Jul 27 2009
Monday News Round Up
- More rumors abound about the Apple Tablet. The Financial Times is stating that it will be due out by Christmas (registration required). There is a supposed launch of a new iTouch complete with camera and microphone in October so it’s possible that the Apple Tablet will be announced at the same time.
- Red Sage author, Leigh Court, was featured on NBC Nightly News in a piece about entertainment. I haven’t watched it yet but I heard it was pro romance.
- Speaking of national news and romance, Geri Krotow, a romance author, gave her book to Barak Obama as a gift for Michelle. The pictures of the President looking at the book are priceless.
- Penguin has a good quarter but only because of the currency exchange rate. Under the hood, it shows that profits fell 19% and there was a 6% sales decline in the first six months of 2009. Penguin appears to be losing money in its travel and reference department which resulted in the layoffs (100 people) and downsizing of its DK Publishing Group. Charlaine Harris is the highlight of the US publishing group. Dead and Gone shipped 540,000 copies of the hardcover. E-book sales are “very strong” but Penguin is concerned about the $9.99 price point. Via Publishers’ Weekly.
- Patricia Briggs (a Penguin author) is having a giveaway extravaganza. Briggs is one of my favorite UF/crossover writers. Go forth and win stuff from her and you, too, will become a convert. Via SmartBitches.
- Also at the Smart Bitches is a to die for blog along by Doc Turtle of J. R. Ward’s Dark Lover.
- All right, who named these poor kids? Seriously. It’s like the BDB had only one even halfway reasonable name to go around and they all drew straws to see who’d get it. And now that one guy is dead. The names are one of the reasons I’m finding it very hard to take this book seriously. I can’t help but think of the MST3K episode Cave Dwellers, in which Tom Servo changes his name to Htom Sirveaux and Crow says to Tom, "well, Htom, why don’t you hlick me?"
- EA (a gaming software company) tries to win the DoucheBag of the Year award for ComicCon 2009. It has a contest that requires the entrants to take pictures committing “acts of lust” with its Booth Babes. Ironically, EA is trying to reach out to the female consumer with new Wii Fit games after suffering a downturn in profits and sales. Oh, EA, did you think ComicCon was a bubble in which being assholic toward women would go unnoticed?
- AP wants to control the dissemination of its news and has now announced that it will be embedding special html code in all its stories. The sad thing is that the AP doesn’t know its ass from its head when it comes to technology because a simple copy and paste of the text will remove said special html code.
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Jul 27, 2009 @ 12:33:52
Ohh.. EA, I am so disappointed in you. They’ve always been DoucheBag-ish to an extent, but come on! Who could have possibly looked at that as being good publicity?
The picture of Obama reading the novel at the end of the article is the best!
Jul 27, 2009 @ 12:37:46
I love those pics of Obama. Yes, the one at the end is the best! I know that expression well. It’s a man thing. It’s the face they make when they don’t want us to know that they’re actually intrigued. Keep an eye on your book, Michelle!
Jul 27, 2009 @ 12:56:21
Those Obama pics made me LOL. Too funny.
I am very excited about these rumors of an ipod touch with a camera. I am already saving for one because I’m just that much of a tech geek. lol.
Jul 27, 2009 @ 13:53:04
EA is the friggin evil empire of the video game world. Everyone knows that.
The day they bought Maxis I wept.
Jul 27, 2009 @ 15:37:53
That last Obama pic is awesome. :D
My theory is that, ten or twelve years ago or however long ago it was that she started writing this series, Ms. Ward did a Visiting Writer Day at a middle school, and let all the eleven- to thirteen-year-olds come up with “Koolh!” names for her characters. Seriously, doesn’t that make sense…? And yes, the one exception just makes it worse. If you’re going to set up a ridiculous pattern, at least follow it. And aren’t those names supposed to be, like, genetic or something? They show up in a birthmark? Which is very silly in and of itself, but that being the case, it’s not like you can just say, “Well, the one dude with a normal name, his mother had two functional brain cells and put her foot down,” or anything like that.
