News & Notes - 10/26/13 (the Halloween edition!)

News & Notes is a weekly Saturday post featuring book- and publishing-related news, links to interesting articles and opinion pieces, giveaways on this and other blogs, and other cool stuff.

Books & Ebooks in the News:

• World Book Night's book list for 2014
• "Health Woes Will Keep Munro From Nobel Ceremony"  (Annalisa Quinn, NPR's The Two-Way)
• "Simon & Schuster to Launch Science Fiction, Fantasy Imprint" for readers "of all ages" but mainly YA and up.  (Jim Milliot, Publishers Weekly)
• "Emily Dickinson Papers Go Online, Deepening Harvard-Amherst Feud" (Annalisa Quinn, NPR's The Two-Way)
• Amazon.com Announces Third Quarter Sales up 24% to $17.09 Billion (press release)
• "Kirshbaum to Leave Amazon Publishing"  (Publishers Weekly) 
• NYT style guide keeps the hyphen in "e-book"  (Diana Dilworth, GalleyCat)
• "Dilbert Creator Responds to One-Star Review on Amazon" (Jason Boog, GalleyCat)
• "Winners of the 2013 Whiting Writers Awards" (Jason Boog, GalleyCat)

Worth Reading: 

• "Goodreads: Where readers and authors battle it out in an online version of 'Lord of the Flies'" (Laura Miller, Salon)
• "How Amazon and Goodreads could lose their best readers" (Laura Miller, Salon)
• "For Major Pubs, Will Print No Longer Be the Norm?"  (Rachel Deahl & Jim Milliot, Publishers Weekly)
• "Masterpiece Memoirist".  The Wall Street Journal's Joanne Kaufman talks with Rebecca Eaton, executive producer of PBS's "Masterpiece", about her new memoir.
• "Turning a Page Inside a Rural One-Room Library" (Jennifer Davidson, NPR)
• "Why Your Brain Needs More Downtime" (Ferris Jabr, Scientific American)
• "Young Adult Books from Page to Screen" (Ashley Strickland, CNN)
• "Unfettered: Tales by Masters of Fantasy edited by Shawn Speakman: Fantasy meets health care reality" Fantasy author Shawn Speakman battled cancer but was left with a $200,000 bill.  Author friends donated stories for an anthology to help him cover those costs.  Now Speakman is planning a non-profit organization to help other writers cover catastrophic health care costs. The article also reviews the anthology, which sounds well worth the price of admission. (John Ruch, Paste Magazine) 

For Writers & Bloggers:

• "Freelance Writers and the Affordable Care Act" (Jason Boog, GalleyCat)

Book Announcements:

Christopher Paolini in the Beyond Words fantasy calendar. Photo by Lauren Zurchin

• "Samsa in Love", a ew short story by Haruki Murikama, which you can read (free!) courtesy of The New Yorker
• Beyond Words, Lauren Zurchin's fantasy calendar featuring photos well-known authors in fantasy costumes, is now completed.  Authors include Patrick Rothfuss, Cassandra Clare, Gail Carriger, Lauren Oliver, Christopher Paolini, Brandon Sanderson,  Maggie Stiefvater, Tad Williams, and a few others. You can pre-order the calendar through The Tinker's Pack, the online store of the Worldbuilders charity.

Awesome lists (in honor of Halloween): 

behance.vo.llnwd.net

• The 50 Scariest Books of All Time  (Emily Temple, Flavorwire)
• 10 Books That Will Scare the H*ll Out of You  (Julie Bluntin, Huffington Post)
• 18 Literary Pumpkins For a Bookish Halloween (Kangaru, Buzzfeed)
• 20 Photos of Famous Authors in Awesome Costumes  (Emily Temple, Flavorwire)

Bookish Quotes:

That's it for this week!

I'm always on the lookout for interesting articles, lists, and links for News & Notes, so please let me know if you see (or write!) anything that might be good for this feature.  You can leave me a comment or send me an email -- my address is on the About/Review Policy/Contact page.