Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog

Interesting posts and other things that have caught my eye this week. It isn’t actually everything, since I didn’t want to kill myself copy-pasting, so for the entire link collection check out my Delicious page.

And now, I present to you, my readers: Awesome Post Full of Links #2: September 6-12!

Books in General

• Story collection soars after Fry Tweet | theBookseller.com
  “A book of short stories has leaped up Amazon’s book charts to become second only to Dan Brown after Stephen Fry endorsed it on his Twitter feed.”
• What YA Lit is and isn’t / Tor.com
  Mary Pearson explain what YA is and why you should be reading it. “The bottom line is that YA books are not meant to raise children. They are everything any adult book is. They are entertainment. They are a place to see ourselves. They are a place to get lost for a few hours. They are a place to make us think and wonder and imagine. They are a place to evoke anger, disagreement, discussion, and maybe tears.”
• Die, Gothic, Die | Romancing the Blog
  “I’m positive other readers share my gravitation toward the lush language, the oblique heroes, the suspect situations of the gothic romance. More, I’m positive the right agents and editors are on the look out – especially given the publishing world’s continued craving for dark paranormal novels.”
• Embargoed books, or why book publicists have white hairs « The Book Publicity Blog
  Explaining what exactly an embargo on a book means, and why you should be horrified the NY Times ignored it.
• IT’S A CRIME! (OR A MYSTERY…): A revolutionary new book concept from the Netherlands.
  “Called the dwarsligger – which translates as “sleeper” – the book is a hard copy and was described by Sean French as “the size of a match box, almost”. The aim is to make the book much smaller and therefore more portable. The average weight comes in at 145 grms.”
• Childish Things / Tor.com
  My favorite bit: “No-one can have a story truly their own if a responsible adult will come and sort everything out for them. Parents are rarely permitted to get involved. They don’t necessarily need to be eaten by a crazed rhinoceros (Roald Dahl’s distinctive method from James and the Giant Peach), but the child must be allowed to overcome their own obstacles. The parents must be absent, incapacitated or, occasionally, given their own plot.” ABSOLUTELY YES.
• This Could Be the Year of Digital Textbooks, if Students Accept Them | The Chronicle of Higher Education
  “The increased awareness and availability of e-textbooks could make this a watershed year for the format—which has held only 2 to 3 percent of the market until now, according to the National Association of College Stores—as publishers learn whether or not enough students like the new titles and features to make them worth selling.” (via @bookoven)
• The English Teacher’s Companion: Remember to Read
  “If we do not read–a poem here, some portion of a book or article there–we will find ourselves drying out and beginning to resent our work, our kids, our life–all that prevents us from doing what we love, from being ourselves.” (via SophisticatedDorkiness.com)
• Using POD to Make Shelf Worthy Books | Dear Author
  “With POD technology, readers can create their own selection of limited edition hardcovers for their favorite authors. They can choose from a selection of covers or upload their own. Designers can proffer their own suggestions for covers, taking a small royalty for each sale. Penguin held a contest to design the cover of the next Donna Tartt novel. Readers could choose which, out of the winning designs, they would put on the cover. Readers could include a custom flyleaf, pick their own font, chapter headings, and color of binding.”

Publishers & Authors

• To Our Friends in the Bookish Community | Quartet Press
  Quartet Press has disbanded. (via @KatMeyer)
• Hachette Hires Private Detective in Ted Kennedy Leak – mediabistro.com: GalleyCat
  “After the NY Times published two articles looking at a leaked copy of Ted Kennedy’s embargoed autobiography, Hachette Book Group has hired a private detective.” Oh shit.
• Authors, Personal Information & Reader Expectation | Romancing the Blog
  “As readers, we expect to have access to our favourite authors nowadays. We are annoyed if they don’t have a website, or if they don’t update it on a regular basis. Ditto with author blogs. We feel entitled to see a photograph of them. We feel cheated if author interviews focus solely on their books and don’t provide at least a glimpse into their private sphere. Yet we don’t have a right to any of this information. We don’t automatically assume we’re entitled to know the intimate details of our dentist’s home life, so why should it be any different with authors?”
• 20 Neil Gaiman Facts | Jim C. Hines
  “#8 William Shakespeare once came back from the dead to ask for Neil Gaiman’s autograph.”

(Book) Blogging

• Persnickety Snark: A Guide to YA Blogging
  “A few weeks back I thought it would be a great idea to ask YA authors and bloggers about what they expected of one another in the blogosphere.”

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