Why don't we start with a couple of authors who made a mark this week?
Over at Read Now Sleep Later Alethea talks about YA Shame and Stigma in connection with some controversial and off-putting to us, YA readers, statements made by an author of a quite popular novel. Isaac Marion's zombie story Warm Bodies achieved success (including a movie deal) thanks to endorsements by influential YA writers like Stephenie Meyer and Maggie Stiefvater and was embraced by the YA-loving audience. Marion is very unhappy about this as he doesn't want to be associated with YA in any way, because, you know, eeew, YA cooties, and he is a serious writer with extensive vocabulary. What an exceptional way of acknowledging and appreciating the people who helped you make tons of money!
In UK, a spy writer Jon Stock unabashedly praises himself for properly handling an Amazon reviewer (naturally, the reviewer didn't leave a positive review) by seeking out her email address, having a conversation with her during which he "convinced" her to remove her negative comments and then writing a blog post in The Telegraph about it with adding her real name, place of work and quotes from their correspondence without her permission (via Vacuous Minx). Stock proudly named his blog post How I survived an online literary mauling. Also notable is this quote from his piece:
"Without wishing to sound like a serial killer, I track down all my hostile reviewers, sooner or later, particularly the anonymous ones."
How this is different from the actions of the infamous STGB site is hard to fathom.
Now, as if to add to the already wide-spread, multi-faceted author hysteria, Amazon introduces Author Rank feature which is apparently visible to the authors exclusively. The authors will, from now on, be able to compare themselves to their colleagues and freak out not only because of their GR ratings, but sales as well.
We've talked about the "New Adult" category in the past, and here is another very informative article on the subject which poses a question - Whose “Failure” is New Adult? The article argues that the long-held notion that nobody will be buying books written in this category (and therefore agents don't buy and try to sell such books to editors) seems to be wrong as the majority of self-published bestsellers appear to fall into this exact category.
Another myth, this time the one that states that YA is dominated by female writers and male writers (and consequently male readers) are shoved aside, is possibly dispelled by Lady Business in this very scientific and very data-heavy study - Gender Balance in YA Award Winners since 2000.
In case you missed it, National Book Award announced its lists of finalists (YA included) this week. You can find samples of all finalists here. Sadly, we haven't read even one YA book on that list. And immediately Salon published an article stating that NBA got it wrong again and decrying lack of genre fiction among the finalists - National Book Awards: Genre fiction dissed again. Which is in itself a valid argument, if not applied by the author of the post to the books whose quality we find questionable and not necessarily award-worthy.
If you are a fan of genre fiction, specifically sci-fi and fantasy, you might enjoy this great deal - Humble eBook Bundle. Eight ebooks of great quality (Paolo Bacigalupi, Lauren Beukes, Kelly Link, Cory Doctorow and others), DRM-free and YOU decide how much you pay for it and how much of it goes to charity and how much - to the authors.
Over at Read Now Sleep Later Alethea talks about YA Shame and Stigma in connection with some controversial and off-putting to us, YA readers, statements made by an author of a quite popular novel. Isaac Marion's zombie story Warm Bodies achieved success (including a movie deal) thanks to endorsements by influential YA writers like Stephenie Meyer and Maggie Stiefvater and was embraced by the YA-loving audience. Marion is very unhappy about this as he doesn't want to be associated with YA in any way, because, you know, eeew, YA cooties, and he is a serious writer with extensive vocabulary. What an exceptional way of acknowledging and appreciating the people who helped you make tons of money!
In UK, a spy writer Jon Stock unabashedly praises himself for properly handling an Amazon reviewer (naturally, the reviewer didn't leave a positive review) by seeking out her email address, having a conversation with her during which he "convinced" her to remove her negative comments and then writing a blog post in The Telegraph about it with adding her real name, place of work and quotes from their correspondence without her permission (via Vacuous Minx). Stock proudly named his blog post How I survived an online literary mauling. Also notable is this quote from his piece:
"Without wishing to sound like a serial killer, I track down all my hostile reviewers, sooner or later, particularly the anonymous ones."
How this is different from the actions of the infamous STGB site is hard to fathom.
Now, as if to add to the already wide-spread, multi-faceted author hysteria, Amazon introduces Author Rank feature which is apparently visible to the authors exclusively. The authors will, from now on, be able to compare themselves to their colleagues and freak out not only because of their GR ratings, but sales as well.
We've talked about the "New Adult" category in the past, and here is another very informative article on the subject which poses a question - Whose “Failure” is New Adult? The article argues that the long-held notion that nobody will be buying books written in this category (and therefore agents don't buy and try to sell such books to editors) seems to be wrong as the majority of self-published bestsellers appear to fall into this exact category.
Another myth, this time the one that states that YA is dominated by female writers and male writers (and consequently male readers) are shoved aside, is possibly dispelled by Lady Business in this very scientific and very data-heavy study - Gender Balance in YA Award Winners since 2000.
In case you missed it, National Book Award announced its lists of finalists (YA included) this week. You can find samples of all finalists here. Sadly, we haven't read even one YA book on that list. And immediately Salon published an article stating that NBA got it wrong again and decrying lack of genre fiction among the finalists - National Book Awards: Genre fiction dissed again. Which is in itself a valid argument, if not applied by the author of the post to the books whose quality we find questionable and not necessarily award-worthy.
If you are a fan of genre fiction, specifically sci-fi and fantasy, you might enjoy this great deal - Humble eBook Bundle. Eight ebooks of great quality (Paolo Bacigalupi, Lauren Beukes, Kelly Link, Cory Doctorow and others), DRM-free and YOU decide how much you pay for it and how much of it goes to charity and how much - to the authors.
