Stephen Aucutt, formerly contracts manager at Hodder & Stoughton, draws on his thirty years experience to provide a contracts checklist when agreeing terms with trade publishers. Read more
I‘ve just signed a publishing contract with Ben Fenton, a Fleet Street veteran and director for creative industries at Edelman. His book is on the concept and practicalities of fairness-and that concept's history, science, law, politics, and morality, as well as an explanation of the number 42.
My independent press Mensch Publishing is to release it in March 2021, all going well. Read more
Many aspects of publishing-including arrangements with authors, agents, illustrators, freelancers, employees, printers, binders, and distributors-involve contracts. The terms of a contract vary depending on the situation, but in every case, the nature of legally binding agreements is the same.
Agents are under increasing pressure from the big corporates to make world rights deals - not because those publishers are suddenly more expert or passionate than we in rights selling - but because the corporate strategy is to spread their risk and to aggregate their profits and losses across multiple territories and activities. Read more
In the UK a new digital publisher called Canelo releases its first titles this week and will discover over coming months whether its bold, innovative approach will work. It is operating in a different way to most publishers in that it is not paying advances, but offering its authors much higher royalties, starting at 50% and going up to 60%. Read more
The Authors Guild has outlined some of the "egregious terms" of current contract boilerplates it plans to address in its Fair Contract Initiative, first announced May 28 during BookExpo AmericaBookExpo America, commonly referred to within the book publishing industry as BEA. The largest annual book trade fair in the United States.
'Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be bloody-minded. Argue with the world.
Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
Agents have predicted continued demand in 2023 for feel-good stories as well as a romance and ‘romantasy' boom thanks to TikTok but say there could be a shift this year towards darker, genre-busting and challenging books.
When I pitched One Woman's War: A Novel of the Real Miss Moneypenny in October 2020, I had no idea that Operation Mincemeat, a movie about the same subject matter, would be released in early 2022, just a few months before One Woman's War was due out.
In a sense, every detective novel is about the inside of someone's head. What immediately captures the reader at the beginning of a Sherlock Holmes story is the tick-tock of Holmes mind: what brilliance will he conjure next, what detail will he pull out of an ordinary scene, who is this guy?
Both Romance & Sagas and Sci-Fi & Fantasy had banner years, with Romance's £53m its best since 2012, the year of E L James and Fifty Shades, and Sci-Fi & Fantasy's £47m its highest since 2007. Colleen Hoover's It Ends with Us was the overall bestseller of the year, with four other Hoover titles in the top 10. Read more
Mystery readers savor the hallmarks of their preferred subgenres of crime fiction. To meet their expectations, the savvy mystery author should choose their words wisely. Authors must deliver the expected violence level, the appropriate sleuth qualifications, the correct level of police involvement, a vibrant setting, a compelling whodunnit, and a satisfying resolution.
Everybody wants a good climax, especially when it comes to storytelling. That's why, today, we'll answer the question- what is a story climax? We'll also talk about the types of story climaxes, climaxes versus other story elements, look at some examples, and discuss how to write a compelling story climax. So, let's get started!
"Why isn't there more sex in your books?" I get this question a lot. In my DMs. In my email. In Zoom book club meetings, bookstore signings, and festival events. This, more than any other, seems to be the question my enthusiastic (and apparently thirsty) fans are burning to ask. Written inquiries are usually punctuated with fire emojis, or more commonly, a string of bright red chili peppers. Read more
I write dark fantasy stories for adults that explore survival after sexual trauma and war. My work focuses on the aftermath of sexual violence and the way my protagonists stubbornly live well after the unthinkable. There are no on-page depictions of SA in my work. Read more
I write a historical fiction series set in World War Two London. My protagonist is a Scotland Yard detective called Frank Merlin. I place great importance on being historically accurate in my books. I take the view that as I am attempting to transport my readers to a very different time and place, accuracy is a key element to doing that successfully. Read more
Booksellers report that more customers are switching to paperbacks as household budgets tighten, with agents and publishers also predicting a shift towards the cheaper format. Read more
'Writing is a kind of revenge against circumstance too: bad luck, loss, pain. If you make something out of it, then you've no longer been bested by these events.'