Buzz Worthy News

Tor is accepting submissions straight from authors, small publishers are rocking the literary world, bookish awards, Uncle Tom’s Cabin play… now with white slaves, Amy Peohler has a new medium to blast us with awesome, and huge movie news for Vampire Academy fans!  Come check out all this and more in this week’s Buzz Worthy News.

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: How New Titles.

Publishing News

Tor UK to embrace the self-pubs

Are you or have you been self-pubbed?  Ready to make that leap to mainstream?  Tor UK is looking to help you along with that. You don’t have to be in the UK and you don’t have to be represented.  Most importantly, you can be self-published.  They are having open submissions for anyone with a complete novel that isn’t nonfiction, poetry, short stories or novellas.

So what brought this about? “As editors, we’re very aware of just how much work goes into creating a novel, the nerves and anticipation involved with getting someone else to read it and then that long and tiring search looking for someone in the professional industry to actually take a look at it. So we, at Tor UK, have decided to throw the doors open and invite writers to send their novels in. The submission guidelines are below.”

You can read the rest of the guidelines, make sure your novel falls within them and read here for instructions on how to submit.

SOURCE

 The way to the future may be paved in small publishers

The Independent Book Publisher’s Association has released a new report that yadda yadda yadda, small publishers rock.  Did I sum that up nicely?  I certainly hope I didn’t leave out any boring important details.  Just in case I did, I’ve included some important results.

“Net unit sales grew by about 12 percent industry-wide over the four-year period from 2008 to 2011, reaching just under 2.8 billion units. This growth is largely a result of the exponential growth of e-book sales.”

Cool.  Good job Big 5.  Small publishers have slightly different figures:

“During the past four years, from 2008 to 2011, publishers with annual net sales between $500,000 and $5 million grew unit sales by more than 25 percent, double the industry growth rate. And publishers with less than $500,000 in annual net sales also far exceeded the industry average, growing unit sales by nearly 23 percent in the same four-year span.”

In case you’re too lazy to read the above, it basically means small publishers are doing goooooood.  But what are they contributing over all to the industry?

“The independent publisher segments are also impressive in terms of the industry’s total value. In 2011, publishers with annual net sales of less than $500,000 contributed nearly a half billion dollars, while publishers with annual net sales between $500,000 and $5 million contributed just under $1.7 billion, for a combined total of $2.2 billion.”

Since I watched An Affair to Remember the other day, my only comment is: “Not only all that lettuce, but a beautiful tomato too.  Wow!”

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Awards time!  Awards time! Which of our favourites won?

Spoiler: some of our favourites!

Another Spoiler: Mainly the ones in the same, creepy love note to the left.

This time it was the 2013 Best Fiction for Young Adults by The Young Adults Library Services Association – which is kind of a mouthful now that I read it out.  Meanwhile, YALSA did not win any awards for naming shit.  Unlike us, because Cuddlebuggery is the best name ever.

So what’s the deal all about?  In what way are some of our favourite ladies being regarded as the fabulous authors they are?

“Each year, YALSA presents the Best Fiction for Young Adults list after ALA’s Midwinter Meeting. This year’s list of 102 books was drawn from 200 official nominations. The books, recommended for ages 12-18, meet the criteria of both good quality literature and appealing reading for teens. The list comprises a wide range of genres and styles, including contemporary realistic fiction, fantasy, horror, science fiction and novels in verse.”

Good job, authors!  You know how we love you, fantasize about you, want to be your bestest friends ever.  Rachel Hartman was shortlisted in the top 10, so extra congrats to her! While Rossi agreed to marry me, and Steph is tentatively awaiting Bardugo’s response to her proposal.

For the full list, check out here.

It also awarded Tamora Pierce the Edwards Award for two of her series: The Song of the Lioness Quartet and The Protector of the Small Quartet.

“Tamora Pierce is the recipient of the 2013 Margaret A. Edwards Award honoring her significant and lasting contribution to writing for teens for Song of the Lioness quartet and The Protector of the Small quartet.  The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), announced the award today at the ALA Midwinter Meeting, held Jan. 25 – 29 in Seattle.”

Congrats!  I love the Song of the Lioness series!  More information on the award:

“The award is named in honor of the late Margaret A. Edwards, a pioneer in providing library services to young adults. Through her work at Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Edwards demonstrated that only through literature would young adults move beyond themselves into a larger world.”

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Book News

Best Idea I’ve Ever Hated: Reddit Book Exchange

So you know how awesome it is when you mix interaction with random people on the internet?  How trust-worthy, tasteful and delightful anonymous contributors are?  If not, take a stroll through Chat-roulette*.  I’m sure it’s bound be illuminating.

