What's Up With Your Subsidiary Rights?

The Harry Potter Wizarding World store in New York opened this month.

While not all of our work will end up as inspiration for amusement parks, movie franchises, and manhattan retail experiences, it does offer us the opportunity to consider some questions:

How deep and fascinating are the worlds we create? The characters we bring to life? How big can we dream?

How can what we create mean so much to readers that they want to be part of it beyond reading our words, our translations, our pictures?

Illustrate, Translate, and Write On,
Lee

In the News This Week

Fridays on the SCBWI blog, I share snippets of and links to some of the publishing/media-related news I've read during the last week that I found interesting, helpful, and/or fun. (I missed last week because I was on vacation.) Click titles to get to the full articles.

Today's news bits include collections of stories and posts related to just three topics: Google+ (you'll find helpful guides and tips), Borders (don't miss the going-out-of-business sale), and Harry Potter (who, surprisingly, is still not quite as popular as Jesus--at least on Facebook).


Google+: The Complete Guide (Mashable)
Google+: It’s the hot social network on the block. In just three weeks, Google’s competitor to Facebook and Twitter has amassed more than 10 million users, and its users are sharing more than 1 billion pieces of content daily. It’s become a hotbed for early adopters, tech luminaries, marketers and businesses around the world.

How Is Google+ Like Twitter And Facebook? [INFOGRAPHIC] (AllTwitter)
Google+ is the newest social network on the block, and it’s gaining a lot of momentum. But it’s very much an unknown quantity for a lot of people, as many of its features are still being explored.

HOW TO Tweet Your Google+ Posts Automatically To Twitter (AllTwitter)
A big Twitter management app has just added connectivity to Google+ for those of you who want to integrate your two accounts. Learn how below. ManageFlitter allows Twitter users to monitor which of their followers is active and which isn’t, in order to choose who is worth a follow back and who isn’t. And now they’ve added Google+ functionality, too.
 
How To Use Google+ Hangouts (eBookNewser)
Ever wish your writing group or book club could include readers from around the world? Last night we experimented with the Hangouts section of the new Google+ social network, coming up with some simple tips for using Google+ Hangouts to connect with readers and writers online. Using Google+ Hangouts, writers can quickly assemble spontaneous but private conversations in “live multi-person video” chatrooms.
 
Borders Sale Approved (PW)

In the end, Borders went the way of other large retailers like Circuit City and Linens 'n Things. At Thursday's hearing, Judge Martin Glenn said that he will enter the sales order for Borders's liquidation and going-out-of-business sales starting Friday. "This is a very bittersweet day in the history of this company," said Borders attorney Andrew Glenn. "We obviously didn’t get to where we wanted it to be, a full going-concern sale. Let’s just hope that people are reading books after this."

How Bookstores Can Survive in a Post-Borders World (GalleyCat)

Is the Borders’ liquidation the beginning of the end for independent booksellers? The American Booksellers Association (ABA) doesn’t think so.

Google’s Getting Harry Potter, But The Kindle Will Too (TechCrunch)

This morning Google made an announcement of magical significance: the Harry Potter eBooks, which are being released for the first time this October, will be available via its Google Books platform. That sounds like it should be a given, but in the case of Potter it isn’t — author J.K. Rowling is selling the books exclusively through Pottermore, a site that she launched with much fanfare last month.

JK Rowling 'writing hard' on new work (Guardian)

Start all the clocks and plug the telephone back in: JK Rowling has provided a shred of comfort to the millions of mourners lamenting the release of the final Harry Potter movie with the revelation that she has written "quite a lot" of new material and has plans to publish it.

Harry Potter Publisher Leaving Bloomsbury Children’s for New Venture (PW)

The news that Sarah Odedina is to leave Bloomsbury Children's Books after 14 years came as a shock on Monday, as London publishing was winding down for the summer. Odedina, who has published all of the Harry Potter titles, will take the reins as managing director and publisher of a to-be-named children’s fiction list at Bonnier, the privately owned Swedish media group whose U.K. operation already includes the illustrated children’s publishers Templar and Autumn. Odedina’s start date has not yet been announced and she has agreed to stay on at Bloomsbury until a successor has been named.  

  

Jesus Daily Beats ‘Harry Potter’ For Most Engaging Page (AllFacebook)

Jesus Daily fans rejoice as they tackle their toughest competition yet to hold on as Facebook’s most engaging page: Harry Potter shattered box office records, but the noise on the film’s social networking home could not successfully outshine the long-standing number one contender.

