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Submission + - Literary Mag Switches to Open Source Slush Pile (fictioncircus.com)

Submitted by
Miracle Jones
Miracle Jones writes: "The NYC online literary magazine "The Fiction Circus" is pioneering an open-source, living slush pile, where short story submissions are ranked via a Reddit system and editors comments are tracked along with the comments of writers and the general public. The magazine feels that the new system will increase transparency and fairness, while at the same time building a community and training fiction writers to be better at online social networking."
Books

Submission + - Amazon Provokes Big-Time Ebook Rights Fight (fictioncircus.com)

Submitted by
Miracle Jones
Miracle Jones writes: "The biggest NYC agent (Andrew "The Jackal" Wylie) and the biggest NYC publishing house (Germany's Bertelsmann Corporation, also known as "Random House") are no longer doing business together, at odds because of a big-time fight about electronic rights. Last week, Wylie started its own ebook publishing company called Odyssey Editions in order to distribute backlist books exclusively to the Amazon Kindle. Random House, calling Wylie direct competition, has declared they will no longer buy books from the agency. Either way, Amazon wins."
Books

Submission + - Apple Reverses "Ulysses" Ban (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by
Miracle Jones
Miracle Jones writes: "After massive public outcry, Apple has decided to reverse its ban on the "Ulysses" comic book app "Ulysses Seen." But what does that mean for the rest of the "Ulysses" comic, and later chapters where the novel actually does get down and dirty? Will the piecemeal publication of a "Ulysses "comic app force Apple to slowly come to grips with the fact that it cannot control the internet?"
Books

Submission + - Apple Censors "Ulysses" App in Time For Bloomsday (fictioncircus.com)

Submitted by
Miracle Jones
Miracle Jones writes: "Apple has censored a "Ulysses" comic book app — just in time for "Bloomsday" — because of a picture of Buck Mulligan's stately, plump cartoon penis. Not since Amazon removed digital copies of "1984" from people's Kindles while they slept has there been such a hilarious episode in the ongoing slapstick farce "Let's See What Happens When Corporations Become Publishers.""

Submission + - Dick Head Found in Red Booty (fictioncircus.com)

Submitted by
Miracle Jones
Miracle Jones writes: "The missing head of the Philip K. Dick android has finally been discovered in St. Petersburg, confiscated in an Interpol sting against the Russian software piracy syndicate "Little Bear." "They were using the head basically as a portable hard drive to transport pirated ebooks, movies, games, and data between Russia and South America," said Detective Andrei Supernov. "I think they thought it was funny.""

Submission + - Judge Chin Says He Will Cut the Google Book Settle (fictioncircus.com)

Submitted by
Miracle Jones
Miracle Jones writes: "In a move that has shocked the publishing world, Judge Denny Chin has filed a brief saying that he has decided to cut the Google Book Settlement in half, letting Google host the first half of every book the company has scanned, and letting other interested stakeholders fight for the rights to the rest.

"We think this is a hard decision, but a fair one," said John Peter Franks for Google. "We would like to be able to host and control whole books, but at least we get the front half.""

Submission + - Pirate Sting Uncovers Missing Head of Philip Dick (fictioncircus.com)

Submitted by
Miracle Jones
Miracle Jones writes: "The missing head of the Philip K. Dick android has finally been discovered in St. Petersburg, confiscated in an Interpol sting against the Russian software piracy syndicate "Little Bear." "They were using the head basically as a portable hard drive to transport pirated ebooks, movies, games, and data between Russia and South America," said Detective Andrei Supernov. "I think they thought it was funny.""

Submission + - What if Copyright Was Uses, Not Duration? (fictioncircus.com)

Submitted by
Miracle Jones
Miracle Jones writes: "What if instead of being based on duration, copyright was based on the number of uses, encouraging creators to be wiser about the way they choose to exploit their creative properties? Like a coffee punchcard. Additionally, if somebody never wants to publish or make money off what they have created, then they would retain their copyright basically forever. There are problems with this, obviously, but such a system would protect rights while also limiting Disney-style abuses."
Idle

Submission + - Live-Action Comic Book Puts Real Art on the Screen (fictioncircus.com)

Submitted by
Miracle Jones
Miracle Jones writes: ""The Intergalactic Nemesis" is the first of its kind: a live-action graphic novel that is being performed serially at the Alamo Drafthouse movie theater in Austin, Texas. Before the trailers at movies like "Daybreakers" and "The Lightning Thief," the pulp comic book is being staged by professional voice actors who read the dialog while the individual comic panels are projected on the screen behind them. This creates a communal comic book experience, where fans can enjoy the actual comic book art and pacing instead of a bad movie adaptation that tries to recreate comics panel by panel anyway, like "The Watchmen" or "300." Imagine old "Tales From the Crypt" comics put on this way...or "The Invisibles"....or R. Crumb's "Book of Genesis"..."
Books

Submission + - This Title Has a 21.4% Chance of Being Slashdotted (fictioncircus.com)

Submitted by
Miracle Jones
Miracle Jones writes: "The Lulu Titlescorer will tell you exactly (to the decimal) how likely it is that your novel title will give you a bestseller. All you do is plug in your title, answer a few grammar questions, and then get ready to cash in. From Lulu: "We commissioned a research team to analyse the title of every novel to have topped the hardback fiction section of the New York Times Bestseller List during the half-century from 1955 to 2004 and then compare them with the titles of a control group of less successful novels by the same authors. The team, lead by British statistician Dr. Atai Winkler, then used the data gathered from a total of some 700 titles to create this "Lulu Titlescorer" a program able to predict the chances that any given title would produce a New York Times No. 1 bestseller." The real question is, can anybody write a better title than "Atlas Shrugged"?"
Books

Submission + - This Title Has a 43% Chance of Being Slashdotted

Submitted by
Miracle Jones
Miracle Jones writes: "The Lulu Titlescorer will tell you (to the decimal) exactly how likely it is that any given novel will become a bestseller. You plug in the title, answer a few grammar questions, and then voila! "The Lulu Titlescorer is a useful tool, which, in Lulu's 50-year study of some 700 novels, proved 40% better than random guess-work in guessing whether a particular title had produced a bestseller or not. "It guessed right in nearly 70% of cases," says Dr Atai Winkler. "Given the nature of the data and the way tastes change, this is very good – better than we might have expected." But can anybody get a better score than "Atlas Shrugged?""
Books

Submission + - DOJ Says No to Amended Google Book Settlement (fictioncircus.com)

Submitted by
Miracle Jones
Miracle Jones writes: "The Department of Justice issued a filing today saying that the recent amendments to the Google Book Settlement are not good enough, delivering a serious blow to the chances that the Settlement will be approved in New York on February 18th. From the DOJ: "...the amended settlement agreement suffers from the same core problem as the original agreement: it is an attempt to use the class action mechanism to implement forward-looking business arrangements that go far beyond the dispute before the court in this litigation." While the DOJ says it is committed to helping Google and the Author's Guild fix this problem, there is not nearly enough time for this to happen, unless Google has a secret emergency settlement hidden away somewhere."

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