Thursday News: Baileys Book Prize, millennials reading, Star Wars (again), and cool cosplay
Publishing NewsBaileys Prize / bookstores / cosplay / India / millennials / print books / Star Wars6 Comments
McInerney’s murder tale wins Baileys book prize – Formerly the Orange Prize, the Baileys Prize for Fiction honors the best UK books by women, and this year’s winner is Lisa McInerney for The Glorious Heresies. The Prize is £30,000 and is 20 years old this year.
The shortlisted books were as follows:
- Cynthia Bond – Ruby (Two Roads) – American – first Novel
- Anne Enright – The Green Road (Jonathan Cape) – Irish – sixth Novel
- Lisa McInerney – The Glorious Heresies (John Murray) – Irish – first Novel
- Elizabeth McKenzie – The Portable Veblen (Fourth Estate) – American – second Novel
- Hannah Rothschild – The Improbability of Love ( Bloomsbury) – British – first Novel
- Hanya Yanagihara – A Little Life (Picador) – American – second Novel – BBC
Reading into the millennial book-buying boom – Despite the stereotype that physical book lovers tend to be part of an older demographic, apparently millennials are particularly partial to buying in print. Which actually makes sense when you think about books like that Anna Todd real-person-fiction story collection. I wonder how much traffic from younger readers most US bookstores are seeing these days, especially independents.
Millennial customers at Books-A-Million and other retailers are missing out on online discounts at websites like Amazon.com Inc, but they are more interested in the group experience, with the bookstore becoming a social destination.
Across the United States, the 22-to-34 age group has become a larger percentage of the physical book-buying demographic. It is now 37 percent of the market, up from 27 percent in 2012, according to Nielsen Books and Consumers.
Millennials are also putting a huge chunk of their reading budget – 82 percent – into books they can hold, keep and eventually share, according to Nielsen. – Reuters
STAR WARS: ROGUE ONE IN WORSE TROUBLE THAN THOUGHT – For those of you following the rumors about reshoots for Star Wars: Rogue One, this is not a particularly promising development from the rumor mill:
Now reports are coming in that things are so bad on Star Wars: Rogue One that not only is half the movie getting reshot, but a new director has been brought on board and rewrites on the script are underway.
Latino Review is stating nearly half of Star Wars: Rogue One is going to be reshot this Summer.
On top of that, the Playlist is stating Tony Gilroy (Bourne Legacy) is overseeing the reshoots and rewrites of the script. – Cosmic Book News
This Kolkata Woman Does The Most INSANE Cosplay In The Country – Indian artist Pracheta Banerjee’s cosplay is amazing. Check out some of the pics at Buzzfeed. I especially like Banerjee’s philosophy:
“I do it for people who feel that our ‘looks’ are ‘limited’. I want it to be a message for all, that it isn’t a limited universe, we can be whoever we want to be,” Banerjee told BuzzFeed.
SW Force Awakens was a wonderful pastiche of old Star Wars themes, but it was pretty clear it had nowhere to go. Rey is a MarySue, Finn overcame his fear, and there wasn’t a hell of a lot more plot that was more than hints, and most of those hints were derivative. It was more of an homage to Star Wars than the beginning of a series.
And given that The Force Awakens was basically plotlets and underdeveloped plot ideas sandwiched between big action scenes, if the next movie is having plot problems, that says they dove into the whole Star Wars concept without doing ANY basic plotting.
Robin, I’d been wondering when you were going to post updated on Rogue One (LOL.)
At this point, I don’t know what to think. OTOH, there’s a now steady stream of news about how this movie is in serious trouble and we’re still months away from getting to see it. OTOH, there’s no way I won’t see it (or any other Star Wars fan, really). I mean, there’s no way I won’t vote with my dollars to support a movie featuring a diverse cast (including Latinx actors!) with a female lead.
Short of it being mega-terrible like, I dunno, Prometheus or this year’s mess (a.k.a. Batman v. Superman: Look How Grimdark and Macho We Can Be!), my hopes are still quite high that Rogue One will turn out to be a watchable movie.
Moving on.
I can’ help but roll my eyes at seeing some older people acting SO SURPRISED that younger people do read. It’s 2016 and there are different platforms. The bookish side of YouTube, i.e. BookTube, is rather epic. Bookstagram (bookish side of Insta) is also massive. So to me it seems that, since the older people aren’t really using newer social media platforms, they are simply assuming that younger people aren’t reading. I’m less familiar with the Tumblr side of books, but I’m pretty sure there’s a steady presence there too.
It all boils down to older people doing stupid-ass assumptions because the younger generations aren’t expressing their love for reading in the “traditional” ways. FTR, I’m not a Millennial.
@Maz:
*post updates on Rogue One. Ugh, I need more coffee.
From reading the post and comments I wasn’t sure if everyone knows that Rogue One isn’t the sequel to The Force Awakens. Rogue One takes place in the Star Wars universe, but it’s unrelated to the upcoming Star Wars 8. I think Rogue One takes place before A New Hope when the Alliance was trying to steal the battle plans for the Death Star.
@Kim: Yes, I knew this (Star Wars medium-level nerd represent!) and, in the previous post with Star Wars news, I mentioned that there’s a serious marketing problem with this movie. A lot of people are going to be expecting Rogue One to connect to last year’s TFA and/or have no idea that it’s the movie right before A New Hope.
IMO, they haven’t done too much to correct this mistake. Maybe in hopes to get people to go see this movie?
@Kim: There was actually a brief discussion regarding Rogue One’s placement in the series in the comment to the previous post on the re-filming rumors: https://dearauthor.com/features/industry-news/tuesday-news-digital-publishing-star-wars-competition-writing-research-memorial-day-v-veterans-day/
@Maz: I think there is a perception that younger readers are all about digital, while older readers tend to stick with print. While all stereotypes have some kernel of truth, it’s clearly very oversimplified. I tend to be wary of all generalizations, especially where books are concerned, in part because of the weird competition between digital and print publishing.
Re. Star Wars, I’m less concerned that the movie is crap and more concerned about Disney’s intentions and branding vision, and what that might be doing to the film (especially given the promise of a more diverse cast).