Author: Jamie Canaves

Why Apple iPhone & iPad Don’t Allow Amazon eBook Purchases

Congress has called leaders of giant tech companies to answer questions in an investigation on antitrust issues, leading to internal documents from Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google to be released by the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee. In them is Steve Job’s emails discussing his decision of not allowing iPhone and iPad users to purchase ebooks in Amazon’s apps: “[i]t’s time for Amazon to decide to use our payment mechanism or bow out [of the App Store]”.

Michael Cohen Can Write Tell-All

Donald Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen, who was imprisoned after pleading guilty to criminal tax evasion and campaign finance violations, had been released on medical furlough. He was then sent back to prison, but a judge ruled that it had been retaliatory over him writing a tell-all book about Trump and sent him back to home-confinement. Now Cohen has reached a new deal where he is free to speak to the media and write the book, which “he has said includes ‘graphic and unflattering details’ about Trump’s behavior.”

Booker Prize-Longlisted Author Arrested

Tsitsi Dangarembga, whose novel This Mournable Body has just been long listed for the Booker Prize, was arrested in Harare, Zimbabwe at anti-corruption demonstrations. One hour before tweeting that she was being arrested she posted “Friends, here is a principle. If you want your suffering to end, you have to act. Action comes from hope. This the principle of faith and action.”

Need Stamps?

Help save the USPS and up your book nerdery with these bookish postage stamps you can buy right now.

Alright Alright Alright McConaughey Writes Memoir

Matthew McConaughey has written a memoir that will release this fall. But don’t go thinking this is a standard celebrity memoir: the actor has instead turned to a diary he’s had for 35 years to recount adventures he’s had in his life. Greenlights will be out on October 20th.

Jordan Peele And Issa Rae Team Up For Adaptation

Leyna Krow’s short story “Sinkhole” will be getting the film adaptation treatment with Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw production company teaming up with Issa Rae and Universal Pictures. It’s reported that the auction for the rights had 10 bidders (!) and Issa Rae will potentially star as the story’s lead: a woman moves into a new house with her family and finds a sinkhole in the backyard…

“Utterly Joyful” Picture Book Win Children’s Book Of Year Award

Waterstones children’s book prize has gone to Nathan Bryon and Dapo Adeola’s Look Up! The picture book follows the adventures a Black girl, Rocket, who loves science and would like her brother–too busy looking down at his phone–to look up in the sky at the meteor shower. Adorable!

Take A Lovely Tour From Sofa City

Indulge in some armchair travel and get to know the rich literary history of Lahore, Pakistan.

Help Digitize The Boston Public Library’s Anti-Slavery Collection

With about 40,000 items in their anti-slavery collection the Boston Public Library is asking for help to turn into text “handwritten correspondence between anti-slavery activists in the 19th century.” The goal is for the works to be digitized in order to make it easy for students, teachers, researchers, and anyone who wants access, to find and read the items.

Millie Bobby Brown And Jason Bateman Team Up For Adaptation

Tess Sharpe’s upcoming thriller The Girls I’ve Been is already being adapted into a Netflix film. Millie Bobby Brown is attached to star and also to produce through her company PCMA Productions along with Jason Bateman’s Aggregate Films Banner. While you wait for her upcoming thriller, Tess Sharpe has a great catalog of crime novels: Far From You and Barbed Wire Heart (which works for Ozark’s fans, and makes sense Bateman signed on to her upcoming thriller.)

1918 Flu Rhyming Poetry And Skeptical Satire

We may have made a lot of advances in technology and medicine but history is always here to remind us how far we also haven’t come–or how we just repeat ourselves. All the current TikToks and memes responding to the current COVID-19 pandemic have similar, albeit through different mediums, “posts” back during the 1918 Flu including poetry and satirical pieces. “While our collective memory of 1918’s flu suggests that people universally cooperated with quarantines and mask-wearing, this poetry tells a different story.”

Looking For A Reading Challenge?

Participate in #TheSealeyChallenge by reading a poetry chapbook or full-length collection a day for 31 days, and share your reads with the hashtag.

The Witcher Gets A Netflix Prequel

Netflix’s Henry Cavill starring series The Witcher, a hit based on Andrzej Sapkowski fantasy novels, will get a prequel limited series: The Witcher: Blood Origin. The conjunction of the spheres–how humans, elves, and monsters came together–will be explored with Sapkowski consulting and The Witcher’s writer, Declan de Barra, serving as showrunner. “A question has been burning in my mind ever since I first read The Witcher books: What was the Elven world really like before the cataclysmic arrival of the humans?”

More Fantasy!

Now certainly feels like a perfect time to escape the current world into other worlds: The World Fantasy Convention announced the 2020 World Fantasy Award Finalists! And, honestly, you should really just read your way through the first category: Queen of the Conquered by Kacen Callender; The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow; The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie; Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir; The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa.

Record Setting Donations

The Madison Reading Project–in Madison, Wisconsin–partnered with local social workers and schools to make sure kids had access to books during the pandemic. And they delivered a record-setting 35,000 free books. “Books give children new knowledge, entertainment, empowerment, and can help keep them out of trouble!”

More Award News

The longlist for the 2020 Booker Prize has been announced!

