Buzz Worthy News

This week in Buzz Worthy News: There’s an update on Iain Banks’ health, Lydia Davis wins the Man Booker prize, Amazon made everyone lose their shit with an announcement that they will soon begin selling fanfiction, and controversy.  Just the general author wank.  All this and more so come check it out!

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.

Books

Sir Iain Banks Gives an Update

Okay, so he hasn’t actually been knighted, but I decided he deserved to be, so I’m awarding him an honorary Knighting.

He posted this week to let the book world know how he’s doing.  Which is great since he was enjoying himself on his honeymoon while freaking us all out with his morbid grave humor while we weep uselessly.

“The latest medical news is that my bilirubin level continues to fall and I have an appointment for a CT scan at the end of the month. If my bilirubin is below 50 – and if the tumours have behaved themselves – then chemotherapy will be an option, with these new CT results forming the base line for measuring the improvements chemo might provide. If the scan shows the tumours have been over-enthusiastic during the last couple of months, then – as I understand it – chemo would be pointless. Assuming it is an option I’ll probably try chemo and see how I react, but if it wipes me out each time I shan’t be persevering.”

Good luck, dude!  Cuddlebuggery is thinking of you!

SOURCE

Lydia Davis Wins the Man Booker Prize.

Lydia Davis, accomplished author of short stories, translator, essayist and all round awesome person, has been awarded the Man Booker Prize this year.

The Prize, worth £60,000, is awarded for an achievement in fiction on the world stage and Davis’s achievements are writ large despite often using startlingly few words (some of her longer stories only stretch to two or three pages). Her work has the brevity and precision of poetry. Sir Christopher Ricks, chairman of the judges, said her “writings fling their lithe arms wide to embrace many a kind. Just how to categorise them? They have been called stories but could equally be miniatures, anecdotes, essays, jokes, parables, fables, texts, aphorisms or even apophthegms, prayers or simply observations.”

Man Booker International Prize Finalists for 2013

U R Ananthamurthy

Aharon Appelfeld

Lydia Davis

Intizar Husain

Yan Lianke

Marie NDiaye

Josip Novakovich

Marilynne Robinson

Vladimir Sorokin

Peter Stamm

SOURCE

Publishing

DRAMA!  Amazon is Selling Fan Fiction

The big news this week, that has kind of rocked the publishing world, is that Amazon, using Kindle World will start allowing people to publish and sell their fanfiction for any books or shows that Amazon has permission to.

“Today, Amazon Publishing announces Kindle Worlds, the first commercial publishing platform that will enable any writer to create fan fiction based on a range of original stories and characters and earn royalties for doing so. Amazon Publishing has secured licenses from Warner Bros. Television Group’s Alloy Entertainment division for its New York Times best-selling book series Gossip Girl, by Cecily von Ziegesar; Pretty Little Liars, by Sara Shepard; and Vampire Diaries, by L.J. Smith; and plans to announce more licenses soon. Through these licenses, Kindle Worlds will allow any writer to publish authorized stories inspired by these popular Worlds and make them available for readers to purchase in the Kindle Store.”

But, who gets paid?

“Amazon Publishing will pay royalties to both the rights holders of the Worlds and the author. The standard author’s royalty rate (for works of at least 10,000 words) will be 35% of net revenue. As with all titles from Amazon Publishing, Kindle Worlds will base net revenue off of sales price—rather than the lower, industry standard of wholesale price—and royalties will be paid monthly.”

There’s other stuff in the press release about short stories being sold blah, blah, blah… but WHAT?!  Selling fanfiction now?!  *Stares intently at my Harry Potter Fanfiction*

Reactions to this by authors and people were not… warm.  For starters, it says nothing there about the original author making any money from this.  Unless, of course, they’re the right’s holders – which is unlikely for many of the authors of the original works.

I think this summarized it best:

There is a lot of controversy about this.  And you guys know how anti-amazon I generally am in my views.  But I have to kind of admire Amazon’s brass balls in this case.  People love Fanfiction.  This idea will probably make a lot of money.  Heartless, soulless, dodgy corporation they may be, but nobody can claim they lack innovation.

