Last week, I briefly referenced this article from ABC news (“Emerging ‘New Adult’ Genre Puts Smut Fiction on Bestseller Lists”), to support the idea that reader demand was already having an impact on publishing. I expressed some skepticism about whether New Adult could be classified strictly as “smut fiction,” but didn’t delve too far into arguing the point. Welp, this week the outrage hit the fan in a major way (and understandably so). Storify has a round-up of some of the responses to this piece. While I agree that it is troubling that ABC News would lump all New Adult fiction into one “scandalous” (and no doubt, ratings-boosting) category, a huge part of me wants to say, WHAT OF IT, ABC??! The ominously threatening opening to their video segment, “Racy reads with sexual themes are finding a PASSIONATE fan base with young girls all across the country”, read in a tone that says “WE SHOULD ALL BE FRIGHTENED AND ASHAMED” is what really upsets me about the whole piece. If we’re going to get angry about this, let’s get angry that the slut-shaming of young adult women still sells. And then after that’s passed, we can of course sit back and laugh openly at ABC News’ obvious and total ignorance of the New Adult genre.
This week was full of outrage, it seems. Flavorwire had a fantastic round-up of support for libraries from authors throughout history, in response to British children’s author Terry Deary’s crankypants view on libraries (from The Guardian):
“Because it's been 150 years, we've got this idea that we've got an entitlement to read books for free, at the expense of authors, publishers and council tax payers. This is not the Victorian age, when we wanted to allow the impoverished access to literature. We pay for compulsory schooling to do that.”
Yes, because of course every single person in society has access to a school library.
NPR’s book blog also had a wonderful round-up of LGBT characters in graphic novels, written partly in response to the announcement that DC Comics has hired noted gay rights opponent Orson Scott “I find the comparison between civil rights based on race and supposed new rights being granted for what amounts to deviant behavior to be really kind of ridiculous” Card to write a series of Superman comics. DC Comics also announced that Batwoman will be getting hitched to her long-time girlfriend Maggie Sawyer soon.
And in a last bit of outrage (my own, this time), I’d like to invite some public ridicule of this piece over at (where else?) Fox News: Four Things Jane Austen Teaches Us About Love. The only thing that cools my anger over this piece is imagining Elizabeth Bennet emerging from the pages of P&P to verbally dress down the author. Because obviously, if there’s one thing we all learned from P&P, it’s that playing hard to get, flattering a man’s ego, and being overly virtuous are all excellent ways to procure a husband. Bahahaha.
Three independent bookstores have joined to bring a class-action lawsuit against Amazon and the big six publishers, alleging that their use of DRM on ebooks has created a monopoly for Amazon.
The Digital Reader also reported that new book recommendation site Bookish may be more “marketing tool” and less reader community.
And to end with our weekly wrap-up of the more fun news (pretty scant this week!):
This week was full of outrage, it seems. Flavorwire had a fantastic round-up of support for libraries from authors throughout history, in response to British children’s author Terry Deary’s crankypants view on libraries (from The Guardian):
“Because it's been 150 years, we've got this idea that we've got an entitlement to read books for free, at the expense of authors, publishers and council tax payers. This is not the Victorian age, when we wanted to allow the impoverished access to literature. We pay for compulsory schooling to do that.”
Yes, because of course every single person in society has access to a school library.
NPR’s book blog also had a wonderful round-up of LGBT characters in graphic novels, written partly in response to the announcement that DC Comics has hired noted gay rights opponent Orson Scott “I find the comparison between civil rights based on race and supposed new rights being granted for what amounts to deviant behavior to be really kind of ridiculous” Card to write a series of Superman comics. DC Comics also announced that Batwoman will be getting hitched to her long-time girlfriend Maggie Sawyer soon.
And in a last bit of outrage (my own, this time), I’d like to invite some public ridicule of this piece over at (where else?) Fox News: Four Things Jane Austen Teaches Us About Love. The only thing that cools my anger over this piece is imagining Elizabeth Bennet emerging from the pages of P&P to verbally dress down the author. Because obviously, if there’s one thing we all learned from P&P, it’s that playing hard to get, flattering a man’s ego, and being overly virtuous are all excellent ways to procure a husband. Bahahaha.
Three independent bookstores have joined to bring a class-action lawsuit against Amazon and the big six publishers, alleging that their use of DRM on ebooks has created a monopoly for Amazon.
The Digital Reader also reported that new book recommendation site Bookish may be more “marketing tool” and less reader community.
And to end with our weekly wrap-up of the more fun news (pretty scant this week!):
- The cover for Just One Year by Gayle Forman was revealed. USA Today also posted a short excerpt.
- Both the Nebula Awards and Audies nominees were announced. Galleycat has a great round up of some free samples (and in some cases, free complete versions) of the Nebula nominees. The Readventurer will once again be participating in the Armchair Audies. This year we’ll be listening to and evaluating the nominees for best solo narration – female.
- Stacia Kane had some new info and a snippet from her upcoming novella (told from Terrible’s point of view).
- As part of Blackberry's Keep Moving campaign, Neil Gaiman wrote twelve short stories based on Twitter prompts from his friends and followers, one for each month. You can download and read the entire Calendar of Tales (PDF alert) or you can wait to purchase the calendar that will match the stories with original artwork.
- And over at The Onion, they had this heartwarming and realistic tale of publishing success.
That's it for us this week! Stop by and tell us what we missed!
