Jul 5 2012
Thursday News: Entangled goes the warehouse route; Apple Mini iPad news heats up
Apple iPad. Big Stock Photo
Sizzling ebooks stimulate bigscreen interest – Entertainment News, Top News, Media – Variety – Print publishing rights went up for auction last month [for The Marriage Bargain], but despite hefty seven-figure offers from most major publishers, Entangled saw enough upside to self-distribute — a change of heart that held up film-rights talks. Still, Hollywood interest in “The Marriage Bargain” remains high, and current talks are expected to yield a Gersh-repped rights deal in the coming days.” Variety
This article essentially says that film studios are interested in books like the Marriage Bargain (which I would predict to be a big screen fail unless it includes the Magic Mike crew inserting pelvic thrusts every ten minutes) and Bared to You by Sylvia Day (ditto). The movie moguls are trolling the Kindle bestseller list. “On the Island” has already been optioned and I actually think that has enough interesting content to generate a decent and maybe dark movie.
Entangled deciding to print its own mass market books. Mass market books are pulped and returned for a credit. Warehousing, taxable issues, and no refunds make mass market expensive.
Amazon Has Reportedly Ordered 2 Million Redesigned Kindle Fires For Early August (AMZN) – SFGate – “Amazon has ordered 2 million redesigned Kindle Fires for an early August release, says the China Times, via Staska at Unwired. The new Kindle Fire is said to have a metal frame with a plastic chassis. (Sounds like an iPhone 3G.) The original Kindle Fire was a clunky piece of hardware that was reportedly picked off a shelf. It looked exactly like the BlackBerry Playbook.” SF Gate
It’s looking like a late July announcement with an early August ship date is more likely than not.
Apple supply chain points to 8-inch iPad – MarketWatch – ” TAIPEI (MarketWatch) — Apple Inc.’s component suppliers in Asia are preparing for mass production in September of a new tablet computer with a smaller screen, people familiar with the situation said, suggesting that the Cupertino, Calif., company is close to launching a smaller tablet. … Two of the people said the new tablet will likely come with a screen smaller than 8 inches, compared with the 9.7-inch screen of Apple’s AAPL +1.16% latest version of the iPad, which was released in March. The iPad’s screen size has remained the same since the first model was released in 2010. “ Market Watch
I still think this rumor is very iffy even though Google has launched its own 7″ tablet and Amazon is onto version 2. That said, Bloomberg and the WSJ are saying that Apple intends to launch a cheaper, smaller iPad around October. October is supposedly the release date of the iPhone 5.
Apple Said to Plan Smaller IPad to Vie With Google Nexus – Bloomberg – “Apple Inc. (AAPL) plans to debut a smaller, cheaper iPad by year-end, two people with knowledge of the plans said, to help maintain dominance of the tablet market as Google Inc. (GOOG) and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) prepare competing handheld devices. The new model will have a screen that’s 7 inches to 8 inches diagonally, less than the current 9.7-inch version, said the people, who asked not to be identified because Apple hasn’t made its plans public. The product, which Apple may announce by October, won’t have the high-definition screen featured on the iPad that was released in March, one of the people said.” Bloomberg
Fracking Now Legal in North Carolina, Because Lawmaker Pressed the Wrong Button – “The vote took place late Monday. Democrat Becky Carney, who had lobbied her fellow democrats to vote against the bill, was tired. It was the end of the day, the night really, and she was feeling fatigued. So fatigued, in fact, she pressed Yea instead of Nay, casting the deciding 72nd vote in favor of the veto! The Atlantic Wire reports that just after the vote, Carney’s voice could be heard on her microphone, saying “Oh my gosh. I pushed green.” Apparently, House rules allow you to change your vote only if it will have no effect on the outcome. What a pointless rule!” Gizmodo
This is insane. A vote made accidentally should not count.
Charles Carreon Drops Bogus Lawsuit Against The Oatmeal Creator | Electronic Frontier Foundation – “San Francisco – Attorney Charles Carreon dropped his bizarre lawsuit against The Oatmeal creator Matthew Inman today, ending his strange legal campaign against Inman’s humorous and creative public criticism of a frivolous cease and desist letter that Carreon wrote on behalf of his client Funny Junk. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and co-counsel Venkat Balasubramani represented Inman in the case. While Carreon’s lawsuit was purportedly about whether Inman’s online fundraising campaign for the American Cancer Society and the National Wildlife Federation complies with California regulations, it was really a classic SLAPP – a strategic lawsuit against public participation.” EFF
Look, a happy ever after ending!
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Jul 05, 2012 @ 06:16:50
I think it’s great so many Indie books are gaining interest from Hollywood, but even if these books sell their film rights, the majority don’t always get made into films. I’m still waiting to hear if and when The Night Circus will be made into a film, which would be fabulous. Also, after the rush to sell Fifty Shades to film, what’s the hold up? I would expect everyone to scramble and start filming next year.
Jul 05, 2012 @ 08:28:48
@KT Grant: For most book-to-movie situations, getting the film rights is probably one of the cheaper if not the cheapest expenses. Hence the rush, then wait wait wait wait.
