News and notes

Happy Friday the 13th everyone! Over the course of the week I've picked up a few interesting bits of news from the internets and decided to share them.

A group of YA and kids' books bloggers I respect and admire have started a movement to get people to buy diverse books as birthday gifts for the young folks in our lives. The mission is to encourage a new generation of readers. Have you taken the Birthday Party Pledge yet?

TODAY ONLY, download a FREE ebook of Creatures Here Below by O.H. Bennett from publisher Agate Bolden. It's a really good novel, well worth the money, so to get it for free is really special. Hopefully, this kind of marketing will help it get some well-deserved attention. Download it today and help spread the word. (Watch this blog for a Q&A with Bennett soon.)

ReShonda Tate Billingsley and Victoria Christopher Murray have joined forces with a book just released this week featuring the heroines of their respective series. Sinners and Saints promises to be a fun read, especially if you enjoy Christian fiction. Or if you, like me, enjoy the shenanigans on "The Real Housewives" (Can a "Real Pastors Wives" be far off?). The two are on tour and may be coming to a book store near you!

Hat tip to Connie Briscoe for pointing me to this article on HuffPo about how books are segmented by genre, race, gender and class.

I had not heard of The Book Look online show, until Dolen Perkins-Valdez posted this on Facebook.