In the News This Week

Happy holiday weekend, friends. Before you don red, white and blue, view parades, and marvel at fireworks, check out some of this week's news stories. Fridays on the SCBWI blog, I share snippets of and links to some of the publishing/media-related news I've read during the last week that I found interesting, helpful, and/or fun. Click titles to get to the full articles.

This week's tidbits include dwindling library budgets, tons and tons of tweeting, John Green signing and signing and signing, a literary agency repping self-pubbed authors, ALA in pictures, eReader stats, THE GIVER on the big screen, census news on your future audience, a psychologists weighing in on GO THE F**K TO SLEEP, and more.


In Lean Times, Schools Squeeze Out Librarians (NYT)
Budget belt-tightening threatens to send school librarians the way of the card catalog. Students at all six high schools at the Martin Luther King Jr. campus in Manhattan must share the resources of one library. The schools superintendent in Lancaster, Pa., said he had to eliminate 15 of the district’s 20 librarians to save full-day kindergarten classes.In the Salem-Keizer school district in Oregon, all 48 elementary and middle school librarians would lose their jobs under a budget proposal that faces a vote next week.

200 million Tweets per day (twitter blog)
Halfway through 2011, users on Twitter are now sending 200 million Tweets per day. For context on the speed of Twitter’s growth, in January of 2009, users sent two million Tweets a day, and one year ago they posted 65 million a day.

YA Author John Green to Sign All Preorders of Next Novel  (PW)
After revealing Tuesday on a YouTube video that the title of his next novel is The Fault in Our Stars, YA author John Green made a second announcement that has some of his 1,140,780 Twitter followers, 61,714 Facebook friends, 525,676 YouTube subscribers, and other fans buzzing today. Not only buzzing, but also rushing to preorder The Fault in Our Stars, even though its tentative pub date isn't until May 2012, and the cover art hasn’t designed yet. Within hours of the announcement, the book shot to #1 on Amazon.com and bn.com, where it remains on both sites as of press time.

ALA 2011: Photos from the Show (PW)
The Big Easy played host to librarians, publishers, and writers who ventured to New Orleans June 23-28 for the ALA's annual conference. Library Journal reported that attendance was down this year, with 20,186 attendees and vendors at the show, but there was no shortage of excitement for children's books. The Newbery-Caldecott banquet bestowed top honors on Clare Vanderpool, winner of the Newbery Medal for Moon Over Manifest, and Erin Stead, who was awarded the Caldecott for A Sick Day for Amos McGee. 

For the iPad, Books That Respond to a Child’s Touch (NYT)
There may never come a day when book apps, as interactive books for tablet computers are known, are more appealing to children than games. But the apps are getting more engaging. The latest book apps to appear on my iPad include The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore ($5), Angelina Ballerina’s New Ballet Teacher ($1), The Wrong Side of the Bed in 3-D ($3), Oh, the Thinks You Can Think! ($4) and Cars 2 Storybook Deluxe ($6).

Specific Media Buys Myspace, Timberlake Takes Stake (Online Media Daily)
Marking the end of a social era, ad network Specific Media on Wednesday announced the acquisition of Myspace. And in a strange twist, music star-cum-actor Justin Timberlake is also taking an undisclosed ownership stake in the company, and is expected to play a key role in re-imagining the MySpace brand.
While financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, multiple reports put it at about $35 million--far less than the $580 million News Corp. paid for the then-high-flying site back in 2005.

eReader Adoption Hits 12% In U.S. Says Pew Research (GalleyCat)
The share of adults in the United States who own an eReader doubled in May 2011 to 12 percent from 6 percent in November 2010, according to the Pew Internet Project. Tablets haven’t seen the same level of growth in recent months. In May 2011, 8 percent of adults report owning a tablet, up only 1 percent since and 3 percent since November 2010.

Bridges giving 'Giver' another shot (Variety)
Jeff Bridges and producer Nikki Silver are taking another stab at a bigscreen version of Lois Lowry's young adult novel "The Giver." They had been developing a feature version of the popular book for nearly a decade before it wound up at Warner Bros., which ponied up nearly $1 million to set up the tome with Red Wagon's Douglas Wick and Lucy Fisher in 2007.

