loves Harry as much as you do. Thank you very much for writing to me, I will treasure your letter.”

And…NOW cry.

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Honestly, the universe hates me with an unbridled passion this week.  That or Death is getting back at the publishing world for Fifty Shades of Grey – we’ll get back to you.

Nora Ephron – Epic screenwriter, director, author and Most Likely to Contribute to My Chic Movie Nights passed away this week at the age of 71.

Her publisher made the following statement: “It is with great sadness that we report that Nora Ephron has died at the age of 71, after a battle with leukemia. She brought an awful lot of people a tremendous amount of joy. She will be sorely missed.”

If it wasn’t for Nora then college aged douche’s across the western world wouldn’t still be debating whether men and women can be friends and if the sex gets in the way.

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Classics by Splinters has given the classics bold new teeny covers to try and get teens reading more classics.

That is the theory of publishers who are wrapping books like “Emma” and “Jane Eyre” in new covers: provocative, modern jackets in bold shades of scarlet and lime green that are explicitly aimed at teenagers raised on “Twilight” and “The Hunger Games.”

Because this has absolutely never been done before!  Yup.  Nobody has ever tried to revamp classics to look like the YA books that all those cool kids are reading!

Nope.  Never been done before.

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Stanley Fish while writing a piece for the New York Times, enraged literally twos of people by writing about events that happened in The Hunger Games’ trilogy plot that HAVEN’T yet happened in a movie.

“I haven’t even read book III yet. Thank you Mr Fish for RUINING it for me. Haven’t you heard of a spoiler alert?!”

Apparently this is a comment from an actual person and not from a troll robot designed to make us weep for humanity.

Alison Flood from the Guardian says, “Harry Potter lives, Bella chooses Edward, Susan doesn’t get to go to heaven. Now go and find some grown-up books to read, and stop whining.”

Now, putting aside the “find some grown up books to read” comment, c’mon people?! I follow the Gladstone school of Spoiler law.  Except I still think two years (which was when Mockingjay came out) is an excessive amount of time.  What are people going to get upset about next?

Here’s a spoiler!  Jesus dies.  He totally dies.  Crucified.

I expect to hear mass whinging in the comments about how you were totally going to read the whole Bible and how COULD I spoil that for you?

SOURCE

Scandalous Scandals

Image from Pontoon blog

ARCgate/Bunheadgate went down this week and it was… GATEY!  The most salacious kind of gateyness we’ve seen in awhile.

So what happened and what scale of epic was it?

The video has been taken down, but a blogger and her sister (who is not a blogger or Librarian) attended ALA.  Their haul of 150 books – of which they had a copy of each book because sharing is for other people.  Europeans maybe*?

Any way, the 22 minute scandalgasm sent the blogging, authoring, librarian community into fits of apoplectic rage. Everyone was on ALL sides of the issue.

Catagator from Stacked blog wrote something here about it and then followed it up with a secondary one here.  She was also mainly the one calling attention to the issue in the first place.

Jenica Rogers raged and ranted on twitter – her most hilarious and inflammatory being this:

“This has to be the stupidest, most pointless kerfuffle I’ve EVER HEARD OF.  Fucking bunhead librarians make me sick.”

And that was when the secondary scandal Bunheadgate began, not least of all, because everyone knows that bunheads are ballerinas, NOT librarians.  Librarians are Glassesfaces.  Duh!

ALA responded in a tweet here:

Michelle Witte followed up with a series of tweets in this blogpost which outlined her opinion.  Everybody collapsed into an existentialists nightmare, the world ended and then people got bored and moved on.  The original naughty bloggers wrote a clarification here.

*Europeans don’t necessarily share.  I don’t know.  It’s mean to stereotype.

 

 

32 Responses to “Buzz Worthy News 2nd July 2012”

  1. Meg K.

    Oh, God, not another E.L. James-related novel. I have had enough of Christian Grey to last me a lifetime. I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who detests his very existence. O_O

    Rowling, our queen! *sobs hysterically* She’s both a great writer and an awesome person with a great heart. D: She’s just the greatest person alive, but of course, I’m quite biased. 😉

    Thanks for sharing, Kat! This was a very happy post. Well, the J.K. Rowling part was.