Jul 05, 2012 @ 08:50:05
I’ve been glued to Popehat.com and Techdirt following the Carreon saga. It’s been grand entertainment.
Jul 05, 2012 @ 09:12:26
@Nadia Lee: Well, there is also the fact that a lot of times the movie retains very little of the book. The movie made from Andre Norton’s The Beastmaster comes to mind. I was thoroughly disappointed that all of the book (except the talking to animals part) was essentially dropped.
Then Bladerunner took the title from an interesting medical sf novel (Alan Nourse) and added it to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Bladerunner the movie was stunning though. Beastmaster wasn’t.
Jul 05, 2012 @ 09:28:42
Is there a link missing for the Entangled mmpb news?
Jul 05, 2012 @ 10:02:18
@AmyW: It’s in the Variety link.
Jul 05, 2012 @ 11:24:39
I’ve been keeping up with the Inman/Carreon saga on Popehat, too. (thank you so much, Jane, for linking to that blog–it’s awesome) A bonus to the entertainment factor is the education I’m getting in frivolous lawsuits. Also, my respect for lawyers (except Carreon, of course) has increased. You guys have to have so much data crammed in your heads AND be able to use it effectively. I would never make it through law school.
Jul 05, 2012 @ 11:36:41
@CourtneyLee:
You guys have to have so much data crammed in your heads AND be able to use it effectively. I would never make it through law school.
No, not really. Most lawyers I know only speak off the cuff about things they deal with on a very, very regular basis. Everything else, they look up first, and then talk about. But most interactions people have with lawyers are structured to hide the look-up time.
As a lawyer, you have to know how to access the stuff crammed elsewhere, and make sense of it quickly. But you don’t need to know what it is. As a general rule, I usually do a sanity check before I say anything, because my memory (which isn’t bad) is wrong about 20% of the time, and the law has changed from what I remember about 20% of the time.
So it’s not what you can cram in, it’s what you can figure out. Put another way: people with strong google-fu make better lawyers.
You can actually see this in action at the Popehat link. In the latest post, he throws something out there that he thinks is true, and then quickly recants. Notice how he cabined the original statement (about attorneys fees under the Lanham Act) with a caveat, and then went and researched it. Most of the time, lawyers don’t tell you that they’re researching things before they speak–they research and then speak, without mentioning the research, giving the impression they just knew the answer off the top of their heads.
Jul 05, 2012 @ 11:39:57
“So fatigued, in fact, she pressed Yea instead of Nay, casting the deciding 72nd vote in favor of the veto!”
She should have been paying attention when voting on an important issue. She’s not making lattes, she’s making laws. 71 others pressed the right button…or were smart enough to pretend they did.
Jul 05, 2012 @ 14:45:25
@DS:
OMG! I had no idea that movie was based on an Andrea Norton book. I watched that movie incessantly when I was a kid. It was one of the first movie rentals we had for our new betamax vhs (um, yeah…my parents picked the wrong hardware on that one!) I really loved that movie. We were on a barbarian kick in my family for a while and watched that along with all the Conan movies, Red Sonja, Sheena Queen of the Jungle, etc…
Now I am off to get the book and see how it compares.
Jul 05, 2012 @ 14:49:20
@Courtney Milan:
The first rule of Usenet warfare…
Just sayin’.
Jul 05, 2012 @ 14:58:48
@Helen: It doesn’t. Or at least, it’s an apples to oranges comparison.
That reminds me though that there are sequels to the Norton book that I haven’t read. Partly because I wasn’t sure if they’d be as good.
Jul 05, 2012 @ 18:26:34
@MaryK: Norton wrote the sequel to Beastmaster, Lord of Thunder. It’s worth reading. I haven’t read the co-authored sequels. The co-authored books I have read, the ones published near the end of her life and afterwards, have not impressed me in the least. .
Jul 05, 2012 @ 19:01:25
@Moriah Jovan: Nah, that’s the second rule. The first rule is there are no rules in Usenet warfare. So, fight as dirty or fair as you like. That’s where the second rule comes in.
Jul 05, 2012 @ 19:09:35
@Jane: Thanks, I hadn’t read the article yet and thought I missed something!
Jul 05, 2012 @ 19:38:29
@DS: Some of the co-authored Nortons are reasonable, but many are mediocre. A big problem is that none of the co-authors come anywhere close to capturing the unique voice Norton had when most of her space adventures came out. Beastmaster, Sargasso of Space, Zero Stone, Catseye – they all have this alien tone to them which works very well with her stories of outsiders.
Jul 05, 2012 @ 20:46:36
“Attorney Charles Carreon dropped his bizarre lawsuit against The Oatmeal creator Matthew Inman today, ending his strange legal campaign against Inman’s humorous and creative public criticism of a frivolous cease and desist letter that Carreon wrote on behalf of his client Funny Junk.”
You missed the best bit:
Shades of Saddam ‘Mother of all Victories’ Hussein. And where is he now, hmmm?