Friday Midday Links: YA fiction permeating every area of publishing
Publishing NewsAmazon / plagiarism / Young-Adult9 Comments
2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA) winners – Amazon and Penguin Group (USA) Name Alan Averill and Regina Sirois Winners of 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest. Both receive publishing contracts and a $15,000 advance from Penguin Group. A shortlist is compiled by authors, agents and editors and the customers of Amazon voted for the winners.
Regina Sirois was born and raised outside of Kansas City. She minored in Creative Writing, but never found the right inspiration for a story until she became the mother of two girls. “On Little Wings” is her first novel. In it, 16-year-old Jennifer’s discovery of an aunt she never knew existed reunites her family and provokes love and forgiveness. One customer reviewer writes: “…some of the most exquisite writing I’ve seen in a VERY long time. Any given sentence, paragraph or scene was sublime.”
Univ. of Minnesota Press Moves into YA Fiction – “An author’s error in sending a manuscript to the University of Minnesota Press, instead of to its intended recipient – Minnesota Historical Society Press – has resulted in a first for a publisher best known for publishing scholarly books on current events and regional nonfiction for adult readers. This fall, the University of Minnesota Press will release a hardcover YA novel, Frozen by Mary Casanova. According to the press’s director, Douglas Armato, the press has reissued “a couple” of YA novels in the past, just to keep them from going out of print, but has never before published original YA fiction. The initial print run for Frozen will be 7,500 copies; it will also be available simultaneously as an e-book.” PW
Book Goggles: Authors Behaving Badly: Daphne du Maurier – “Imagine a story where a woman marries a wealthy man whose dead wife still holds a grip on everyone in the house, with a housekeeper that’s passionately devoted to the deceased mistress of the house. Sounds like Rebecca, right? Well, this is also the plot of A Sucessora by Carolina Nabuco. Which was written in 1934. Four years before du Maurier published Rebecca.” My Book Googles h/t to Shalor
Via the magic of Google, there are a few more references to du Maurier’s possible plagiarism of A Sucessora. This blog says the following:
“Nabuco never sued Du Maurier for plagiarism, though she did write in her book of memoirs Oito Décadas (“Eight Decades”) that she herself translated A Sucessora into English. She then submitted the manuscript to a New York publishing house, requesting that they forward her proposal to British literary houses as well. Whether Du Maurier actually read Nabuco’s translation has been subject to debate, though Daphne Du Maurier, Haunted Heiress author Nina Auerbach reportedly claims in her book that that was indeed the case. (I haven’t read Haunted Heiress.)”
Jason Gilbert: Nexus 7 vs. Kindle Fire: Google Smacks Amazon With Superior $199 Tablet – I’m summing up this article for you. Nexus 7 has a better screen resolution, thinner, lighter, faster, more powerful with a camera, volume buttons, microphone, bluetooth, port for video out, and better battery life. To sum up, unless you are hardcore user of Amazon Instant Video, don’t waste your money on a Fire. Huffington Post
What does the Supreme Court’s health-care ruling mean for me? – The Washington Post – For our independent contractor friends out there, Washington Post has a calculator you can use to determine your costs of healthcare now the ACA has been upheld (mostly) by the Supreme Court. “Beginning in 2014, virtually all Americans will have to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty. There also will be new opportunities to get coverage, including state-based marketplaces known as exchanges* (through which individuals will be able to purchase private plans that meet strict benchmarks for quality) and federal subsidies to help low-income people buy plans on the exchanges. “Washington Post
Based on this calculator, a household of 3 with married tax filers and an income of 50,000 would pay an annual premium of 4,205-4,750.