*Do not ever go on Chat-roulette unless you’re in a phallic sort of mood.  Okay, just don’t go on Chat-roulette ever.

Now I’m not saying that Redditors are a group of sick degenerates.  After all, my partner and I are Redditors!  So I’m only kind of tacitly implying it – in the most flattering, affectionate kind of way.

But in all seriousness, Reddit is doing something kind of cool with this Reddit Book Exchange.

“When’s the last time you read a really good book? You know, the one you can’t put down and you’ll read it while walking down the street!

Here is your opportunity to help someone have that experience, and in return get that experience as well. Show a fellow redditor a book they’ve never read and you’ll help make the world a better place!”

So just sign up and exchange books with people!  W00t!  I have compiled a list of wonderful book ideas to send to your exchangee:

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Yup.  Nothing is going to go wrong with this idea at all.

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More Book Awards.  ALA has been busy.

This time it’s the Caldecott and Newbery Medal winners being announced.

The Caldecott Medal went to Jon Klassen for This Is Not My Hat.

The Caldecott Medal annually recognizes “the most distinguished picture book for children” published in the United States, beginning with 1937 publications. It is awarded to the illustrator by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association.^[1] The Caldecott and Newbery Medals are the most prestigious American children’s book awards.- Wikistoleitpidea

The Newbery went to Katherine Applegate for The One and Only Ivan:

The John Newbery Medal is a literary award given by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association (ALA). The award is given to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children. Named for John Newbery, an 18th century English publisher of juvenile books, the Newbery Medal was proposed by Frederic G. Melcher in 1921, making it the first children’s book award in the world.^[1]:1 The medal was designed by Rene Paul Chambellan and depicts on an author giving his work (a book) to a boy and a girl to read.-Wikistoleitpedia

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Steph Now Interrupts Your Regularly Scheduled BWN to Rage

So there’s this theater company in Pennsylvania called EgoPo Classical Theatre and guess what they’ve decided to do? Put on a new revamped production of Harriet Breecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. At first glance, this might sound like a fine idea. However, when you consider that most of the productions put on in the past were blatantly racist, it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. In fact, it’s for that reason why theatre companies have strayed away from any more attempts.

Lane Savadove, the artistic director, wants to remain true to the book and not deviate with other scripts as other productions have doe in the past. What’s interesting is when she was asked WHY she wanted to do the show he replied,

“…the top African American scholars like Henry Louis Gates and Cornel West have gone back to reclaim it as an important part of racial history. And so, we wanted to go back now that it’s seen in this new light and create a new theater version.”

Anyone see anything wrong here?

“The citing of Henry Louis Gates and Cornel West to somehow say, ‘See, the black guy said it’s OK!’ is problematic,” says Ijames. “Citing the elder statesmen is akin to the ‘some of my best friends are black’ argument. That notion and rebuttal and defense doesn’t have anything to do with anything.” -Philadelphia actor James Ijames

You see, the above logic is flung around a lot, to the point where I’m getting USED to it. Ridiculous? Yes. Will it stop anytime soon? Probably not.  But that’s not even the worst of it. Apparently, people have learned NOTHING  from Victoria Foyt’s Revealing Eden novel. Because, hey, what’s wrong with making white people the slaves and black people the slave owners?

Oh, I’m so serious.

“Even though, by all accounts, the dialogue is incredibly historically accurate, it’s a loaded subject to have a black man speak in a Southern slave dialect. And so we’re switching the races. And we’re painting a picture of an America where it happens to be that the whites became enslaved and the blacks became the slave owners. We’re pointing out the randomness with which the blacks became enslaved and the whites became empowered.”

Back. the. fuck. up. So basically, they’re going to use the same stereotypes of that time period and pin it to white people, thus trivializing the struggles of an entire race? Yup, sounds like an awesome idea. And “randomness”? Gee, thanks for tackling this project with the sensitivity it deserves. I’m sure when my ancestors were pickin’ cotton, they were thinking, “Damn, this is so fucking RANDOM.”

The only question left is if they are actually hiring black actors for the slave owner roles. But, of course, Savadove danced his little way around the question. Which means only one thing: possible blackface.

Fuck.

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Time for freak-out! Your imaginary girlfriend Amy Poehler has a book deal!

Firstly, stop imagining her caressing your face.

Amy Poehler – talented comedian, bestie of Tina Fey and all-round Bio-factory of awesomeness – has a book deal!

Please, please readers!  Control yourselves!  I know, I know!  I get it.  I feel the same way.  I love her almost as much as I love Veronica Rossi or Rachel Maddow.

