Streaming services are still eager to acquire TV and film rights to books despite reports of a decrease in the number of subscribers but are now more focused on known backlist IP that is less risky, agents and producers say.
The latest set of accounts published at Companies House also show pretax profits increased to £14.4m, from £13.2m the year before. TRDSC's former directors Luke Kelly and Claire Wright said the performance "exceeded expectations" with revenue 13.2% ahead of budget. Read more
When Sarah Pinborough's thriller Behind Her Eyes was published in 2017, even she described it as a "Marmite book". Her publisher slapped on equally dire warnings, hyping it with the hashtag #WTFthatending.
Netflix's blockbuster show, Bridgerton, has led to renewed demand for the Regency-era novels by Julia Quinn that form the basis for the eight-episode program. Netflix released Bridgerton on December 25 and since that time, HarperCollins's Avon imprint reports that it has sold a total of 750,000 copies of books from the series, including 285,000 copies last week.
Author Rumaan Alam kept his expectations low, even as the film rights to his upcoming book "Leave the World Behind" became the center of a bidding contest among Hollywood studios this summer. Read more
"Nobody knows anything ... Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what's going to work. Every time it's a guess and, if you're lucky, an educated one." Read more
Is Netflix a friend or foe to the book business? That question was addressed by the Global 50 CEO Talk 2019, which featured a conversation with Kelly Luegenbiehl, VP International Originals of Netflix, hosted by publishing consultant Ruediger Wischenbart and with the editors of global trade journals.
A JRR Tolkien expert working on Amazon's forthcoming multi-series adaptation of The Lord of the Rings has claimed that the retail and streaming giant has been refused permission by the estate to use the bulk of the book's plot.
Netflix will produce a new series titled Zero, an Italian-language show based on the work of 27-year-old Antonio Dikele Distefano, a formerly self-published Italian author whose books have sold hundreds of thousands of copies since he signed with Mondadori. Read more
The man in the video says there's a simple reason why I'm not rich. "Most people have a scarcity mindset," he explains through a thick Australian accent, addressing the camera like a wise mentor lecturing a student. "Top-tier people-actual movers and shakers that are doing things-have an abundance mindset." Behind him, an ancient sword hangs on the wall. For some reason, he's in a bathrobe.
Unlike English native-speakers, I didn't really encounter gothic novels in the first twenty-or-so years of my life. I grew up in the French-speaking part Switzerland, and my modern and medieval literature studies focused on French authors and their preoccupations. Therefore hearing the concept of ‘gothic' as a formative genre for the English psyche didn't really mean much to me... Read more
'As someone who's on their sixth novel and has had their ups and downs, I'm aware of how privileged and lucky I have been, and what a shock it can be for debut writers - all the reality of that world, and that new voice and when the book doesn't quite take off, it's a shock.
Publisher Spines will charge authors between $1,200 and $5,000 to have their books proofread, designed and distributed with the help of artificial intelligence
The 11th edition of the China Shanghai International Children's Book Fair ended its three-day run on November 17. Post-event statistics from co-organizer BolognaFiere showed that 41,262 attended the fair, including 17,081 professional visitors. A total of 353 professional events, book launches, and reading promotion activities were held. Read more
In These Strange New Minds: How AI Learned to Talk and What It Means (Viking, Mar.), neuroscientist Christopher Summerfield explores how large language models work.
The poet Ted Kooser turned 85 this year, and the Pulitzer Prize winner and former poet laureate of the United States is as productive as ever, with Copper Canyon Press putting out his latest volume, Raft, earlier this fall.