  3. Christina (A Reader of Fictions)

    Reading about the ARCgate scandal just took me hours. Now my head hurts. Why does it all have to be such a big deal? All kinds of people go to conferences and take a ton of books. Sigh.

    • Stephanie Sinclair

      @Christina (A Reader of Fictions):

      I don’t know. In this case, it was book collecting on a MASSIVE scale. I saw the video before it was pulled and it screamed greed. They had two copies of almost every book.

      • AnimeJune

        @Stephanie Sinclair: It was also the fact that it was at a conference FOR librarians and the collectors were not librarians. I think if a couple of librarians had walked off with that much swag from a blogger conference, there’d have been complaints, too.

        It’s just that this event seemed to wake up a LOT of pent-up resentment and gave some librarians the perfect excuse to vent everything against bloggers – the same old arguments: “bloggers are uneducated and unprofessional and just after free books” vs. “librarians need a master’s degree and are paid to do this and are about improving their collections for everyone.”

        Which, to be fair, is a valid argument to have about blogger behaviour AT A LIBRARIAN CONFERENCE, but it spilled over into a general “what are bloggers good for anyways?” rant on the internets.

        • Stephanie Sinclair

          @AnimeJune:

          Ugh. Well, you know you have extremes in any situation. Those people are better left ignored. I feel bad for the librarians who are upset in this case. They do pay a lot of money to attend their conference and to not be able to get the books they wanted must really suck. Especially after seeing that video. But saying that about all book bloggers is counterproductive and insulting.

  4. Georgette

    This 50 Shades crap is going to spin up a dervish of related-crapola for a long, long time. Unfortunate doesn’t cover it.

    That’s a great contrast there- first the crap news about more 50 Shades of Lame… and then saved by J.K. Rowling. 50 Shades- not the sort of thing of thing you want to have lasting effects. J.K. and Harry Potter- exactly the sort of thing you want to have impact on many for years to come. Beautifully done.

    People who post what happens, and not use the words “Spoiler Alert” are those people who should be forced to read 50 Shades of Grey. Just my opinion.
    As usual, great blog, Kat.

  5. Rose

    I’ll admit to bawling my eyes out on Rowling’s letter to the fan. I have no shame. She’s such a sweet person.

    And Nora Ephron will certainly be missed. 🙁

  6. Lexxie

    I loved the ALA bloggers response most of all, she seemed more leveled and mature than all the other people who started blogging about it.

    Did you see the article where there’s a few lines from Mr. 50’s book? I think in two or three sentences there are about seven and‘s… Probably won’t be my cup of tea.

    Rowlings’s response was awesome!

    And really, my bible was published this year – so yes, you should have put spoiler alert! 😛

  8. Lisa (Fic Talk)

    As always, a very informative post, Kat. 😀

    LOVE LOVE LOVE Queen J.K. <3

    As for the James' husband… blargh on them both.

    The world has gone mad! Mad, I tell you! – I thought that just this morning in relation to this whole 50 thing.

    Then I read your post about J.K… and EVERYTHING IS MADE BETTER! :')

  9. Yeti

    Bible? Jesus dude? What book is this? Must have passed me by, can’t have been a big seller…

    My husband keeps saying to me all the women where he works are reading 50 Shades of Grey, and I keep telling him I’d rather stick pins in my eyes…or even read the bible book you speak of!

  10. AnimeJune

    I laughed pretty hard about people bitching about book spoilers because they’d rather watch the movies.

    You know Game of Thrones? You can easily, EASILY tell the fans who’ve only watched the show and not read the books – they’re the members of the increasingly nutty Pro-Cersei fandom who post about what a “strong, positive, feminist character she is – she’s just a woman fighting to survive in a man’s world,” and who rant at other people to stop slut-shaming her. Having read Cersei’s behaviour in all the books, um, there is a very very valid reason to hate Cersei and NO she is not in ANY way a positive female character. LOL!