Bernard James: Military Vet to NBA Player | HOOPSWORLD | Basketball News & NBA Rumors – Last night the NBA held its draft for the 2103 season and the best story is the draft of Bernard James. Hoops World
“Prior to finding basketball, James completed a six-year term in the United States Air Force, serving three tours in Iraq, Afghanistan and Qatar. James enlisted in the Air Force when he was 17 years old and eventually rose to the rank of staff sergeant. In Iraq, he guarded thousands of detainees at Camp Bucca. In Qater, he secured buildings and airplanes. In Afghanistan, he worked as military law enforcement.”
James was drafted 33rd by Cleveland last night. What a great story. And dude, if some author writes about a military vet drafted into the NBA as a romance hero and whitewashes him, I’m coming after you and it won’t be pretty.
Nobody’s handing me an extra $5K a year, so I’ll have to choose between insurance and retirement contributions, or insurance and electricity, or insurance and the kids’ college fund… F*uck it, I’ll pay the penalty. Cheaper, and I’d rather give money to a bloated and ineffective government that pisses me off on a daily basis than to the insurance industry, which is is the devil (spoken as a patient and a healthcare worker).
Got to agree about the Fire and the Nexus, but from a software point of view. The Nexus comes with the new Android system, not crippled, so you can have all your ereaders in one – Kindle, Nook, Kobo, or the independent readers (I use Mantano and Moon+ Reader most of the time). The Fire will keep you on Kindle.
Oh yes, and the Nexus is available in Europe, too. You can’t get a Nook Tablet or a Fire outside the USA.
Jane, why no mention of the passing of Nora Ephron?
Nabuco was not the only author who accused du Maurier of plagiarism regarding Rebecca. Edwina Levin MacDonald actually sued du Maurier in 1941, a couple of months before The New York Times ran an article comparing Nabuco’s book with Rebecca.
I did a Google search inside Auerbach’s Haunted Heiress but could not find any mention of Nabuco or her novel in it (Wikipedia articles on both Nabuco and du Maurier reference Haunted Heiress as a source for the claim that du Maurier had read Nabuco’s book before writing Rebecca, a claim du Maurier denied. The cited sentence in the Wikipedia article, “Ms. Nabuco had translated her novel into French and sent it to a publisher in Paris, who she learned was also Ms. du Maurier’s” is not from Auerbach’s book but from a 2002 NYT article about another plagiarism “furor”.
Anyway, Nabuco’s accusation persuaded some, not others. A few weeks after the damning 1941 NYT article The Saturday Review Of Literature ran one dismissing Nabuco’s claims and NYT’s story. It can be read here.
Speaking of YA being everywhere, just saw that EL James’s husband (who writes for TV) has sold a YA.
@Isobel Carr: I guess the family is cashing in on her 15 minutes? Nepotism at work!
Possibly off topic Jane but your lead-in caption of “YA fiction permeating every area of publishing” makes me wonder about the seemingly sudden explosion of all the YA titles on the market. Are they really YA or, as happened when some realized the extent of sales in the romance genre, are they just riding the coattails of what’s selling now? I have no reason to think that they’re all not what they say they are other than my usual scepticism of quality when a glut occurs.
@joanne: I have a lot of friends branching out into YA. Usually, they’ve had an idea for awhile (much like I have SF/F ideas bouncing around). Some of them even started out there, but couldn’t sell it back before it really took off. Some suddenly have teens so the genre is on their radar. Lots of different reasons. I only know one who consciously moved into YA because it’s hot, but she’s writing in 4 genres now, slaving her booty off to support her family. She’s a work horse who can and will do whatever it takes to survive in the industry and I can’t say I fault her for trying YA too.
I don’t write YA currently but I do read quite a bit of it. There is some amazing writing (ahem, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks!) emerging from the genre, and also a stunning variety of narrative styles (Ellen Hopkins being the writer whose success most amazes and delights me. Entire books in verse!). I love that the genre is getting so much attention, but at the same time, it seems to me that the attention focuses on a very narrow slice of the genre — which is a pity. I do love a well-done love triangle, but I’m quite grateful for blogs like The Book Smugglers that highlight the quirky gems that get ignored by the mainstream media.