Prince Harry & Meghan Did Not Help With The Tell-All Book

Carolyn Durand and Omid Scobie’s new book Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of A Modern Family had rumors swirling a bit back that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle had assisted with information in the book. They’ve now set the record straight in a statement: “The Duke and Duchess of Sussex were not interviewed and did not contribute to Finding Freedom.This book is based on the authors’ own experiences as members of the royal press corps and their own independent reporting.” Finding Freedom will be released on August 11th and is currently being serialized in The Times.

Nintendo Tribute Book Will Get English Release

Satoru Iwata, who passed away in 2015, was the much loved president and CEO of Nintendo. Iwata-San, a Japanese tribute book of Iwata that published last year, will get an English translation release: Ask Iwata. “Ask Iwata offers game fans and business leaders an insight into the leadership, development and design philosophies of one of the most beloved figures in gaming history.”

USPS Plans To Slow Mail Delivery

The new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is being accused of implementing new changes that will hurt the postal service further for a Trump-backed political move: “These changes are happening because there’s a White House agenda to privatize and sell off the public Postal Service,’ said Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union. ‘But there’s too much approval for the organization right now. They want to separate the service from the people and then degrade it to the point where people aren’t going to like it anymore.’” The USPS going private could really hurt booksellers/buyers who rely on the media mail service for shipping books, which weigh quite a bit, for a minimal fee: here’s Raven Book Store’s breakdown on shipping costs.

Behind The ebook Making Curtain

We’re taking a close look at how authors make money on ebooks, from the making of an ebook to selling and distributing them through various outlets.

Between The World And Me Will Be HBO Special

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates is a 2015 nonfiction book written as a long letter from Coates to his son about white supremacy in America. The book will be adapted into an HBO special, which will combine the adapted stage play that premiered in 2018, animation, readings from the text, documentary footage, and more.

Bring Back The ’80s

Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang’s completed comic series Paper Girls will be an Amazon TV series. The series follows a group of paper girls in the ’80s whose morning-after Halloween turns their lives upside down in ways you can’t even imagine… Super curious to see the filming considering the coloring of the graphic novels is so beautiful.

All The Dates Are Moving

Disney’s films release dates got moved around (COVID-19), leading Sony to announce that the third movie in the current Spider-Man franchise, starring Tom Holland, is having its release date pushed back. The film that follows Spider-Man: Far From Home will no longer be set as a summer blockbuster but rather a fall film: Nov. 5, 2021. Check out all the new dates, including MCU films.

Judge Rules Cohen’s Return To Prison Retaliatory Over Tell-All Book

Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer, was serving his prison sentence after pleading guilty to campaign finance violations and tax evasion when he was released on furlough in May. Then he was sent back to prison on July 9th with probation officers making him sign new conditions, including not being able to publish a book. U.S District Judge Alvin Hellerstein has sent Cohen to home confinement: “I make the finding that the purpose of transferring Mr. Cohen from furlough and home confinement to jail is retaliatory and it’s retaliatory because of his desire to exercise his First Amendment rights to publish a book.” The book in question is a tell-all about Trump.

D.C.’s Reopened Public Libraries Has Librarians Alarmed

Fourteen of D.C.’s public library locations have been opened for five days a week, six hours a day, to allow patrons inside for computer access and item checkout. While some patrons may be happy with the move, many of the librarians are concerned for their health and the public’s health due to COVID-19. “They also say library managers have kept staff in the dark about colleagues who come down with the virus and have struggled with cleaning protocols and mask requirements.”‘

Time Traveling Serial Killer

Why, yes, that is a thing made of nightmares. And also the plot of Lauren Beukes’ The Shining Girls, which is now going to be an Apple TV+ series, produced by Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way and starring Elisabeth Moss.

Especially Important Time To Get Kids Into Hygiene Books

These hygiene books for elementary students are a helpful guide to teach kids how to stay clean and healthy in a number of ways.

2020 First Novel Prize Long List

The Center For Fiction has announced the long list for the 2020 First Novel Prize and it is an exceptional list. While you wait for the shortlist (will be announced in fall), peruse the list of 27 debut novels that includes magic realism (Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn), contemporary (Real Life by Brandon Taylor), historical/western (How Much of These Hills Is Gold by C Pam Zhang), fantasy (Conjure Women by Afia Atakora) and so much more!

Thriller Author Removed From Top 10

Mark Dawson revealed on his podcast that he’d purchased 400 copies of his own thriller, “motivated to do this after seeing he was in 13th spot on Nielsen’s midweek chart”, which resulted in him breaking into the top 10. As you can imagine this did not go over well and Nielsen BookScan, data provider for publishing, began to investigate. Now Dawson’s book will be removed from the top 10 list for the week ending in July 4th and a correction will be issued by the Sunday Times. Dawson argues that his intention was not to game the system but rather to purchase the books to then sell them to fans around the world.

Marvel 616 Preview!

Marvel 616, set to stream on Disney+ some time this fall, is a docuseries that will dive into Marvel’s comics with a focus on the impact they’ve had on pop culture and more. We now have sneak peeks into two episodes: Higher, Further, Faster (trailblazing women with a focus on the first Muslim superhero to lead a comic book, Ms. Marvel); Lost and Found (a look at forgotten, offbeat, and ahead of their time characters.) If you’ve yet to read Ms. Marvel and need something uplifting in these times highly recommend you pick up a volume.

Speaking Of Comics

Have you ever wondered what the first comic book was?