“The comedian, actress and aces award show host will write her first book, slated for 2014, according to the Associated Press. The release will be handled by It Books, an imprint of Harper Collins, and is described as an “illustrated, non-linear diary.””

I beg your pardon?!  What the hell is a non-linear diary?  Also, is Amy Poehler going to feature in any of those illustrations?

Poehler’s colleague, the indefatigably badass Tina Fey, released her own very commercially successful book, Bossypants.  I really want Poehler’s book to do as well as Fey’s.  YOU CAN DO IT, POEHLER!

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Entertainment

Vampire Academy Movie is cast. Steph won’t stop jumping up and down. Make her stop.

So that Vampire Academy movie thing is apparently going to happen.  People have been cast and everything.  Whilst I’m not sure if I’m psyched to watch it or not, I’m kind of impressed with the casting of Dmitri.  He looks pretty much exactly like I imagined Dmitri.  And Koxlovsky, who’s a whole year older than me, will probably do a good job considering his history in the theater and he’s won two awards – one for his work in White Elephant and Golden Mask.

Who else will be in the movie? Zoey Deutch (to play Rose) and Lucy Fry:

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Zoey Deutch is in the Beautiful Creatures adaptation.  I know it’s finicky, but this kind of annoys me.  Like it’s all a bit incestuous.  I haven’t felt this way since Chris Evans played both Steve Rogers AND Johnny Storm.  Did they not think we’d notice?  *Rocks backwards and forwards incessantly* BUT she is also the daughter of LEA FUCKING THOMPSON!  So I shan’t mess with her. Also, she’s 18, so that’s a plus which kind of makes her and Danila’s age difference about the right gap for Dmitri and Rose.

Lucy Fry is the one I’m worried about.  She doesn’t have much acting experience listed.  But she’s twenty, she looks like I imagined Lissa looking like and she is also Australian which means she will inevitably rock.  We’ll disregard the fact that she’s from Brisbane because everyone has to have a flaw.

“Stuart Ford stated, “Tonally, this is so different from all these movies that are so solemn and serious. This is as much Mean Girls as The Hunger Games. It is snappy, irreverent, sexy and just a lot of fun. And we got the right director for that kind of movie.””-SOURCE

Congratulations Stuart Ford!  You have earned my first Glare of Absolute Fury.  I’m sure it will be joined shortly by others.

“The movie is moving forward with filming scheduled to begin in the summer. Brothers Mark and Daniel Waters are both working on the project. Mark will direct while Daniel has penned the script. “It was the best first draft I had ever read, and that includes other screenplays by my brother,” Mark Waters said. “This is a dream project for us, since we have wanted to work together for so long. Richelle’s mythology and the world she creates is so real and her voice so clear. These kids have real life, modern day problems. And they drink blood.””

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Jon Chu wants to direct Matched by Ally Condie

Jon Chu has directed such gems as Justin Bieber: Never Say Never, and G.I. Joe Retaliation (Sure to be as quality as the first G.I. Joe movie) and the StepUp 2 and StepUp 3D movies.

Look, I know people aren’t in the habit of listening to random bloggers – but here’s my advice: Run, Condie!  RUN!

“The director is in negotiations to direct Matched, Disney’s adaptation of Ally Condie’s futuristic YA novel. Adam Shankman and Jennifer Gibgot are producing via their Offspring Entertainment shingle.

Set in a future society where people are told what to read, what to watch, what to believe and who to love, the story centers on a young woman who rejects an arranged romance and chooses her own path.”

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Warm Bodies lined some pockets this weekend

Generally speaking, a Superbowl weekend contributes to a huge Box Office slump.  Poor Stallone raked in a measly $4.5 Million, for example.  But some marketing gurus seem to have their facts together.  Instead of releasing a ACTIONY Stallone movie during a weekend when many men and women prone to action movies are glued to the Superbowl action, Lionsgate released a Rom Com zombie movie and targeted it toward audiences who prefer heart-touching tenderness with their chuckles and zombie gore.  The strategy paid off!

“Summit Entertainment’s Warm Bodies — a new spin on the zombie genre — topped the weekend box office with a solid $20 million debut thanks to younger females, while Sylvester Stallone‘s new action pic Bullet to the Head turned in a grim $4.5 million.”

The article goes on to talk about the specific strategy which seems to be: “Chicks like romantic flicks”.

This seems particularly stupid to me since %60 of the attendees were women.  That’s a 10 point discrepancy.   Listen, there’s a raw gender pay gap of 20.4% and you can’t get 3/4 of people to agree one exists at all.

Of course it was the romantic comedy elements that drew the womenz in.  Not zombies or anything.  Probably only zombies if they have abs.  Predictable womenz.

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