Twitter and Publishing: How the Industry is Faring (PW)
Last week, PW’s article “The Top Five Twitter Feeds for the Six Largest Publishing Houses” asked publishers to send us data regarding their Twitter feeds, and, on June 6, we ran an initial article featuring a small sampling of imprints on Twitter. While these previous articles were meant to show a basic overview of publishers' presence on Twitter, the table below is meant to be as an inclusive listing of publishers as possible of varying sizes and in a full range of categories. 

A Gateway to Great Books on Your iPhone (NYT Gadgetwise)
Penguin Classics, that more-than-1,500-titles collection of English-language literary classics, has a new free app for iOS devices available on Tuesday. The paperback publisher, celebrating 65 years of the Classics collection this year, has created a catalog of its titles (which basically includes every author you have heard of, ever) and put it into an easily searchable database.

DGLM Elaborates on Plan to Rep Self-Published Authors (PW)
After announcing on its blog Tuesday that it would be working its clients through the digital self-publishing process, literary agency Dystel & Goderich has had publishing insiders buzzing. What did the announcement mean? How would the agency take commissions from authors who are self-publishing? Would the agency become a publisher itself?

Census estimates show minority babies now outnumber white babies, part of sweeping race change (WaPo)
For the first time, more than half of the children under age 2 in the U.S. are minorities, part of a sweeping race change and a growing age divide between mostly white, older Americans and fast-growing younger ethnic populations that could reshape government policies.
 
Why Has Go the F**k to Sleep Struck Such a Nerve With Parents? (HuffPo)
I admit, it's funny. And there's another thing I like about Adam Mansbach's Go the F**k to Sleep: It exposes the underbelly of parenting -- that dark, secret part of us that needs a little time to ourselves when we can do grown up things -- or maybe just crawl into our own bed for some desperately needed sleep.

In the News This Week

Fridays on the SCBWI blog, I share snippets of and links to some of the publishing/media-related news I've read during the last week that I found interesting, helpful, and/or fun. Click titles to get to the full articles.

This week's news includes PW's coverage of NBA winner Kathryn Erskine's acceptance speech, goodbye to Tricycle Press, a pair of some studies on the teens' dating habits and buying habits (including books), MySpace/Facebook partnership, help with e-reader holiday shopping, and more.


Erskine Wins NBA in Young People's Literature (PW)
Kathryn Erskine was filled with gratitude as she stepped up to the podium on Wednesday night to claim the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, for her novel Mockingbird (Philomel), about a 10-year-old girl with Asperger’s syndrome. She thanked the National Book Awards "for supporting reading and our culture," as well as the judges, her publishing house Penguin, and "readers and friends and supporters and family." She also thanked educators, for teaching children "to think critically and deeply, and think for themselves." And she saved special thanks for her mother, for teaching her not only the "what" of the world, "but also the 'why.'"

Random House to Shutter Tricycle Press (PW)

As of January 31st Random House Children’s Books is discontinuing the frontlist publishing program of Berkeley-based Tricycle Press, the 18-year-old children’s book imprint. As part of the change, v-p and publisher Nicole Geiger and her four-person editorial team will leave the company on the 31st as well. Tricycle marketing and publicity manager Laura Mancuso will stay on in the same capacity at RHCB.

A study confirms every suspicion you ever had about high-school dating (Slate)
In the Darwinian world of high-school dating, freshman girls and senior boys have the highest chances of successfully partnering up. Senior girls (too picky!) and freshman boys (pond scum!) have the least. These are truisms known to anyone who has watched 10 minutes of a teen movie or spent 10 minutes in a high school cafeteria. Now, however, social scientists have examined them exhaustively and empirically. And they have found that for the most part, they're accurate. So are some other old prom-era chestnuts: Teen boys are primarily—obsessively?—interested in sex, whereas girls, no matter how boy-crazy, tend to focus on relationships. Young men frequently fib about their sexual experience, whereas young women tend to be more truthful. Once a student has sex, it becomes less of an issue in future relationships.

Teen Girls as Avid Shoppers (AdWeek)
 Don't blame teenage girls for the sluggishness of consumer spending. In a survey just released by Varsity Brands (which sells cheerleading apparel) and Ketchum Global Research Network, girls age 13-18 identified shopping as their favorite pastime. And the list of purchases they've recently made confirms this isn't just talk. But other parts of the survey may leave you wondering how the girls' immersion in new media leaves them with time to buy things.