And, hey, if they publish the really successful fanfictions as paperbacks books in bookstores, Stephen King might even approve.

SOURCE

Penguin’s Price Fixing Debacle is Over Now

The price fixing scandal that has plagued Penguin is now over after the big publisher settled for 75 million dollars.  Doing so will resolve all anti-trust issues the publisher has with the 33 state attorney’s generals and the consumers affected by its anti trust activities.

“Penguin has also committed to the State Attorneys General to abide by the same injunctive relief as previously agreed in a separate settlement with the Department of Justice. In anticipation of reaching this agreement, Pearson had made a $40m provision for settlement in its 2012 accounts. An incremental charge will be expensed in Pearson’s 2013 statutory accounts as part of the accounting for the Penguin Random House joint-venture.”

SOURCE

Barnes & Noble Seems to Have Deleted a Bunch of Dirty, Filthy Erotica – Because of the Children!

So, a while ago a few authors started to notice that a bunch of their titles were missing from Barnes & Noble’s Nook site.  They also appear to be playing with the rankings of many of the titles – moving some from #5 to #127, something that doesn’t tend to happen naturally, much, in the market.  Here’s a blog post from author Maya Cross:

“Barnes and Noble appear to be manipulating their Nook bestseller list. They seem to have issue with either self published books or books containing erotic content, or both, and they don’t want them being too visible on their site. From what we can gather, there seems to be an artificial wall in their rankings, somewhere around #125, and any books they deem unworthy cannot rank higher, no matter how many copies they sell. My two titles are both currently affected by this, as are Cassia Leo’s USA today best selling Shattered Hearts books, and several other works.

To give you the long form and explain how I know this:

My second book, Lockout, was doing astoundingly well on B&N. It was #5 in the whole store yesterday, right up between Dan Brown and James Patterson. I was over the moon.

But something weird was happening with the first book in my series, Locked. It rose when book two launched, but once it hit #126 in the overall store, it stuck in place. It kept selling more books, but wouldn’t move. Not even a single ranking place. And it held that position for 48 hours. Now, it’s almost impossible for a book to not shift even a few places in a given day. Most books change rank every hour, so obviously this wasn’t normal. It felt like it had been pinned in place.

Then, this morning, the same thing happened to Lockout. It went from #5 in the whole Nook store, to #126, in the blink of an eye. This makes no sense. It’s all but totally impossible for book sales to plummet that dramatically of their own accord.”

Then word came in, though unofficially, about what seems to be going on:

“Nook UK has simply DELETED thousands of erotic romance/erotica titles. No algorithm shenanigans, no rank tinkering… just gone, completely.

All enquiries get either an unhelpful pass the buck reply, or ignored. It took one of my publishers to get an answer. Nook UK had decided they wanted to ‘clean house’ because they were doing a promo for kids and teens, so they just removed what they considered to be questionable material from their catalogue.

But they wouldn’t admit that to individual authors.”

I’m not actually sure what’s going on, what’s true and what’s not – but it seems weird shit is happening at the online Nook Store.

SOURCE – A cool Dudette.  She knows who she is.

Entertainment

The School for Good and Evil is Going to be a Movie

So the MG novel that had everyone tittering about it’s awesome trailer now has a movie deal!  It’s with Universal Pictures so I’m sure that won’t be an issue.

“The Oz The Great And Powerful producer had partnered with Jane Startz Production to acquire movie rights to The School For Good And Evil. After a spirited auction, Universal Pictures won the property in a seven-figure deal for book and scriptwriting fees. It’s the first title in a novel trilogy by Soman Chainani that will be published in the U.S. by HarperCollins on May 14 and in the U.K. on June 6. The trilogy tells the story of ordinary boys and girls who are kidnapped from their homes and sent to The School for Good and Evil, where they are trained to be fairy tale heroes and villains, princesses and witches. The protagonist is Sophie, a beauty who is dumped into the School for Evil while her homely best friend Agatha is taken to the School for Good. Both girls find their fortunes reversed and are forced to confront the truth about their unexpected destinies. The book debuted this weekend #7 on The New York Times Bestseller list.”

