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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Scandalous Scandals
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.
Kat Kennedy
Latest posts by Kat Kennedy (see all)
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- Buzz Worthy News: 13th May 2013 - May 13, 2013
- Review+Giveaway: Nameless by Lili St. Crow - May 10, 2013