You Can Now Log in to MySpace with Facebook (Mashable)
In a move that has been rumored for nearly a year, MySpace users can now log in to the once dominant social network using Facebook. At a press event this afternoon, the two companies announced an expansion of their existing partnership that puts a connect with Facebook button on the MySpace homepage and enables a wide range of personalization and sharing features on MySpace.

Closing the book on Harry Potter (NYT)
A LOT has happened since the screenwriter Steve Kloves began working on his adaptation of the very first Harry Potter book, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” in the late 1990s.
The three central characters — Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint) — have grown up on screen, enduring the twin horrors of Voldemort and adolescence before our very eyes. The stories have become progressively darker and more complicated. And Mr. Kloves has immersed himself so deeply in the world of Harry Potter that by the time J. K. Rowling’s seventh and final volume, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” came out in 2007, he said, he knew the characters almost as thoroughly as she did herself.

Holiday Gift Guide To eReaders (eBook Newser)
The holiday shopping season is here and eReaders and tablets are poised to be the hot items of the season. To help you navigate through all of the devices out there, we have compiled a Holiday Gift Guide To eReaders featuring the latest eReaders on the market. The below list includes eReaders that have come out over the last year and will be hot this season:

Great Holiday Expectations for E-Readers (NYT)
E-readers will be widely available at stores like Target, Best Buy and Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retailer, and offered at prices that make sense for Christmas gifts—less than $150. Publishers and booksellers are expecting that instead of giving your mother a new Nicholas Sparks novel or your father a David Baldacci thriller in the hardcovers that traditionally fly off the shelves and into wrapping paper at this time of year, you might elect to convert them to e-reading.

In the News This Week

Fridays on the SCBWI blog, I share snippets of and links to some of the publishing/media-related news I've read during the last week that I found interesting, helpful, and/or fun. Click titles to get to the full articles.

Among this week's news: Sterling's new YA imprint, social networks and marketing, Scholastic's own social network, the MySpace redesign, B&N's Nook plus color, kindergartners in a bookstore, a book seller in an elementary school, rearranging YA in B&N, raising boys who read, a PW interview with SCBWI board member Linda Sue Park, and more.


Sterling Publishing’s Splinter Imprint Opens with Colleen Houck Fantasy Series (GalleyCat)
Splinter, Sterling Publishing’s young-adult imprint, will launch with a three-part fantasy series by Colleen Houck. Breaking the tradition of publishing one book per year, the Tiger Saga will be available in its entirety by the end of 2011. Splinter will release Tiger’s Curse on January 11th, Tiger’s Quest on June 11th, and Tiger’s Voyage on November 11th. The books will be published in both hardcover and eBook formats.

B&N Divides Out Teen Fiction Genres (PW)

In a sign of just how popular teen fiction has become, Barnes & Noble is in the midst of rearranging its teen fiction section chain-wide this week in an effort to improve the shopping experience and boost sales. Already teen fiction is the biggest book growth category at Barnes & Noble, according to Mary Amicucci, v-p of children’s books. In terms of volume, it is the second largest subject, behind adult fiction.

It's All About the Social Network (PW)
Nearly 80 publishing professionals tuned in to a BISG-sponsored webcast, “Marketing ‘Books’ in a Digital World,” on Wednesday. The hour-long discussion covered a range of tactics publishers are taking to get their books into readers’ hands, but the topic that loomed largest was social networking.

Scholastic Launches Social Networking Site (PW)
Scholastic is releasing a new social networking site today, YouAreWhatYouRead.com, that lets people build a profile based on the five books that were most influential in their lives. Like GoodReads and other social networking sites for readers, users can find other people with shared literary interests, or “Bookprints,” as Scholastic calls them. Scholastic books don’t appear to get special billing on YouAreWhatYouRead.com, and nearly every book in print from any publisher is available for users to catalog on their profiles. There is a strong celebrity angle to the site, with visible profiles for more than 130 well-known personalities ranging from Bill Gates to Whoopi Goldberg.

B&N Intros Nookcolor Tablet, New Children's Titles (PW)
Approximately one year after introducing its first e-reading device, Barnes & Noble took a major step forward Tuesday with the introduction of the Nookcolor, a $249 tablet with a seven inch VividView Color Touchscreen. The addition of color to the e-reading device allowed B&N to officially announce Nook Kids, which in addition to 12,000 chapter books, will have 130 picture books at launch with that number expected to double by the end of the year. Some of the children’s books will be enhanced e-books, featuring video and audio. A third part of the launch was the announcement of Nookdeveloper that will allow creators to develop “reading-centric” apps that will be sold through the Nook app store. Since the Nook runs on the Android platform, apps from the Android Market can be ported to the Nook, but Android Market apps will not automatically be sold through the Nook since B&N want to curate the store, company CEO William Lynch said.

Amazon to Introduce Lending for Kindle (GalleyCat)
In keeping with a tradition of quietly releasing news on Fridays, Amazon revealed last week they will soon allow readers to loan Kindle books to other users–one crucial feature that many readers have sought.

How to Raise Boys Who Read (WSJ)
When I was a young boy, America's elite schools and universities were almost entirely reserved for males. That seems incredible now, in an era when headlines suggest that boys are largely unfit for the classroom. In particular, they can't read. According to a recent report from the Center on Education Policy, for example, substantially more boys than girls score below the proficiency level on the annual National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test. This disparity goes back to 1992, and in some states the percentage of boys proficient in reading is now more than ten points below that of girls. The male-female reading gap is found in every socio-economic and ethnic category, including the children of white, college-educated parents. The good news is that influential people have noticed this problem. The bad news is that many of them have perfectly awful ideas for solving it.

Kindergartners and Commerce (Shelf Talker)
Every year the Shelburne Community School kindergartners come to the bookstore. They walk over, hand in hand, from the school down the road. They pile into the store, one class at a time and settle in the picture book section on our comfy rug. It’s a cozy tradition.

Corrupting the Youth (Genreville)
My alumni association loves me; every time they ask me whether I want to give a talk, I say yes. Today I went back to my elementary school to teach seven-year-olds about book reviewing. If you’ve ever wanted to get back to basics in your work or personal life, try explaining what you do to a very smart seven-year-old. I knew I was going to be facing a tough audience: perceptive but easily bored. Fortunately, I also knew that they were all interested in books and reading–and in having and sharing opinions.

9 Super Annoying Twitter Personality Type (Social Times)
I dip in and out of Twitter, and lately it’s been obvious to me that I’m looking at the same personality types no matter where I go. Here are 9 – Which one are you?

Survey Finds College Students Love Laptops But Not eReaders, Facebook But Not Twitter (ReadWriteWeb)
Want to know what the future workforce thinks of technology, how it uses search engines, social networking, and online collaborative tools? The recently released ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology gives some excellent insights into trends in college students' technology ownership, perceptions, skills, and habits. The 2010 report was recently released by EDUCAUSE, a non-profit organization that supports the advancement of technology in higher education. The report is based on a survey from the spring of 2010 of over 36,950 freshmen and seniors at 100 four-year institutions and students at 27 two-year institutions.

iPads Hit AT&T And Verizon Store (eBook Newer)
Apple’s iPad goes on sales today at AT&T Wireless and Verizon stores. The tablet is popping up in various retailers this holiday season, as Apple hopes to push the iPad as this year’s holiday gift. The iPad is already available in Target, Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club.

MySpace Unveils Major Redesign (MediaWeek)
MySpace on Wednesday (Oct. 27) will unveil a striking redesign that represents a culmination of the News Corp.-owned social network's attempt at reinventing itself as an entertainment hub. According to president Mike Jones, MySpace had long suffered from what he calls "design debt"—i.e. an accumulation of different looks and incompatible functionalities. For example, there had been 117 different styles for the MySpace logo alone. Therefore, rather than undertake a simple redesign, Jones and his team elected to completely rebuild the site "from the ground up," he said. "This is something we can now build upon."

Q & A with Linda Sue Park (PW)
Linda Sue Park is the Newbery-Award winning author of A Single Shard and other acclaimed novels and picture books. Her forthcoming book, The Long Walk to Water, profiles two young people in the Sudan—one based on a real Lost Boy, who was forced to flee his village, the other a fictional girl who collects the water for her village.