I'm sure you all saw the news that Little, Brown UK are publishing the screenplay for The Crimes of Grindelwald and I'm also sure you fall in to one of two camps: hyped and uhhhh how shall I say it?? pissed.

This announcement comes not too long after that of the paperback editions of the illustrated Harry Potter books and at this point I just feel a little... frustrated. It feels like... in fact I KNOW that we, the Harry Potter fans, are being taken for as mugs. Not muggles - just downright mugs. 

They KNOW we will pay the money for more *official* books EVEN if we already own it... in several different editions. I currently have SEVEN editions of Philosopher's Stone.

Wait... no... I have 8.

It's crazy and completely unnecessary but I like collecting books. Even so, I collect books in different editions, cover changes, foreign countries and even in different languages yet I haven't been meaning to collect the philosopher's stone. Four of the 8 copes have the original cover art. I haven't collected any of the other UK covers. I have so many copies not because I want them, but because there is such a buzz surrounding a "new" Harry Potter that I feel I have to buy it, or I think I "need" it. I don't. 

I don't need nor want to spend my money adding more and more of the same book to my collection. I don't want a screenplay or a script. I read Cursed Child when it came out and DEVOURED it but a year and a half later when I saw the stage show I realised how bad the book was. The book wasn't there for us to read (trust me, the play is INCREDIBLE but the book does absolutely no justice to the story) it was there so we'd all rush out at midnight (ahem... WORK yup. I had to work the midnight release. Madness that was) and spend our money on it. 

It's the same with this. It's to make money. I know that's what all book releases are about but there's a difference. Books are written to tell and share a story. This screenplay was written to make a film. A film everyone will want to see and will make millions at the box office. This screenplay was obsolete. The film is made. They don't need it. It's redundant. So how to make even more money off a fandom who will throw any amount of money at anything saying "JK ROWLING OFFICIAL"? Bind it and sell it. 

Don't get me wrong - I probably will do the same as I did when I saw Fantastic Beasts on release day: go straight round to Waterstones and grab the book and a pop figure or two (Grindelwald pleaseeee).

But I can't help feeling a little disgruntled by the blatant money grabbing now. It's been nearly four years since the first illustrated edition came out so why only now are they announcing the paperbacks? It's like the forgot about them and in some meeting someone just went 'umm... you know we could totally convince people to buy the illustrated books if they were cheaper so why not make them paperback? and I don't know... include a poster of a dragon or something". 

I don't know guys. I love that the magic is still alive but I'm a bit fed up of screenplays and new editions. Give us a marauders book or something and if JK doesn't want to write that then stop milking a book that came out 21 years ago? 
It's getting to the point that it has more editions than classics have (not quite but you get my drift). 

I know, I know, it's us the readers and fans who keep buying them but they could make it seem a little less... ugh I don't know. I guess I just think that in the last year and a half since the Cursed Child release it's been non-stop new editions and I'm just over it. Gimmie a break in between lads.

What do you think? Should we be getting so many editions or should they chill? Would you like to see more books/series get special editions?

// emmanovella

I don't have words to talk about my love for Jerry Spinelli. He's not a hugely talked about YA author and most people only know him as the author of Stargirl - which is definitely one of my favourite books. 

When I was in Paris, I spotted his name in the YA section of Shakespeare and Co and as it was a nice floppy paperback in a slightly larger size for only €11 I knew I had to buy it.
​

After posting everyday over Christmas and New Year, I feel like I haven't posted in forever.

I guess that explains this post.

I don't really have anything to share with you except an explanation for why I've barely read and thus not posted as many reviews as I had planned: #amwriting.

In a few short hours 2017 will be over and soon we start afresh with our reading goals and goodreads challenges! 

Looking back at the first few books of the year, I can't believe it was only this year that I read 'Everything, Everything' but also, how was it not just a month ago that I picked up 'Caraval' and made it my first review? 

There's also things we aren't aware of when we read - the amount of pages, the number of male v female (v multiple authors, anthologies or gender neutral). So I want to take this time, my last post of 2017, to look over all my statistics for the year!