I am super excited about this, actually.   But the reviews haven’t been as super awesome as the concept seems to be.  Still, I shall have to read it for myself to see!

SOURCE

Only Seven Seasons of Game of Thrones.

Though I don’t watch the show, nor have I read the books, that sentence does seem distressing.  I should mention that I fully intend to watch the show… someday.  I’ll probably wait until the episode where this dude dies so that I’ll have that to comfort me.

But, yeah, news is out that you Game of Thrones watching peeps are three seasons down, with only four to go!  Dayum!

[The number of seasons] is being discussed as we speak. The third season was the first half of book three, season four will be the second part of book three. George R.R. Martin has written books four and five; six and seven are pending… I would hope that, if we all survive, and if the audience stays with us we’ll probably get through to seven seasons.

Chris Hems-worthy-of-my-attraction Might Play Christian Grey

Normally, I’d ignore this kind of update because it’s really just fan-wanking, but it was a slow news week, so on it goes!

Chris Hemsworth of Thor and Avengers fame, father of James Tiberius Kirk and frequent guest star in my dreams, is one of those being considered to play Christian Grey.

“Hollyscoop also reported that Hemsworth is a front-runnner to play 27-year-old sexy billionaire and BDSM-crazed Christian Grey.

The writer pointed out that Hemsworth might be too bulky for the important part, but he could also slim down to the perfect weight for Christian Grey and “Fifty Shades of Grey” movie fans.

This was back in January, but Hemsworth has always been a top contender for Christian Grey along with Ian Somerhalder, Matt Bomer, Henry Cavill, Alexander Skarsgard, Robert Pattinson, and others.”

No.  You see, if he loses the bulk, then he can’t be Thor any more, people.  And I think we can all agree, that Thor is the far more important of the two roles.

“Is that a Mjolnir in your pants, or are you just happy to see me?” – The opening line to one of my more frequent fantasies.

Controversies

“The formatting is poor, the run on sentences are still present everywhere and then there are phrases such as, “I range the police.”
I tried reading past Eve’s story to the first letter that was by another survivor. The prose was so boring, and again, the grammar so poor, that I found myself skimming.
Glad I read the sample instead of spending ten dollars on this.”

“Today I am off to visit with Lancashire Police, I will be mentioning this although I am not sure what can be done.  I do know that most of the bullies/trolls are from the USA, 1 is from the UK, the one that rang the charity I support so it may be difficult but I will try this is #OneVoice and I am fiercely protective!”

“Hello Eve,I’m the Customer Care Manager here – Emily has escalated your request to me.

We do fully support your cause against domestic violence, and of course we wish you the very best in your charity’s endeavors. Your book will continue to be available on Goodreads for members to review and recommend to others – it is not our intention to silence your voice.

That said,  we do expect all Goodreads members to abide by our Terms of Service- and in the case of authors, our author guidelines.   Your account was deleted because you failed to follow our rules despite multiple warnings.   In particular, sending unsolicited advertisements to members is considered spamming and is strictly prohibited, even if the book is for a charitable cause.  We received multiple complaints from members of the site about you spamming them.  It also violates our guidelines to confront users who have reviewed your books negatively. While negative reviews can be upsetting,  readers do have a right to express their honest opinion about a book without harassment from the author.  As these rules continued to be broken, we were eventually forced to ban you from further use of Goodreads.

I understand that you feel some of the reviews of your books were unfair.   I promise to take a close look at all the reviews to ensure they comply with our review guidelines, though I’d remind you again that we do not remove reviews simply for being critical of a work and that includes what a member perceives to be the quality of the writing.

Best regards,
Kara

Kara EricksonCustomer Care ManagerGoodreads.com”

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