Welcome to this week’s Buzz Worthy News! The publishing world launches new online imprints in an attempt to stick it to Amazon, GoodReads creates a “Hispter Lit” reading chart, book bloggers are the devil (maybe, but probably not), Harry Potter collectors set can be yours for only $1,000 and two hilarious parodies even out the week. NaNoWriMo is over and Kat is back, which means Steph won’t be subjected to torture any longer. All this and much, much more. Read on to find out everything that’s been happening in the book world this week.
Buzz Worthy News is Cuddlebuggery’s weekly Monday news post. Bringing you all the most interesting, relevant and fun news from the publishing and book blogging world.
Publishing News
Random House Creates 3 New Imprints
Random House is getting tech SNAZZY by creating three new digital imprints. Alibi is a mystery/thriller line, Flirt is a Young Adult line and Hydra is a science fiction line. Allison Dodson will be heading up the digital imprints line. Allison, we salute you!
President of the Random House Publishing group, Gina Centrello, said that each imprint will have its own editing, marketing and publishing group.
“There are many readers out there looking for exactly what Loveswept offers—compelling characters and great stories published frequently at an affordable price,” said Centrello. “We are thrilled to expand this program.”
HarperCollins Goes Digital Too
I guess digital imprints are becoming the vogue thing to do because HarperCollins has got an exciting new one coming up.
“The imprint, called HarperTeen Impulse, will begin sales on Dec. 4 for short fiction in a variety of genres. Although the imprint is open to both new and established authors, it will lean heavily at first on some reliable names.
Its first titles include “Breathless” by Sophie Jordan, described as a companion novella to Ms. Jordan’s popular “Firelight” fantasy series about a dragon in human form, and “Stupid Perfect World,” a futuristic novella by Scott Westerfeld, author of the beloved “Leviathan” trilogy, which mixed alternative history with science fiction.
Impulse says it will make up to four new books available on the first Tuesday of every month through e-book retailers, at prices ranging from 99 cents to $2.99. HarperCollins will back up the Impulse books with dedicated marketing, social media outreach and cross-promotion in HarperTeen print books.”
All I know is that I like those prices!
Simon & Schuster Launches Self-Published Service
So much publishing news this week! Simon & Schuster launched it’s self publishing service Archway Publishing.
“They will run the new service with help from Author Solutions, the self-publishing company acquired by Pearson for $116 million in July.
Archway Publishing will include “editorial, design, distribution and marketing services” for its authors, all these tools coming from Author Solutions. Fiction options range from $1,999 Author package to the $14,999 Publicist package. The business book options start at $2,199 and go as high as $24,999.”
Yey! For only the deposit of a house, you too could be self published!
This decision hasn’t been without commentary from industry insiders and every single person ever born in general.
“That price tag doesn’t include any real editing, just an assessment which – according to their own website – is “not a replacement” for editorial services but “a preliminary diagnostic tool.”
But what if you need proper editing? Fear not! Simon & Schuster is here to help. For just $0.035 a word, you can have a thorough edit of your book. Which sounds cheap until you realize that a standard 80,000 word novel would cost you $2,800. So, in actual fact, the cheapest package, plus their edit, will set you back $4,799 for a standard length book.” SOURCE
There’s more over at David Gaughran’s website.
Best Books 2012 List is Out – Did YA Kick Ass?
Short answer: Yes. Long answer: I haven’t read it yet, I just assumed.
So what does it say?
“YA continues to dominate in terms of output and sheer heft, but there was a noticeable uptick in the numbers of fine middle grade novels. “
What?! Middle Grade! Why are you trying to steal our thunder? Oh well, I guess the little kiddies deserve good reads and it would be an evil kind of person who would begrudge them that. Which I totally will because I am evil! *Cue evil laugh*
Here is the list, peeps! Check it out!
Hipsters Have it So Hard – But Goodreads is there to help
You know how hard it can be when you’re drinking your free trade coffee and squeezing into your skinny jeans and you need to find a book to read now that you’ve finished Infinite Jest. Luckily Goodreads is there to help by creating a handy Hipster lit Flow Chart!
“Here on Goodreads, we’ve got all kinds of readers: Romance, Sci Fi, Armchair Sailors, you name it. This month we decided to focus on an interesting subset of our gigantic and diverse community—The Hipsters. After analyzing the data, and admittedly, taking some editorial liberties, we’ve determined a few things. The life of the hipster is hard. Between worrying the band you love is about to go big and wondering whether it’s finally time to wash your raw denim jeans, you don’t have a lot of time to think about what to read next. To make matters worse, now that you’ve raced through his collected essays, Both Flesh and Not, you’ve run out of David Foster Wallace books. That’s where Goodreads comes in. Behold our hipster lit flow chart! Answer a few simple questions, and we will hook you up with your next favorite book. Life should always be this easy.”
Go to Goodreads and check it out!
Controversy
Book Bloggers are the Hell Bringers of the Apocalypse (or something…)
Well, well, well. Here we are with yet another book critic expressing their hate and calling book bloggers the end of literature. *snort* Right. William Giraldi wrote an article last week on Rotten Reviews Redux: A Literary Companion. In it, he fully demonstrates his gift of using his thesaurus like a boss and makes a few choice remarks about book bloggers, many of them sexist and elitist. To be honest, the entire thing is tl;dr, but here are a few noteworthy points I did catch:
Literature has always had its leeches, except now the Net has given every one of them a bog to wiggle around in. This wouldn’t be any more of an issue than it is to ignore the wastrel on the corner dispensing pamphlets on anarchy, but as respectable print publications either prune their space for book commentary or else go extinct altogether, more and more criticism — like more and more of everything else — is migrating to blogs and social media sites. Young or new book readers looking for literary analysis are going to have an increasingly arduous chore of dividing the shit from the serious. Worse, the biddable and ovine will gravitate to the shit because that’s where all the buzzing is. If you’ve ever attempted to read a review on Amazon or on someone’s personal blog, you know it’s identical to seeking relationship advice on the wall of a public restroom.