    • Kat Kennedy

      @AnimeJune: SPOILERS! Kidding, I don’t care. Maybe they’re just trying to find something positive about some kind of female character.

  11. AJ

    I have to admit I liked the Harper covers on classic novels. it made me want to buy them even though I’ve read them. But I’m a sucker for covers.

    • Kat Kennedy

      @AJ: I actually do like the new covers because I love the colours and the artwork – even if I did riff on them.

  12. Jay

    I love J.K. Rowling. She never let the fame and money go to her head.

  13. BarkLessWagMore

    J.K. Rowling *sobs* what a gracious kind lady. People don’t realize how much a small kindness means, especially to a teen. When I was much younger I wrote a heartfelt letter to an author about her book, explaining how much I appreciated her book and how it resonated with me because of a traumatic event in my childhood and I received, in reply, a form letter from the publisher basically telling thanks for writing but the author is a thoughtless bitch who is too busy to read your piddly letter. This author wasn’t nearly as famous as Rowling and it broke my heart. It was the last love letter I ever wrote to an author.

  14. Kate C.

    Hey, at least you didn’t point out the part where Jesus was raised from the dead. That would have been TOO MUCH. Oops.

    JK Rowling is awesome. And not just because she wrote my beloved Harry Potter books.

  15. Cassi Haggard

    After having seen the girls clarification about ARCgate (I was at camp when it all went down) it sounded like an overreaction.

    To me both sides seemed rather petty and selfish. They’re free books! I don’t think anyone at ALA was deprived of free books. I feel like both sides need to take deep breaths and ask themselves is it something work panicking over. Also, I think the frustration was really a boil over from last time there was blogger vs librarian drama and they were just looking for something to get angry about. I don’t know why librarians and bloggers can’t be on the same team? I know that me and my librarian support each other (I told her about netgalley actually).

    • Sam Wise

      @Cassi Haggard:

      Cassie this reponse isn’t a direct response to you, but a response to us bloggers as a whole. Just some thoughts that your comment triggered. Because you are right, us bloggers don’t get the respect that most of us deserved.

      I think the librarians have a valid concern. Yes, they shouldn’t be calling that all bloggers are evil, because bloggers do have use and purpose. But when some bloggers who lack any etiquette shows no considerations for others, it reflects badly on all of us. Walking away with 2 sets of books for 150 books is excessive. It’s proof that bloggers have no professionalism in them.

      It also does not surprise me that more and more publishers are not even allowing bloggers access to their e-ARCs. Yet, all most bloggers do is whine and complain about how they are mistreated… some with valid complaints as they have voliated no rules, but we are a community group and as people say actions speaks louder than words and when people tend to commit negative actions without any thought, those actions always speaks the loudest.

      As a blogger, I see many of the wrong doings of other bloggers and I just sigh. If we want to be treated well, we have to first respect the wishes and urges of others, especially those who we want free books from. Yes, they are free… but ARCs are treated as some godly prize. “Advance.” Bloggers now want to be the first. Forget all these older books that many haven’t read or forgetten about… they just want new and now. After the newness is gone they toss away the book like it was last night’s trash… some still trying to milk the ARCs worth by selling it (when they aren’t suppose to). Most book blogs (especially YA genre) focuses on the new. Most every YA blog out there are all about new books. Books published within the year. I’m not saying there aren’t any about older books but that’s the way things are at this moment and everyone seems to just want to be first. Then the excuse of we love books is given. Yeah, but you only love new books, right? Books published 2 years before aren’t worth your time.

      Some book bloggers even ignore publisher’s want of respect by posting reviews before they’re suppose to (many ARCs I’ve received come with a notice asking to please wait a month prior to actual book release to posting reviews). But then I see all these reviews posted by book bloggers well in advance. The “I didn’t know” excuse don’t work either. If you want to join the industry learn the rules.

      Yet some of us, can’t seem to fanthom why there’s this disrespect? It’s obvious to me. We need to correct our mind frame as a group. Passing the blame and ignoring the errors we (as a book blogger group) have done, is childish as best and ignorant and idiotic at worst.