Thursday News: RIP Bertrice Small, Apple loses another lawsuit, Hollywood and originality, and requiem for a bookstore

JanetPublishing NewsApple / Beatrice Small / bookstores / DRM / films / genre / iTunes / obituary / patent infringement5 Comments

Remembering Bertrice Small: 1937 – 2015 – Despite the lack of formal obituaries for Beatrice Small (and what is up with THAT???), RT Book Reviews has a nice tribute to the late author (she was only 77), with memories from other authors and industry professionals, as well as some great photographs. Joyce Lamb has a similar piece up at USA Today, and you can watch Small receive the RWA 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award on YouTube, as well.

Bertrice published her first novel, The Kadin, in 1978, and went on to write more than 50 romances. Fans flocked to her passionate, exciting stories, and many count her beloved raven-haired, hot-tempered Skye O’Malley as an all-time favorite heroine. Bertrice not only hit the bestselling lists of The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, USA Today and more, but she helped found this genre that we love so much, by writing exciting, edgy stories, at a time when no one else was doing so. –RT Book Reviews

Jury orders Apple to pay $533 million in iTunes patent case – Apple has suffered another legal setback, with a new jury finding that Apple, via iTunes, infringed in three Smartflash patents, to the tune of $533 million in damages (Apple was hoping for no more than $4.5m). The patents, all related to DRM, storage, and payment for mobile devices, were held by Smartflash, which is known as a patent licenser. Some, including Apple, view these licensing entities as “patent trolls”:

Apple described Smartflash as “exploiting” the system in a statement sent to CNET:

“Smartflash makes no products, has no employees, creates no jobs, has no U.S. presence, and is exploiting our patent system to seek royalties for technology Apple invented. We refused to pay off this company for the ideas our employees spent years innovating and unfortunately we have been left with no choice but to take this fight up through the court system.” –CNET

HOLLYWOOD HAS ALWAYS BEEN ORIGINAL – What a thoughtful and relevant piece on originality in Hollywood filmmaking (especially after the discussion yesterday about so-called commercial films about comics as opposed to so-called ‘art’ films. You could, in fact, substitute “genre fiction” for “Hollywood” in this article, and the argument would be the same — namely that formula is everywhere in Hollywood films, and that the real originality is in how formula is interpreted and utilized via the filmmaker’s imagination. You know, like the argument that genre fiction is built on formula, but an author’s voice and expression can infuse it with originality. Also, I love the conceptualization of formula as “a database of possibilities” — when you think about it, it’s kind of a cop out to say that there’s nothing original anymore, because it sets the execution bar pretty darn low.

Hollywood’s economic design thrives on formula – a set of expected elements associated with a particular type of film – but it has rarely operated according to a strict execution of said formula. Formula is not Hollywood’s set of constraints that bastardize pure artistic visions, as the repeated narrative of artists vs. suits always seems to illustrate, but is instead the genius of the system. It doesn’t always produce good stuff, it mostly produces forgettable stuff, but it has sometimes produced great stuff because of, not despite, the eternal play with formula.

Formula is not a set of rules, but a database of possibilities, and it’s where Hollywood has perfected its own unique type of originality. . . .

That something may be formulaic does not preclude it from originality, creativity and invention. In fact, the opposite is true: the existence of formula actually encourages invention – if not in Hollywood itself then at least in many of the creatives Hollywood hires – for within formula is an implicit challenge to do something new with it, to take the familiar as a foundation to execute something new, even, occasionally, something bizarre. –Film School Rejects

Saying Goodbye to a Set of Shelves – a Guest Post from Stacey Agdern – Get the tissues out before you read Stacey Agdern’s post about the closure of Posman Books in New York’s Grand Central Station, where Agdern worked and curated the small corner of Romance shelves. The store closed this past New Year’s Eve, and I think there are many readers and authors who can relate to the feelings of sadness and nostalgia Agdern expresses about her experience with the store and its many patrons and visiting authors (and the books, of course). Also, if you know of any bookish type jobs, apparently Agdern is still looking for one.

If you do it right, you end up not with shelves, but with a community. You meet good friends when they decide to come to events, and you get to host them at their book signings. You share experiences that are good and bad, anything from great new books to mourning the losses of favorite authors. And, you get placed on a list of good romance sections throughout the country so that people searching for community can find you.

The romance section at Posman Boooks in Grand Central Terminal became that kind of community. How do you say goodbye to that? –Smart Bitches Trashy Books

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!

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