Friday News: Yahoo hack, NBF’s 5 Under 35, Library of a Lifetime contest, and DA wins the Golden Apple

JanetPublishing NewsATT / debut authors / Golden Apple Award / National Book Foundation / online security / readers contest / Yahoo11 Comments

Yahoo hack: It’s not just Verizon. AT&T should be worried too – Out of what is being called “the biggest hack ever,” (500 million accounts!) the interconnected nature of Internet companies is also being revealed. And for some AT&T customers, it seems particular unfair, because they don’t even have Yahoo email accounts – any yet, their AT&T accounts may have been compromised. And reports have surfaced that some AT&T and Yahoo users are having difficulty changing their passwords, even though that is SOP after a security breach. Security has been a contested area within Yahoo for quite a while now, but we may also be facing the chilling possibility that true security is an illusion.

That’s because many AT&T customers get the option to use — yep, you guessed it — a Yahoo Mail account to manage services like home broadband, wireless and pay-television services.

It’s the outgrowth of a partnership formed 15 years ago between Yahoo and AT&T (then called SBC Communications), bringing AT&T broadband customers to Yahoo’s search engine and media services, including Yahoo Mail. At the time, industry watchers hailed the deal as a landmark partnership that would better combat the growing power of AOL and Microsoft’s MSN portal. – CNET

Meet the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 – Selected by authors including Ta-Nehisi Coates, Lauren Groff, and Jacqueline Woodson, the winners of the 2016 National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Award have been announced: Brit Bennett, Yaa Gyasi, Greg Jackson, S. Li, and Thomas Pierce. This LA Times piece provides a brief but good profile of the authors and their debut works of fiction, and reading some of the reactions to the phone call from the NBF is pretty amusing (one initially thought it was a scam).

The National Book Foundation, which presents the National Book Awards, launched its 5 Under 35 program in 2006 to highlight the work of young literary talents; this year each writer gets a $1,000 cash prize and will be invited to participate in public readings.  . . .

But the point of the 5 Under 35 honor is to discover such talents in an extremely crowded field. A new crop of aspiring authors graduates each year from more than 500 creative writing programs across the country, a huge pack of writers all striving to find publishers and readers. – Los Angeles Times

ATTENTION, READERS OF THE WORLD – THIS IS FOR YOU – To celebrate their 80th anniversary, London bookstore Heywood Hill is holding a contest, and the first prize is a book a month for life. FOR LIFE, PEOPLE!  It would be like winning the book lottery. All you need to is explain “which single book has meant the most to you, published in English since Heywood Hill opened in 1936” and fill out a short entry form on the bookstore’s website. Anyone over the age of 18 (who is not a current or former employee) can enter, the contest is free, and the books can be shipped anywhere in the world.

First Prize: The Library of A Lifetime: A lifetime subscription to Heywood Hill’s legendary A Year in Books service. After a reading consultation with your personal bookseller you will receive a hardback book every month for life!  A truly life-changing intellectual adventure.

Second Prize: A Year in Books – Hardback 12: A year–long subscription to Heywood Hill’s A Year in Books service. Each month you will receive a hardback book chosen to suit your reading taste and delivered beautifully wrapped in our famous Heywood Hill livery.

Third Prize: A Year in Books – Hardback 6: Our newest A Year in Books subscription. You will receive a hardback book every other month for one year chosen to suit your reading taste. – Heywood Hill

2016 Golden Apple Awards – Dear Author is honored to receive the Golden Apple Award from the RWA New York City for Media Source of the Year, and we would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our readers for continuing to support the blog. We really appreciate you! The full list of Golden Apple honorees is as follows:

Lifetime Achievement Award
Isabo Kelly

Author of the Year
LaQuette

Agent of the Year
Linda Camacho
Prospect Agency

Publisher of the Year
Kensington Publishers

Editor of the Year
Kerri Buckley
Carina Press

Media Source of the Year
Dear Author Blog

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