When it comes to reading goals the most I ever think about it is my goodreads reading challenge, however this year I have decided to work on my reading a bit more beyond the 'I MUST READ THIS MANY BOOKS OR I HAVE FAILED'

I know that once I tell someone my goals I'm accountable and therefore I try harder to follow through so here I am, telling you all about the few things I aim to achieve with my reading in 2018!

I've been sort of sporadically blogging this year, and only really in the last month or so I've began taking it more seriously and trying to be organised. I've enjoyed blogging so much more when I've planned out what I want to share and for 2018 I want to continue being organised and keep enjoying blogging!

I don't want to bore you all with the nitty gritty of my planning life but I do want to clue you in to some things I'm hoping to achieve in the coming year with emmanovella!

Goodreads giveaways are a wonderful thing. For readers, we get the opportunity to receive free books both well known titles & authors and indie/self-published books that we may never have come across otherwise. I’ve won a number of giveaways and only one is from a fairly big, well known author. I revel in discovering hidden gems, the unknown books that only have reviews from family and friends. These are titles that have no marketing behind them but they absolutely are just as important as the books with 50k advances and movie deals coming in.


But now, Goodreads is setting up a new system. A new system that will do everything in its power to keep the independant and self-published books tucked away, once again blocked out by the big publishing house competitors who have money to throw away on big billboards and sponsored reviews on youtube and blogs.

The once free platform will now charge between $100-$600 to post a giveaway as well as being US only at launch. Wether or not books out with this area can be listed I am unsure of. Goodreads is claiming that this new version of giveaways will bring more promotion to books by adding in certain features including emailing winners 8 weeks after the giveaway has closed reminding them to rate and review as well as my personal favourite: automatically adding the book to entrants ‘want-to-read’ shelf.


Where to start? I'm actually incredibly angry at this news having just found out about it perhaps half an hour ago and I feel the best thing I can do is use my small platform to shout about it, to spread our disgust for what Goodreads is doing.


I suppose my biggest grievance as a reader is the automatic addition to my TBR shelf. This may seem petty but it threw me over the edge. I use my exclusive 'want-to-read' shelf for books I own, not books I want. I have OCD (yes, really. I know - someone who isn't making a mockery of mental health) and I have separate shelves for pretty much everything; standalone books I want to buy; books I desperately want; books I need to look into more. I even keep first books in series to buy separate from the second, third, fourth, so on and even have a specific TBR shelf for books further on in a series: for example, if I’ve only read Philosopher’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets I obviously can’t read Goblet of Fire etc before I pick up Prisoner of Azkaban, but instead of having five books in my TBR, I only put the next book I have to read in my main TBR shelf and the rest go on the shelf for series TBR.
Anyway. My point is that I don't want giveaway entries in my TBR shelf. I don't own them. They are not to be read.

It’s already a faff to enter giveaways (confirming address, unchecking the add to TBR and then accepting the terms) without having a book automatically added to a shelf it doesn’t belong on and then having to go in to the shelf and move it and uggghhhh. Not to mention the amount of times I have removed a book from a shelf only to discover later it ended up being added to my read shelf?? I love Goodreads, don’t get me wrong. Being able to properly catalogue my books and reading is so incredible but there’s definitely some bugs in the system.


As for authors, I can only give an opinion but I certainly do not see this as a positive for anyone but Goodreads themselves.


Big 5 publishers do not need Goodreads for promotion. They have plenty of marketing budget for their books and the titles they tend to list are already popular ones that people will buy anyway. They also have a massive social media following where they can host their own giveaways for free. Sure they will probably continue to list giveaways here but that's because cost really isn't a concern for them - they know they're going to turn around a profit.


