Facebook may add video to Instagram on June 20th, according to a report on TechCrunch. Facebook is holding a press conference on Thursday and the  technology blog apparently received a tipoff that the social network will use the event to debut Instagram video.

Here is more from the blog:

We are still looking for more information because we understand that Facebook has not wanted the details of June 20 to leak out — so this could be an intentional blind alley. But if the Instagram video report is true, you could say the event invite itself — sent by snail mail, coffee cup stain charmingly in one corner — is a red herring of its own.

There are plenty of other video sharing apps already available such as Viddy, Socialcam and Twitter’s Vine.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

While you may be used to reading a user review of a book or a pair of shoes, you probably haven’t read a review of a guy before.

Well, now you can. Lulu is a app that lets women write reviews of guys on Facebook that they have dated and share dating tips with their friends. Women can judge these guys on a number of attributes including their personality, their sense of humor and even how they kiss.

Mashable has more details:

Founder Alexandra Chong launched the app in February, but what she describes as “Yelp for boys” has roused some of the male population, who are irked that they can’t log on directly to see what women are saying about them. Guys who want to opt out of the service must send a letter requesting removal to privacy@onlulu.com with a screenshot of their profile, or download a separate app, Lulu Dude, to manage or deactivate their profiles.

What do you think about this app?

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Winners of competition encouraging 100,000 English school pupils to read more than 400,000 books announced.    

Will the kids in your life read more than eight books this summer? They can get a free book through Barnes & Noble’s Summer Reading program.

Kids can download the free Summer Reading Journal (PDF link) and fill it up as they read eight books this summer. They can bring the filled-up journal to a Barnes & Noble and pick out a book from the store’s special Reading Journal list. Here’s more about the process:

1. Read any eight books this summer and record them in this Barnes & Noble Summer Reading Imagination’s Destination  Journal. Be sure to let us know to whom you would recommend each book, and why. 2. Bring your completed journal to a Barnes & Noble store  between May 21st and September 3rd, 2013. 3. Choose your FREE reading adventure from the book list featured on the back of the journal.

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The Syrian author and journalist describes how she sees the situation in Syria.    

The former Archbishop of Canterbury and the director of the British Museum discuss religious imagery.    

Apple executive Eddy Cue spent the bulk of the Monday's court session on the witness stand again, with the government then resting its case in the late afternoon. (Apple called its first expert witness, Ben Klein, who only testified briefly before court adjourned for the day.) As was the case…

As Sylvia Day published Entwined with You this month, we caught up with her for a video interview. She shared her success story as a self-published author, offering some advice for aspiring writers as well.

Since she landed a book deal with Penguin’s Berkley Books imprint, she has sold more than 7,000,000 copies in English the last ten months. Here’s an excerpt:

I try to convey to [my readers] all the time how grateful I am. Because I know they can spend their hard earned dollars on any book. If they’re going to spend it on mine and then spend the next few hours of their life with it, the least I can say is “Thank you” … Gratitude goes a long way. Never forget that you are where you are because your readers are there for you.

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The Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) has announced a number of promotions to support National Bookshop Day on 10 August. The ABA will be running a national competition calling for people to vote for their favourite bookshop, with everyone who votes going into the draw to win $500 worth of Australian Book

The State Library of Victoria (SLV) has announced the recipients of the 2013-14 Creative Fellowships. Among the recipients selected for funding are several with book-related projects. Joanne Oliver will work on the biography Etched with Love and Courage: The Life and Work of Jessie Traill, Australian Printmaker, 1881-1967; Nicole Lindsay will

Type Books on Queen Street West in Toronto has a new window display celebrating Corey Mintz’s book, How to Host a Dinner Party (House of Anansi Press). The display was designed by Type staffer Kalpna Patel.

Click on the thumbnails to see details.

Ever thought about getting a literary tattoo?

BuzzFeed has created a video called, “Can You Guess These Amazing Literary Tattoos?”

The idea is simple: see a tattoo alongside the literary quote that inspire it. We’ve embedded the video above…

 

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On June 15 at a ceremony in Orillia, Ontario, Vancouver’s Christopher Meades was presented with the Canadian Authors Association’s fiction award for his novel The Last Hiccup (ECW Press).

Founded in 1975, the CAA Literary Awards are presented to writers who “achieve excellence without sacrificing popular appeal.”

The other winners are:

CAA Lela Common Award for Canadian History
Michael S. Cross, A Biography of Robert Baldwin: The Morning-Star of Memory (Oxford University Press)

CAA Poetry Award
Don McKay, Paradoxides (McClelland & Stewart)

2013 Emerging Writers
Claire Battershill, Jay Bahadur

Each winner receives $2,000 and a silver medal. Co-winnersBattershill and Bahadur split the $500 prize for emerging writer.

 

Robert Kennedy

A little more than a year after taking over Robert Kennedy Publishing, CEO and publisher Tosca Reno has announced the company’s closure.

On a blog post on her personal website, Reno confirms that the fitness publisher’s parent company, Canusa, filed for bankruptcy on June 7.

