Friday News: Litsy, Colombian marriage equality, global pencil shortage, and the “period skirt”

JanetPublishing Newsadult coloring books / Colombia / Litsy / marketing / marriage equality / pencils5 Comments

Litsy is a book-focused social network that goes beyond reviews – Litsy, a free app, has been developed by the founders of Out of Print, a book-themed apparel business, to combine the community building aspects of social media with book database and review sites like Goodreads. You can post reviews and hide spoilers and rate yourself against other readers (“Litfluence”). As much as I would love to see something compete meaningfully with Goodreads, I’m not sure a “Litfluence” competition is going to do it.

So on Litsy, each post can take a number of different forms — a blurb (basically any short comment), a quote or a review. Even if you’re writing a review, you have to be concise, because everything’s limited to 300 characters. You can also include an image, whether it’s a photo of your copy of the book or something else that’s related.

You can browse Litsy content by following different accounts, but all those updates are also tied to a specific book. So you can bring up a book’s profile, read what everyone has said about it (Lawton described it as seeing “the world’s collective marginalia”) and, if it seems interesting, add it to your to-read list. – Tech Crunch

BREAKING: Marriage Equality Comes to Colombia – With the 6-3 decision of the Constitutional Court, Colombia joins Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay as the fourth Latin American country to  support same-sex marriage on a national scale (some Mexican states also legally recognize same-sex marriage). Given the fact that the Court had previously ordered the law to be in place by 2013, yesterday’s ruling was immediately enforceable.

In 2011, the Constitutional Court ordered the national congress to create a law establishing marriage equality by June 20, 2013. Lawmakers failed to meet this deadline, which means same-sex couples in Colombia have technically been able to legally recognize their relationships since 2013, though to do so couples were required to seek out a notary or judge to formally solemnize their commitment. Because there was no definitive policy regulating these unions, many same-sex couples were turned away by judges and notaries. Four such couples filed the lawsuit that was decided today, which determines that no judge or notary can legally refuse to marry a same-sex couple.  – The Advocate

Adult colouring book craze prompts global pencil shortage – Not sure this is really a “shortage,” but the popularity of adult coloring books is definitely putting pressure on pencil factories around the world. Not only are consumers looking for larger, more diverse pencil collections, but they are also buying premium pencil lines, and pencil manufacturers have had to increase production to meet demand.

The world’s biggest wooden pencil manufacturer, Faber-Castell, say they are experiencing “double-digit growth” in the sale of artists’ pencils and have been forced to run more shifts in their German factory to keep up. . . .

Brazil has reported pencil shortages after many Brazilians jumped onto the colouring book bandwagon, The New York Post reports.

While, the famous European pencil manufacturers Staedtler and Stabilo are also struggling to keep up with demand, according to the New Zealand Herald. – The Independent

JCPenney embraces its ‘period skirt’ after it goes viral – A white skirt with a pink flower has been dubbed the “period skirt” on social media, and rather than take it off the market, JC Penney has been cleverly using the inadvertent publicity for its own marketing. Check out the photo and Penney’s take on the controversy.

Janet

isn't sure if she's an average Romance reader, or even an average reader, but a reader she is, enjoying everything from literary fiction to philosophy to history to poetry. Historical Romance was her first love within the genre, but she's fickle and easily seduced by the promise of a good read. She approaches every book with the same hope: that she will be filled from the inside out with something awesome that she didnʼt know, didnʼt think about, or didnʼt feel until that moment. And she's always looking for the next mind-blowing read, so feel free to share any suggestions!

→ Janet