Monday News: Tap dancing cover; Ill strikes down internet tax; tablet and ereader ownership on the rise

JanePublishing NewsAmazon / ereader device / Multifunction-Device / sales tax8 Comments

SpecFic 2013 – Thea and Ana are the editors of the 2013 edition of the Speculative Fiction: The Best Online Reviews, Essays and Commentary.  This will collect the best reviews, essays and commentaries on speculative fiction and all profits go to Room to Read.

our goals are as follows: We will strive to strike a balance between essential cyclical conversations (e.g those about diversity and representation and critical writing in SFF) and the New and Shiny catchprases or topics (e.g. Grimdark) that steal the stage in 2013. We will do our best to capture a broad swath of the many fandoms and subcategories that fall under the SFF umbrella, including (but not limited to) reviews of novels/novellas/short stories, television shows, gaming, art (professional and fan), movie talk, as well as essays about the different aspects of SFF overall. We will acknowledge the fact that SFF conversations are also happening in forums that are not SFF-exclusive (e.g. at locations very much like our own blog). We will maintain the gender balance of contributors. More importantly, we will attempt to maintain the gender balance of the content itself. We will solicit voices that cover different age ranges of SFF fiction – because the Young Adult and Middle Grade categories are exploding with books and discussions – as well as voices from often dismissed subgenres like Urban Fantasy and Romantic SFF. We’ll also do our very best to include international voices, beyond the United States and United Kingdom.

Head on over to their site for the details on how to submit. The Book Smugglers

Ill. Supreme Court invalidates ‘Amazon tax’ requiring retailers to collect state sales tax – I haven’t paid full attention to the state by state legal challenges to online sales tax but this WashPo articles says that the Illinois Supreme Court was the first to invalidate a tax on digital transactions.  The reasoning given was that the law created discriminatory taxes.  This is really a federal issue and federal taxes should be imposed for the ease of collection and implementation. It would be more fair to all parties, including small businesses. Opponents argue that it harms the in state businesses. Washington Post

Pew: One in three Americans owns a tablet, one in four owns an e-reader, and 43% have one or the other – According to recent PEW results, tablet ownership is on the rise. Women are slightly more likely to own a tablet and ereader and one in four US citizens age 16 or older owns an e-reader. Combining the tablet and e-reader numbers, nearly 50% of the adult population own either a tablet or an e-reader. Teens are more likely to own a tablet over an e-reader whereas the over 30s are more likely to own an e-reader over a tablet. The Next Web

For romance fans of the Divergent series by Veronica Roth you may or may not want to check out spoilers regarding Allegiant. I’m not going to link to them but you can search #allegiant spoilers on Tumblr and that should pop it up right away.

To make your week start out just a little better, watch this tap dancing cover of Cups by Anna Kendrick

Jane

Jane Litte is the founder of Dear Author, a lawyer, and a lover of pencil skirts. She self publishes NA and contemporaries (and publishes with Berkley and Montlake) and spends her downtime reading romances and writing about them. Her TBR pile is much larger than the one shown in the picture and not as pretty. You can reach Jane by email at jane @ dearauthor dot com

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