Oh noz! People are doing that thing again, giving their opinions to their friends. And dammit, they’ve discovered the internet. Now all people will read it shit! Heavens forbid people start reading shit! In my not-so-professional opinion it seems rather trivial to attempt to diminish word of mouth, which has and will always be around. People will always gravitate towards the bad, the ugly AND the awesome. Those looking for literary analysis can find it and those seeking just an average book review from someone with similar reading tastes, should be able to find that as well. (But, geez, feeling threatened by the “little people” much?)
But it’s not necessarily the foppish rage that so incenses Henderson — it’s the anonymity: “Anonymous online critics ambush unprotected writers in bursts of verbal automatic rifle fire.” We now live, according to Henderson, “in an online Wild West.” The image is apt, whether or not your business is literature. “All civility gone. Empathy, balance, decency, knowledge, out the window. Everybody a blogger. Everybody an instant critic.”
Ah. The old “you’re attacking the authors, meanies!” He later refers to the online community as “masked assassins.” CORRECTION: Only SOME of us are ninjas. The rest are pirates.
…there’s another side Henderson might be unaware of: a community of coddlers who approach literature as if it were a Sunday knitting circle. On Twitter and Facebook, on their own websites and blogs, this feel-good community praises one another in pastel colors. (For specifics, see Jacob Silverman’s “Against Enthusiasm” in Slate from last summer.) Literature to these online cabals is a social event and not an artistic endeavor; they congregate to swap recipes of cuisine no discerning person would ever care to eat.
Did he just order us back to the kitchen?
The concept of incessant community in literature is preposterous to begin with. In his Nobel speech Hemingway delivered a truism only a counterfeit could deny: “Writing, at its best, is a lonely life,” and of course he means that writing at its best must be a lonely life. All those dysphasic Tweets and Facebook posts and status updates of the status-less? They’re an easeful substitute for the hellish emotional and psychological confrontation that genuine literary work requires.
So, let me get this straight. Book bloggers are flooding the internet with their opinions, we play cops and robbers with authors on the Net (interesting idea that we must use in a future author interview), we “stitch and bitch”, swap recipes and we’re essentially “doing it wrong” since we aren’t being psychologically taxed? Huh. Well, I’m glad we got that all sorted out!
On the positive side, the article seemed to create a fun new hashtag on twitter, #graffitireviews. There’s even a Tumblr page.
Entertainment
Another Stephen King Adaptation to Haunt My Dreams in the Works
CBS is teaming up with Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment to bring Stephen King’s Under the Dome to a TV near you. Does this mean I’ll being doing more hiding under my bed that usual? Probably.
“This is a great novel coming to the television screen with outstanding auspices and in-season production values to create a summer programming event,” CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler said in announcing the news. “We’re excited to transport audiences ‘under the dome’ and into the extraordinary world that Stephen King has imagined.”
In case you’re like me and just hearing about this book for the first time, here is the synopsis taken from GoodReads:
On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester’s Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener’s hand is severed as “the dome” comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when — or if — it will go away.
Dale Barbara, Iraq vet and now a short-order cook, finds himself teamed with a few intrepid citizens — town newspaper owner Julia Shumway, a physician’s assistant at the hospital, a select-woman, and three brave kids. Against them stands Big Jim Rennie, a politician who will stop at nothing — even murder — to hold the reins of power, and his son, who is keeping a horrible secret in a dark pantry. But their main adversary is the Dome itself. Because time isn’t just short. It’s running out.
The series is expected to air summer of 2013.
Anybody got a cool $1,000 laying around?
Get. Me. This. Quick. This is everything I’ve ever dreamed of and if my family truly loves me, they’d totally buy me one of these incredibly rare Harry Potter: Page to Screen collection. How rare? Dudes! They only created 3,000! One of those must be mine. Unfortunately, they are selling it at the insane amount of $1,000. Gah!
Harry Potter: Page to Screen: The Complete Filmmaking Journey includes eight volumes, each of which is designed to resemble a book from the library shelves at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Six of the books focus on the workings of the creative departments behind the films — wardrobe, props, special effects, and the like — while the seventh is a commemorative keepsake offering an intimate look at the relationships that developed between the cast and crew over the decade it took to produce all eight films. But the best part by far is the eighth book: a scale replica of The Monster Book of Monsters.
I can just see myself now, poured over my Monster Book of Monsters… *weeps* Just look at it. It’s like magic in a book.
[tube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKqWJtSc6eQ[/tube]
LOL
Breaking Dawn Cheating Outtakes
Kat found this sketch of “Robert” and “Kristen” filming Twilight after the cheating scandal back in July this year. Lover’s scorn in all its hilarity.
The Hobbit Parody
One of the best parody makers has to be The Hillywood Show, hands down. They’ve done Twilight, The Hunger Games and even The Vampire Diaries, all alongside various popular songs. Their newest video was released a couple of days ago and I was DYING. SO FUNNY!
[tube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXFQFnUdh5I[/tube]
Latest posts by Steph Sinclair (see all)
- First Chapter Reveal + Giveaway: Altered by Gennifer Albin - May 21, 2013
- Hot New Titles: 19th May 2013 - May 19, 2013
- Review: Spark by Brigid Kemmerer - May 18, 2013
- Hot New Titles: 12th May 2013 - May 12, 2013