The best thing about the Goodreads giveaways are the self-published books, the indie publishers - the books you’ve never heard of - and these are the books that are going to suffer. There is so much love and care put in to getting the book out into the world and you can really tell this in comparison to big titles. Every self-published and indie book I have received from a giveaway has been signed and a few dedicated to me. Big names? Nothing. I appreciate that an author sending out one or two books by their own accord has the time to sign whereas a publisher may not have the author around but the indie/self-published authors take so much time to write messages and dedicate the book to you and it just feels so much more personal. It makes it a book you want to talk about and promote unlike the big name ARCs that you know have been sat around someone's office that they want rid of. You can tell which books have been wrapped up carefully and put in a bubblewrapped envelope instead of being thrown into one - it's always the big names doing the latter.

At three figures to just LIST the book, let alone shipping costs, these wonderful small books are going to get lost in the sea of big names. In fact, they won’t get lost in the sea, they just won't be in there. They aren't going to be discovered and that is such a shame.


I for one will not be entering any giveaways if this proposed change goes ahead. The cost is absolutely preposterous. By all means place a small fee but I’d have said $5 maybe $10 per listing is more than sufficient - especailly as the additional features are absilutely menial. I don't know if I missed something on the article but I'm pretty certain $600 would get you a LOT of big name bloggers promoting your book and I'm telling you, that's 100% going to bring in more readers than a Goodreads giveaway.

If Goodreads is so desperate to generate income then place more ads or... I don't know? Something? Something other than extorting money if not promotion from small authors. Honetly, this is just plain nasty. It’s difficult enough for indie and self-published authors to gain promotion without such a massive financial obstacle in their way. Yes, the book will now pop up on dashboards when someone enters and it goes into their TBR pile but I, like most people I know, use Goodreads for personal tracking, not keeping up to date on which books others have read so I am doubtful this will do much to help. As I said above, six hudnred dollars is a lot of social media promotion.


I urge Goodreads to rethink their decision. As I mentioned before I absolutely love the site for giving me the ability to catalogue my books easily but quite frankly with the way they are going I am more than capable of figuring out my own system via my countless notebooks or through one of my mac/iPad’s thousands of apps. 


Self-Published and Indie authors, I may not have the millions of views that Goodreads can generate but I am more than happy to help promote your book in anyway I can without any cost. I’m happy to review, host a giveaway or just write up a post about your title - I’m also happy for you to write something if you wish or share a sample of your book. EMMANOVELLA is a space for books and writing and I think time for us littles to get out there. We need less big name promo and more indie promo. At the end of the day the book community is always there to share their love of ALL books, big and small.

I started this blog just to give me somewhere I could share my love of books with people who want to read it. This blog will always be my little internet home. It will always be where I go to to document the books I read, buy, want to read, etc. 

I never thought it would ever be anything more. However, since having the blog, I have been given a number of bookish opportunities both on and off the internet. I've been sent ARC's, taken part in blog tours, and was even asked to chair an in-store event. I never expected any of this back in March - I don't even think my wildest dreams saw anything of the sort happening; especially with such a new blog.

​I've been incredibly lucky with what I have been able to do so far and it has inspired me to set myself goals so I can focus on blogging regularly and to help motivate me.

Often, when I write a blog post, I feel the need to write a warning about me rambling on, apologising for not being consistent or for the lack of bookish content when I want to discuss something else (such as a theatre review etc.) but recently I had an epiphany... it's my blog.
 
I know that seems like such an obvious thing but it really took me this long to say to myself ‘hang on a minute’. I pay for this domain, I created this site with its layout and logo and all the content. So why am I saying sorry for being myself?

I've experienced writer's block a number of times in my life. In fact, I'm sure most of us book lovers-cum-aspiring authors have dealt with this in our lives. But I've never had 'Blog Block' until now. I've sat and stared at the blank page for a long time today wondering what to post. I have a master list with all my ideas for tags and discussions but none of them are grabbing me. I just don't know what I want to share.

So what do I do? I write about how I don't know what to write about. I guess this is my way of saying "HA!" to my block. "You won't stop me posting on my normal schedule". It's also a way for me to make sure I keep writing. Because sometimes that's what you have to do. No matter how much you think there is nothing in you to type out and share with the world, you just have to put something on the page. 90% of those things will never be shared, but it opens your mind back up and sometimes just letting words flow is the best way to go about writing.