In the News This Week

Fridays on the SCBWI blog, I share snippets of and links to some of the publishing/media-related news I've read during the last week that I found interesting, helpful, and/or fun. Click titles to get to the full articles.

This week's news includes PW's coverage of NBA winner Kathryn Erskine's acceptance speech, goodbye to Tricycle Press, a pair of some studies on the teens' dating habits and buying habits (including books), MySpace/Facebook partnership, help with e-reader holiday shopping, and more.


Erskine Wins NBA in Young People's Literature (PW)
Kathryn Erskine was filled with gratitude as she stepped up to the podium on Wednesday night to claim the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, for her novel Mockingbird (Philomel), about a 10-year-old girl with Asperger’s syndrome. She thanked the National Book Awards "for supporting reading and our culture," as well as the judges, her publishing house Penguin, and "readers and friends and supporters and family." She also thanked educators, for teaching children "to think critically and deeply, and think for themselves." And she saved special thanks for her mother, for teaching her not only the "what" of the world, "but also the 'why.'"

Random House to Shutter Tricycle Press (PW)

As of January 31st Random House Children’s Books is discontinuing the frontlist publishing program of Berkeley-based Tricycle Press, the 18-year-old children’s book imprint. As part of the change, v-p and publisher Nicole Geiger and her four-person editorial team will leave the company on the 31st as well. Tricycle marketing and publicity manager Laura Mancuso will stay on in the same capacity at RHCB.

A study confirms every suspicion you ever had about high-school dating (Slate)
In the Darwinian world of high-school dating, freshman girls and senior boys have the highest chances of successfully partnering up. Senior girls (too picky!) and freshman boys (pond scum!) have the least. These are truisms known to anyone who has watched 10 minutes of a teen movie or spent 10 minutes in a high school cafeteria. Now, however, social scientists have examined them exhaustively and empirically. And they have found that for the most part, they're accurate. So are some other old prom-era chestnuts: Teen boys are primarily—obsessively?—interested in sex, whereas girls, no matter how boy-crazy, tend to focus on relationships. Young men frequently fib about their sexual experience, whereas young women tend to be more truthful. Once a student has sex, it becomes less of an issue in future relationships.

Teen Girls as Avid Shoppers (AdWeek)
 Don't blame teenage girls for the sluggishness of consumer spending. In a survey just released by Varsity Brands (which sells cheerleading apparel) and Ketchum Global Research Network, girls age 13-18 identified shopping as their favorite pastime. And the list of purchases they've recently made confirms this isn't just talk. But other parts of the survey may leave you wondering how the girls' immersion in new media leaves them with time to buy things.

You Can Now Log in to MySpace with Facebook (Mashable)
In a move that has been rumored for nearly a year, MySpace users can now log in to the once dominant social network using Facebook. At a press event this afternoon, the two companies announced an expansion of their existing partnership that puts a connect with Facebook button on the MySpace homepage and enables a wide range of personalization and sharing features on MySpace.

Closing the book on Harry Potter (NYT)
A LOT has happened since the screenwriter Steve Kloves began working on his adaptation of the very first Harry Potter book, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” in the late 1990s.
The three central characters — Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint) — have grown up on screen, enduring the twin horrors of Voldemort and adolescence before our very eyes. The stories have become progressively darker and more complicated. And Mr. Kloves has immersed himself so deeply in the world of Harry Potter that by the time J. K. Rowling’s seventh and final volume, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” came out in 2007, he said, he knew the characters almost as thoroughly as she did herself.

Holiday Gift Guide To eReaders (eBook Newser)
The holiday shopping season is here and eReaders and tablets are poised to be the hot items of the season. To help you navigate through all of the devices out there, we have compiled a Holiday Gift Guide To eReaders featuring the latest eReaders on the market. The below list includes eReaders that have come out over the last year and will be hot this season:

Great Holiday Expectations for E-Readers (NYT)
E-readers will be widely available at stores like Target, Best Buy and Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retailer, and offered at prices that make sense for Christmas gifts—less than $150. Publishers and booksellers are expecting that instead of giving your mother a new Nicholas Sparks novel or your father a David Baldacci thriller in the hardcovers that traditionally fly off the shelves and into wrapping paper at this time of year, you might elect to convert them to e-reading.

In the News This Week

Fridays on the SCBWI blog, I share snippets of and links to some of the publishing/media-related news I've read during the last week that I found interesting, helpful, and/or fun. Click title to get to the full articles.

