CLOUD UNBOUND

Libraries, ebooks, publishing, and all the sublimely prickly stuff in between as viewed by Heather McCormack, Collection Development Manager, 3M Cloud Library
libraryjournal: Any librarians or library workers who are involved in noise music AND going to this summer’s ALA Annual Conference in Chicago, please contact LJ’s Music for the Masses columnist Matthew Moyer at mmoyer@coj.net. What Molly said. Matthew Moyer (I recruited him at LJ years ago to review music books) is a genius, and you’d love working with him.

libraryjournal:

Any librarians or library workers who are involved in noise music AND going to this summer’s ALA Annual Conference in Chicago, please contact LJ’s Music for the Masses columnist Matthew Moyer at mmoyer@coj.net.

What Molly said. Matthew Moyer (I recruited him at LJ years ago to review music books) is a genius, and you’d love working with him.

Publishers are hemmed in and nervous; they engage daily with such dispiriting phenomena as the USP – the Unique Selling Point, or “how to flog a novel in a single sentence”.

The USP works fine for novels about vampires in Honolulu, or paedophiles in bunkers, but demolishes any study of quotidian relationships, ordinary life – any novel I ever really cared about, from Mrs Dalloway (woman thinks?) to Revolutionary Road (married couple argues?) to A La Recherche du Temps Perdu (man remembers?).

—

Joanna Kavenna, a newly minted Granta Best Young British Novelist, in a deft analysis of the book, magazine, and newspaper publishing worlds in The Independent. 

No, she’s not being ungrateful for her accolade, and I wouldn’t call her a publishing cynic or a hater. She’s talking about very real, extremely brutal realities that literary novelists (and journalists) in particular face and need to consider. 

It is with great pleasure that I officially welcome Hachette Book Group USA to the Cloud. Titles are now for sale in our buying tools, with handy lists on the way from me.

Which book am I most excited about? I won’t lie: Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, which has gotten the stamp of approval from many of my trusted librarian pals. 

housingworksbookstore: First Listen: Music From Baz Luhrmann’s Film ‘The Great Gatsby’ : NPR Jammin’ pretty hard to this and writing y’all an events newsletter for tomorrow morning. I am skeptical about Beyonce and Andre 3000’s cover of Amy Winehouse’s “Back to Black” because the original is such sonic perfection, but listen I will. Here is longtime music critic Ann Powers (don’t miss the amazing anthology she co-edited, Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Pop, and Rap) reviewing the Jay-Z-produced soundtrack for The Great Gatsby, coming out Friday: [T]he songs break down into three categories: reflections on the book’s plot and characters; invocations of the musical spirit (though never the letter) of the 1920s; and Lurhmann-like fusions of vintage and contemporary elements. As instantly involving music, the plot-driven songs do best. The jazz-inspired songs, however, are more musically adventurous. And though their happy vulgarity may be off-putting to more refined palates, the fusion numbers are the most successful in approaching that central question about how music felt in 1922.  

housingworksbookstore:

First Listen: Music From Baz Luhrmann’s Film ‘The Great Gatsby’ : NPR

Jammin’ pretty hard to this and writing y’all an events newsletter for tomorrow morning.

I am skeptical about Beyonce and Andre 3000’s cover of Amy Winehouse’s “Back to Black” because the original is such sonic perfection, but listen I will.

Here is longtime music critic Ann Powers (don’t miss the amazing anthology she co-edited, Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Pop, and Rap) reviewing the Jay-Z-produced soundtrack for The Great Gatsby, coming out Friday:

[T]he songs break down into three categories: reflections on the book’s plot and characters; invocations of the musical spirit (though never the letter) of the 1920s; and Lurhmann-like fusions of vintage and contemporary elements. As instantly involving music, the plot-driven songs do best. The jazz-inspired songs, however, are more musically adventurous. And though their happy vulgarity may be off-putting to more refined palates, the fusion numbers are the most successful in approaching that central question about how music felt in 1922.

 

Romance readers: in the event that you haven’t heard the news, Cloud partner Harlequin has paired up with Cosmopolitan to launch Cosmo Red-Hot Reads from Harlequin, an ebook-first line that will launch in August with no less than New York Times best-selling author Sylvia Day (see Bared to You, etc.).

Details:

Ms. Day, a multi-award-winning novelist who had two titles place on various “2012 top ten bestselling books” lists around the world, will introduce readers to Cosmo Red Hot Reads from Harlequin with Afterburnon August 15, 2013. Her second title, Aftershock,will be released on November 15, 2013. Both titles will be connected editorially and feature characters newly created for the Cosmo–Harlequin series. Afterburn and Aftershock will also be released as a two-in-one trade paperback in November 2013; the first Cosmo Red Hot Reads from Harlequin title to be published in traditional print format.

Maybe, just maybe some lucky Cloud librarian will interview Ms. Day about her upcoming books. 

Submit e-Originals to School Library Journal via NetGalley

Crucial nugget for you publishers and reviewers:

The books must be exclusively available as eBooks. Publishers can submit titles using this form, which will send the title information and a widget to SLJ reviewers who will be able to access the digital galley through NetGalley.Only School Library Journal authorized reviewers (a distinction designated in their NetGalley profile) will be given access to the title.

Reviews, buzz, and other media tidbits are coming in for two lead spring titles from Cloud partner HarperCollins: