Around The Bookish World: Week-In-Review

Welcome to this week’s news post! I think everyone must have heard about J.K Rowling’s secret identity being leaked online, Goodreads sued for copyright infringement and much more news in the world of books and publishing.

The huge news this week is all about J.K. Rowling’s secret identity as being debut Mystery writer, Richard Galbraith who wrote THE CUCKOO’S CALLING which was released earlier this year.  But the whole story behind how her real identity being leaked is just as interesting which ranged from theories of the publisher intentionally outing the author to increase sales to Rowling herself. But the real reason was uncovered yesterday when her law firm confirmed it was leaked by one of their lawyers who told his wife who then told her BFF. The BFF then posted a coy tweet which others and papers like The Times managed to prove it was Rowling who …

Around The Bookish World: Week-In-Review

Welcome to this week’s news post and we have a jam packed edition! First up we have the final decision ruling from Judge Cote on the Agency trial which Apple has been found guilty of colusion.  We also have news on Orson Scott Card’s open letter about intolerance over the boycott on his movie adaptation for ENDER’S GAME and more Bookish news!

Well it was pretty obvious that the outcome for the Agency trial would not be in favour for Apple which is the reasons why the  Big 6 publishers settled rather than battle it out. But the ruling and summary which details the level of collusion is pretty mind blowing. Jane from Dear Author has written a fantastic post detailing and summarizing the whole crazy saga including extracts from evidence which includes one executive to another to double delete an email over the discussions on Agency agreement and level …

Around The Bookish World: Week-In-Review

Welcome to this week’s Bookish news! In this edition we will have another twist in the long-running saga of Google’s lawsuit with the Author’s Guild, Shakespeare meets Star Wars and more news from authors and upcoming books to watch out for!

The big news this week is over the long-running saga with the lawsuit with the Author Guild and Google over Google Books. It seems now the 2nd Circuit judge has made a decision which could allow Google to argue a Fair Use argument but they have to refer to a lower court to judge the case. If the lower court decides in favour of Google they may win the 8 year long case on that argument but  it looks like this lawsuit will rumble on for a while yet.

Quirk Books, the publisher behind PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES, will be releasing a book which combine Star Wars and Shakespeare, I …

Around The Bookish World: Week-In-Review

Welcome to this week’s news post. It started off innocuously enough but it has ended with one of the most craziest story linked to plagiarism I’ve seen yet. There is also updates from Karen Marie Moning and Google’s Blogger deletion of adult blogs as well as our usual books to look out for.

Dear Author broke the news that authors Jamie McGuire’s BEAUTIFUL DISASTER and Tammara Webber’s EASY was plagiarised by an author called Jordin Williams in their book called AMAZINGLY DAMAGED. Now this is where the tale gets really strange and twisty when it was later found out that Williams also had a slew of aliases with other books which were then removed and their profiles removed when the news broke. But it gets even stranger when the book was later found out to be  Twilight fanfiction which had plagiarised passages from McGuire and Webber’s books and it was …

Around The Bookish World: Week-In-Review

Welcome to this week’s edition of Bookish news! This week has been chock-full of author and new books updates from Lisa Kleypas’ new Travis book to book covers being unveiled from JR Ward and Anne Bishop!

First up this week started off with the news that one of the books written by author Lorelei James was plagiarized by fanfic writer called Alison Gilmore. Although she has changed her name online and pretended it is another who shares the same name who was the culprit. Blogger Limecello details the crazy saga which happened last weekend in her fantastic post here.

Penguin has launched a new scheme where readers called First To Read which allows early access to arc and excerpts to review or to highlight in social media and in return people can gain points. For more information and join in the scheme click here.

Fifty Shades of Grey movie has a director! …

Around The Bookish World: Week-In-Review

Welcome to this week’s news post – In this edition we have news on the sad passing of author, Iain M. Banks, a very cute story of a pig in a wheelchair and his book deal plus more!

This week started off with the sad announcement of Sci Fi novelist, Iain M. Banks who died of cancer. He announced he had the disease earlier this year and stated he wouldn’t live out the rest of the year. His last book – The Quarry is slated for release in a few weeks time and which also has a character having cancer. Friends and fans can leave a message of condolences at his website. 

Apple has announced ibooks for the Mac. I am surprised this wasn’t available before or for apps for other platforms like Android or Windows which Amazon and Kobo have  on offer for their customers. This is part of the new …

Around the Bookish World: Week-In-Review

Welcome to this week’s news post! I apologise for the lack of  a post last week, but I was battling issues with my computer and a bad cold.  But no fear! In this this week’s edition which is full of spats between Simon and Schuster and Barnes and Noble which seems to be getting worse, Sexism in the SFWA and more news!

First up, it looks like the disagreement  between Simon and Schuster and Barnes and Noble is not going to end anytime soon, and in fact looks like its becoming worse. I saw via Twitter and a few blog posts this week that authors have complained that their books are not listed on the B&N site or shelved at their stores as well. This is harming both companies as S&S has basically lost the support one of the largest booksellers in the country and vice versa for …

Around The Bookish World: Week-In-Review

Welcome to this week’s news post! In this week’s edition we have news of Amazon’s launch into licensing fanfiction with Alloy Entertainment,   and more author and book news!

With the recent successes of pulled to publish fanfiction like 50 Shades of Grey and Gabriel’s Inferno, has certainly helped paved the way. But Amazon has now joined forces with Alloy Entertainment, a book packager who is behind popular franchises like The Vampire Diaries, Gossip Girls and Pretty Little Liars. Fanfic writers who have written stories based in these worlds belonging to Alloy Entertainment which is a subsidiary of Warner brothers, are invited to submit to sell their works via a license which Amazon and will be sold under an imprint called Kindle Worlds. Unlike the KDP programme which allows authors up to 70% of royalties, fanficcers can only get around 35% for each story sold. There is also restrictions …

Around The Bookish World: Week-In-Review

Welcome to this week’s news post and once again we have another author meltdown but this time over their struggles for their art and selling out, Amazon moving into their own currency and more publishing and book updates.

Amazon is back in the news with their recent announcement that they will be launching a digital currency to purchase apps in the Kindle Fire platform.  The more customers purchase and use Amazon Coins for buying apps the more discounts they will get and Amazon is enticing their customers with a free 500 coins offer for all customers in the US which comes up to $5 for those who buy games, movies or apps.

And talking about Amazon, I reported a few months ago that there was problems with their warehouses due to a security firm who were bullying  and throwing racist abuse at workers in Germany. Well it looks like there …

Around the Bookish World: Week-In-Review

Welcome to this week’s news post! This week have news that could shake up DRM in the future with legislation that could allow unlocking in the US, Candace Bushnell’s latest book leaked online due to her email account being hacked into and more news and tidbits.

This is really interesting to note that there is an amendement in Congress right now for the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright ACT) that proposes  users to unlock devices and software from DRM restrictions for their personal use.  This could potentially affect the future of DRM especially for ebooks and with Tor and a few other major publishers starting to lean towards to offer non DRM books for certain imprints. I suspect this is the beginning of the end of DRM for ebooks which hasn’t really affected the state of piracy and Tor recently announced that their move to non DRM ebooks hasn’t caused a spike …