This week you'll find a piece on Christan YA; news of Neil Gaiman's historic win; marketers reaching out to teens (via a seventeen.com redesign), kids (via an e-reader for kids), and readers (via book bloggers); tips on being as successful as Stephenie Meyer (I'm sure they'll work); e-reader price wars; and more.

And although it's ECLIPSE movie week, you may all remember a certain beloved boy wizard who made it from book to big screen. Click through to EW for a peek at the recently released trailer for "Deathly Hallows."

Are You There, God? How Christian YA novels are offering a surprisingly empowering guide to adolescence.  (Salon)
The new popular source of girl power isn't a hyper-sexed Miley Cyrus video or Candace Bushnell's recently published Sex and the City prequel about Carrie Bradshaw's teen years. If you look past the Bible-study scenes, young-adult novels from evangelical authors and publishers are offering their young Christian readers a surprisingly empowering guide to adolescence.

Neil Gaiman Awarded Carnegie Medal in Historic Win (GalleyCat)
Yesterday novelist Neil Gaiman won the UK's CILIP Carnegie Medal, capping off an excellent awards season for the book--it also won the prestigious Newbery Medal in January.

Twilight Saga: how to write a children's best-seller (Telegraph)
When I started to write children’s books, most people would nod sagely and opine, "they’re the hardest audience to write for--very picky, children". This is a cliché which is almost monstrously wrong. The vast majority of children (and by "children", I mean anybody in those prepubescent years who has yet to make the leap to Jane Eyre and Great Expectations) have the literary sensibility of a dead snail and will read any old rubbish. Just look at the success of Stephenie Meyer and J.K Rowling. The Twilight series is cack-handed in execution, bereft of originality, ludicrous in its plots and yet lapped up by hordes and made into box-office-breaking films.

Book bloggers catch on with publishers (LA Times)
When Trish Collins gets done with her job working as an administrative assistant for Santa Rosa County, she might have dinner with her husband or take her poodle for a walk--but most other times she'll have her nose in a book. A soft-spoken redhead with a sweet smile, the 31-year-old Collins' love of reading led her to start blogging about books. And online, Collins has quietly emerged as one of the de facto leaders of the book blogging community, a community publishers are beginning to see as vital.
 
Graphic Novels Find a Place at ALA Annual Meeting (PW)
"Graphic Novels Come of Age" was the title of the Booklist forum on the first evening of the American Library Association's annual meeting, held this past weekend June 24-29 in Washington DC, and graphic novels were on the agenda for many of the librarians in attendance. Some were looking for basic information about how to start a graphic novel collection and where to shelve it in their library, while others attended panels on more sophisticated topics like the psychology of superheroes and spent time talking to creators and publishers about their work.

New 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' trailer debuts. Goosebumple overdose in progress. (EW)
I’m finding it difficult to type, Popwatchers, because I’ve just watched the first full trailer for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and my entire body is currently riddled with goosebumples. Before I apparate you over the jump so y’all can watch the trailer and discover for yourself the sensation of a goosebumple overdose, a word of warning: The opening of this trailer includes an iconic and surprising moment between Harry and Voldemort in the Forbidden Forest.
 
Seventeen.com Relaunches With a Social Networking Push (MediaWeek)
Following the recent boom and bust of teen magazines like TEEN PEOPLE and ELLE GIRL, the remainder has less competition on newsstands. But they also face new rivals for readers who have come of age amid social networks and other digital diversions. To that end, Hearst’s SEVENTEEN has relaunched its Web site with a massive social networking push aimed at pulling girls away from online networks like Facebook, instant messaging, games and the like. "It’s absolutely about having girls spend more time on Seventeen," said Ann Shoket, editor in chief of SEVENTEEN.

VTech Releases eReader For Kids (eBookNewswer)

There are a lot of new eReaders coming out these days, but VTech has a new one designed especially for kids. This week the company released the VReader, a $60 eReader device aimed at kids aged 3 to 7. The toy has an animated screen with a QWERY keyboard and is interactive to help phonics and vocabulary lessons. The book comes preloaded with one title and each additional title is $20.

Amazon Unveils New Kindle DX at Lower Price; Web Widgets (PW)Continuing to aggressively update its Kindle e-reading device, Amazon.com unveiled an updated model of its large-format Kindle DX reader with sharper image quality and a graphite covering for $379, a much lower price than the previous version of the Kindle DX. Amazon is also releasing a set of Kindle Web Widgets, a new embeddable web application for previewing Kindle titles in a web browser.