Thursday News: Twitter stickers, an animated book review cover, Harry Potter’s corporate universe, and coloring book art

JanetPublishing Newsadult coloring books / animation / Book Reviews / Harry-Potter / photo stickers / Twitter8 Comments

Do You Like Stickers? Twitter Wants to Know. – As Twitter continues to barrel toward, well, who knows what they’re thinking, but whatever it is appears to include stickers for photos. The feature, which is being tested by a select number of users, is apparently aimed at making Twitter “more expressive.” Well, okay, then.

The company is considering a new product it’s calling “Stickers” that would let you add images to photos before tweeting them out. (It offers something similar with its celeb-only photo app, Twitter Camera.)

Perhaps more interesting than stickers is that Twitter says the feature will let you “see how other users from around the world have edited the same photo” and will also “suggest photos that you can edit and post to participate in trending conversations and breaking news.” . . .The best part of the test might be the name options. “Stickers” is apparently the front-runner, but Twitter also suggested names like “Stamptags,” “Taptags” and “Stickits.” – Re/code

Girl, Instagrammed: The Web Animation of a Book Review Cover – Putting aside the obvious promotional novelty factor, this is kind of an interesting look into the process through which the review for Peggy Orenstein’s Girls and Sex was animated in deference to the book’s focus on teens and social media. The book has relevance for romance writing, as well, as Orenstein looks at the complex sexual landscape young women are treading and the negative impacts that persistent sexist stereotypes are having on teen girls.

And what subject matter. The issue of how the Internet has shifted the sexual landscape of girls and young women is an important one, and while the subject has its fun side, there is no denying the darker implications. How to create a smart, dynamic cover that would reflect the material in question, without being gratuitously and problematically sexualized itself?

Our art director, Matt Dorfman, had some ideas. He and I discussed the possibility of animating the cover before we even assigned it. The Internet and social media are fast moving platforms: Wouldn’t it make sense for the illustration to reflect that rapidly shifting landscape? – New York Times

Warner Bros. Consumer Products Announces Global Publishing Partners for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them – When people refer to the Harry Potter universe, they generally don’t mean the corporate enterprise that is its own universe, as well. Just check out the announcement for some of the books and other projects that will be produced in tandem with the upcoming U.S.-set film, which Rowling co-wrote. It’s quite a glimpse into the massive money-making machine that Harry Potter has become, with a new “world” that is receiving some well-deserved criticism from Native American scholars like Adrienne Keene.

Warner Bros. Consumer Products (WBCP) announced today a slate of new publishing partners signed on to support Warner Bros. Pictures’ highly anticipated return to J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The big-screen adventure was written by J.K. Rowling and stars Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything). Licensing partners set to publish book programs inspired by the film and its sequels, include Scholastic, HarperCollins, and Insight Editions.

Scholastic, the world’s largest publisher and distributor of children’s books, has a multi-year global publishing deal for books based on the upcoming films and the Harry Potter™ film franchise. . . . Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them will also be supported by HarperCollins, the second largest consumer book publisher in the world, which has been awarded global publishing rights to the films for adult tie-in books. . . . Insight Editions, a long-time publisher of a wide range of books and collectible products for the Harry Potter film franchise, has also acquired rights to a global publishing program in support of the new films that returns fans to the wizarding world of J.K. Rowling. The program, which launches in Fall 2016, will include deluxe novelty and paper engineered books across a variety of formats. – Business Wire

Stunning New Coloring Book Shines a Light on Global Architecture – Canadian artist Steve McDonald specializes in line drawings. His first adult coloring books focuses on aerial landscape drawings, while his new book features architectural structures from around the world. While McDonald never planned on turning his drawings into coloring books, it’s a way for his work to reach a broader audience, and he has gotten a lot of positive feedback from people who have found everything from relaxation to creative inspiration in his drawings.

The drawings featured in McDonald’s books have been so consistent in style, coherent in theme, and impressive in volume that it only makes sense he wasn’t just exceedingly quick to jump on the adult coloring book bandwagon—instead, the series has been in progress for quite a while. Though McDonald has always loved line drawings, the works in his coloring books really got kickstarted in the last half decade, and especially in Bali, Indonesia, where he’d spent a couple of years worrying not about making money, but about making more architectural line drawings.

“I didn’t plan for it to be a coloring book, I was just building up this body of work,” he says in a phone interview. “I thought maybe it’ll be a whole bunch of prints, maybe it’ll be a show at a gallery.” At the same time, McDonald kept hearing from his teenage daughters and a few clients that his drawings might be fun to color. After laughing off the suggestion for a while—he says it might have been a case of “artistic ego”—he took the coloring book idea seriously. And it all came together last year, an auspicious time when the first big adult coloring books started toppingAmazon’s best-seller list. – Curbed

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