Ms. Ward is actually a good writer, egregious abuse of typography (plus a few other issues I have with her) aside. I’m looking forward to her wrapping up her current series and moving on to something different, before which she’ll hopefully visit a college writing class instead and come away with some reasonable names. Then I’ll be able to read and enjoy her books without cringing from cover to cover. [sigh]
Angie
Jul 27, 2009 @ 17:23:31
The blog by Doc Turtle is Hilarious with a capital ‘H’. I have to admit I secretly thought the exact same thing. OMG…did I just admit to that?!?
Jul 27, 2009 @ 19:00:08
@Angie: This is probably not the time to point out that her second series crosses over with the Black Dagger Brotherhood a lot, huh? [DA Jia, destroying hopes and dreams about books since 2007.]
re: EA & their booth babe bounty
I would recommend for anyone who hasn’t yet to NOT read the comments on the linked article. It’s really for your sanity, I promise. (And for the safety of your head, which may explode with rage.)
Jul 27, 2009 @ 21:02:34
Oh dear. I’ve been hasty again. I’ve finally got an iPod Touch two weeks ago as a backup just in case something goes wrong with my Sony PRS505. I’ve been saying I wish there was a camera especially during the recent solar eclipse and my colleague was trying to get a photo (successfully) of the event with the aid of her iPhone and an x-ray film. My Sony camera phone just couldn’t get a tolerable picture. Now we have this rumour of a new iPod with camera, Grrrh!
By the way, I’ve been playing with it and thank you Jane for that write up you did on how to download your books from Calibre to the iPod. It was a breeze. I am so happy with it. Calbre is just fantastic.
The Doc Turtle blog is absolutely hilarious. I’m so looking forward to the next installment. Loved Obama’s expression in the photo too. I can only imagine what Doc Turtle’s was when he was reading Ward’s book. Even more comical.
Jul 27, 2009 @ 22:18:01
Jia — wow, load the gun I’ll use to shoot myself, why don’t you? :/
Well, I can still hope that one of these days she’ll eventually break away from the influence of the Middle School Nomenclature Club and start something fresh.
Angie, keeping a set of virtual fingers crossed
Jul 28, 2009 @ 00:58:43
My crush on Obama just exploded into full on love!! Those pics are the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. Big congrats to Geri Krotow. Wow.
Jul 28, 2009 @ 07:08:55
You know, if a romance author got to give a book to Michelle Obama I really wish it had a) been a romance novel instead of this thing, and b) not the most horrid depressing negative emotion invoking scribbling that I ever had the misfortune to read. I had to read it for a contest and it confirmed why the Everlasting Love line died a fast death. It’s god-awful. How depressing to think that this book made it to the WH when there are so many wonderful romance novels out there.
Jul 28, 2009 @ 08:13:21
Is it just me or is this guy a jerk?
This might be off topic but the tone of this blog post really kind of steamed me up and I wanted a second opinion to see if it was just me being over-sensitive.
Jul 28, 2009 @ 08:13:44
And spam filter ate my comment…
ETA: Nevermind. :)
Jul 28, 2009 @ 09:39:40
@Moth : Oh, it’s just another classic type of That Guy. You know, That Guy.
In this case, he’s sounds like a pretty standard “Hey, I’m a Nice Guy, and I’ve totally pretended to be your friend as a subterfuge for getting into your pants, so you OWE me a blow job, not that jerk who actually bothers to wear nice clothes and style his hair and get out of his cubicle / off his barstool and have an interesting life that attracts you.”
In extreme cases, they turn into “Death of Nice Guy” assholes. Not linking, but you can google if you want.
Ember Case » Post Topic » A romance for Michelle Obama
Aug 06, 2009 @ 06:27:29
[...] via Dear Author, this fun article. The picture at the bottom of the page of President Obama thumbing through is [...]