Happy news! In addition to Barbara Vey’s Beyond Her Book blog, Publishers Weekly will have a romance review section. You can read more about it here.
Interested in trying out a Kindle before buying it? You can now find it at Best Buy, Staples and Target
More e-reader prices are dropping. Border’s Kobo reader is $129 and the super-low-end Aluratek Libre reader is now going for $99.99, down from $120. These are the lower end products, so check reviews.
Bestselling writer Daniel Silva is following Janet Evanovich’s lead and looking for a new publisher.
“What’s driving all of this is the growing realization by authors that their next deal probably won’t be as good as their last. Dealmakers say publishers aren’t stepping up for auctions the way they once did, and nobody wants to overpay.”
Jane Friedman advises agents adapting to change not to blink. Good advice!
Feeling depressed about the industry? This should make you feel better. Scott William Carter lists 10 reasons there’s never been a better time to be a fiction writer.
In Italy, books and the film industry go together.
…the Rome Film Festival’s Business Street mart is setting up a new section called Industry/Books, proving it has a good read of Italian industry needs.
In Italy, according to recent research from Italian publishers’ org AIE, 27% of pics produced are adaptated from tomes that are increasingly becoming the basis for high-profile films — think Saverio Costanzo’s upcoming “The Solitude of Prime Numbers.”
Anyone thinking of booking a flight to Italy? You could sell a book, have it made into a movie (Eat, Pray, Lover), deduct it from your taxes, and eat great food.
The last time I posted I missed this Huffington Post piece with Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner speaking about the NYTimes reviews. Here’s Jennifer:
“I’d love it if the Times actually “celebrated” my genre, but at this point I’d happily settle for the paper merely acknowledging it. As it stands, thrillers and mysteries and speculative fiction can get daily reviews, or considered in the NYTBR round-ups. Chick lit gets ignored, unless it gores one of the paper’s sacred cows (note to self: don’t mess with Anna Wintour!). Romance gets ignored completely…and that, I think, is the most damning argument about gender bias at the Times. How can anyone claim the paper plays fair when genre fiction that men read gets reviewed but genre fiction that women read doesn’t exist on the paper’s review pages? It would be as if the paper’s film critics only reviewed tiny independent fare and refused to see so much as a single frame of a romantic comedy, or if the music critics listened to Grizzly Bear and refused to acknowledge the existence of Katy Perry or Lady Gaga. How seriously would a reader take a critic like that?”
Timing is everything, according to Eric at Pimp My Novel, especially when to put your books on the shelves.
This is old news already (9 days ago), but good news, and a great way to end this week’s post. Leah Hultenshmidt from Dorchester is joining Sourcebooks, which has become one of the top publishers in the romance genre.
Thanks so much for rounding all of this up for us, Edie!