Canadian magazines website Masthead refers to a rep from estate trustee Deloitte & Touche, who says that Canusa’s assets will be sold: “They’re still looking at different ways of how they’re going to do this. We have a lot of issues with copyright, and who owns what, so that might have to be sorted out first.”

A creditors meeting is scheduled for June 27. 

Robert Kennedy, who founded RKP in 1967, named his wife, Reno, a best-selling author and fitness activist, as his successor before his death last April. On her website, Reno writes:

As many of you know, last year I lost my husband of 8 years and reluctantly took the helm of the distressed publishing business he built. Robert was a tremendous visionary who grew a unit of bodybuilding, health, fitness and clean-eating magazines and books, that were global staples, in its long-distant prime days… Due to many years of financial difficulty, I was forced to make the decision to restructure the business as a whole in order to allow our brands, Oxygen, Cleaning Eating and The Eat-Clean Diet to possibly find a new home, where my hope is they can thrive again.

(photo: Greg Locke)

In the June 2013 issue of Q&Q, Mark Callanan speaks to Lisa Moore about her third novel, Caught, a story of courage and escape

When Lisa Moore’s February won the CBC’s Canada Reads competition earlier this year, I was painting crown mouldings in the sunroom of a gargantuan Victorian-era house in St. John’s. This is not an important fact except insofar as it illustrates my sense of bearing witness to a momentous occasion, and therefore being finely attuned to my surroundings at the time.

Moore’s novel takes place in the aftermath of the sinking of the Ocean Ranger oil platform, a tragedy that profoundly affects the book’s protagonist. This year marks the 31st anniversary of the disaster, which is indelibly etched in the minds of Newfoundlanders. As the broadcast came down to the final vote, I felt that something big was at stake. This wasn’t just about a book; for the families and loved ones of the 84 men who died, it was public acknowledgment of a lasting grief.

Upon the launch of her third novel, Caught (published this month by House of Anansi Press), Moore accepts the Canada Reads victory with gratitude and equanimity. “I was aware throughout the entire process – hyperaware – that there were many other books that could have been on any one of those lists, and even as the list got winnowed I really saw it as a lottery,” she says, sitting in the fog-enshrouded light shining through a bank of windows in the kitchen of her downtown St. John’s row house. The tempo of her speech slows as she continues: “Outside of the quality of writing or the book or anything to do with me, I felt glad that the subject of the Ocean Ranger was spoken about, particularly on the anniversary. And that was intensely emotional.”

Click here to read the rest of the story.

Marked for Vengeance (Book One: The Alyx Rayer Chronicles) by SJ Pierce  is today’s Free eBook of the Day.

The story is a paranormal romance. Check it out:

During the initial, routine stake-out of her Marked, a dream prophet named Isaac Walsh, Alyx is thrown for an emotional loop when his allure captivates her heart from two rooftops away. The event marks the very instance when her sense of what’s right and what’s wrong is brutally challenged as her contact with him is strictly forbidden.

Amazon has the free download through June 21st.

For more free eBooks, check out our Free eBook of the Day archive.

 

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Here are some literary events to pencil in your calendar. To get your event posted on our calendar, visit our Facebook Your Literary Event page. Please post your event at least one week prior to its date.

Hip hop star Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson has penned a memoir called Mo’ Meta Blues: The World According to Questlove. Hear him talk about it at Barnes & Noble (Union Square branch) on Wednesday, June 19th starting 7 p.m. (New York, NY)

Novelist Ru Freeman will be discussing her new novel, On Sal Mal Lane, with author Deborah Baker. See them on at the Center for Fiction on Thursday, June 20th starting 7 p.m. (New York, NY)

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Struggling to convert your Microsoft Word document from .DOCX format to a digital book format?

The free eBook creation and editing tool Calibre has been updated with some helpful tools. You can download Calibre at this link. The 0.9.35 Update contains a host of fixes to help writers converting Microsoft Word documents into eBooks. Check it out:

DOCX Input: Add a markup analyzer that identifies and removes redundant markup generated by Word. This can result in much cleaner HTML and reductions in markup size of up to 50% … Bug Fixes … DOCX Input: Add support for theme fonts. DOCX Input: Fix some manual page breaks being ignored DOCX Input: Fix empty paragraphs not being rendered. DOCX Input: Fix some text being underlined incorrectly. The ‘none’ underline style was being translated incorrectly.

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Jocomo by Timothy Cohorst has climbed the Smashwords section of our Self Published Bestsellers List, the only children’s book to ever crack our list.

To help GalleyCat readers discover self-published authors, we compile weekly lists of the top eBooks in four major marketplaces for self-published digital books: Amazon, B&N, Apple iBookstore and Smashwords. You can read all the lists below, complete with links to each book.

If you want more resources as an author, try our Free Sites to Promote Your eBook post, How To Sell Your Self-Published Book in Bookstores post and our How to Pitch Your Book to Online Outlets post.

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