Over the last couple of years, it's been tough not to notice the increase in dramatic rights deals in the book industry. A quick search on Publishers Marketplace reveals a new film or television deal almost every week. Read more
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.
Once upon a time not so very long ago, any board games beyond the household staples like Monopoly and Scrabble were the exclusive property of, well, nerds. And during this not so very long time ago nerds dwelled on the sidelines, wallflower-like: by near definition they were the opposite of popular.
During my awkward teenage years, I produced a lot of angst-ridden poetry on topics such as boredom and unrequited love. I kept those poems in a trunk with a stack of short stories that were also about things that seemed important to teenage me, like the unfairness of parents and teachers. I always thought that one day I would try to write a novel. Read more
Given the increase in book-to-screen deals in recent years, and the tendency of the TV/movie industry to build off existing intellectual property, it's natural for authors to wonder if their own work is suitable for adaptation-or if they can increase their chances of writing something that will be adapted. Read more
Last week, Sara Gran and I had an hour-long conversation on Zoom. We were supposed to be talking about her new publishing company, Dreamland Books, and its first release, Gran's novel The Book of the Most Precious Substance. Instead, our conversation ended up touching on almost every hot button topic in the genre, from gender politics to publishing issues. Read more
When author and illustrator Ariella Elovic drafted her book proposal for Cheeky: A Head-to-Toe Memoir, she never considered that the graphic memoir about body acceptance might one day become a television series. Read more
It was author David Finkel who taught me to "report cinematically." This was key, he argued, to writing a story that feels like a movie, using the variety of camera angles available to the cinematographer, from wide establishing shots to extreme close-ups. Read more
Thirty years ago, Helen Mirren stepped into the role of Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison, and an icon was born. In the series Prime Suspect (which ran from 1991-2006), Mirren's Tennison created an indelible archetype of the female investigator: a take-no-crap leader battling the overtly misogynist and often corrupt institution that she nevertheless believed in very deeply.
Saving movies to watch later is a breeze on YouTube TV, where "recording without storage limits" comes free with the monthly subscription fee of $64.99. There are 85-plus channels on offer, and the jewels you choose from this wealth of movies and shows are kept in what they call your "library." Read more
'For God's sake, never use a metaphor and then explain it...
You can assume a world from so little and readers will. So I'm more interested economy than encyclopaedism, in how little you can get away with rather than how much you can cram in...
I don't want to write puzzle stories that can be decoded to the correct answer... Read more
Less than a year after an attempt on his life, author Salman Rushdie made a rare public appearance at an awards ceremony Thursday to warn of the dangers of banning books and of related movements in the US to roll back freedoms of expression.
"The information is telling me -" wrote Martin Amis in his 1995 novel The Information. "The information is telling me to stop saying hi and to start saying bye." It was an intimation of mortality typical of Amis, who died on Friday at the age of 73 - as interested in how stylishly the thought was expressed as in what it was expressing.
Accepting the coveted Caldecott medal in 1964, an annual award honouring the "most distinguished American picture book for children", the author Maurice Sendak addressed the rumbles of disapproval his winning book had received from some quarters about it being too frightening by wryly commenting, "Where the Wild Things Are was not meant to please everybody - only children."
The intellectual property rights to the novels of British-South African author Wilbur Smith are up for sale, with ACF investment bank handling the process.
Smith, who died in 2021, published over 50 novels in genres such as adventure and historical fiction. Smith's first novel When the Lion Feeds was published in 1964.
Today in good news, the American Booksellers Association announced that membership is at its highest level in 20 years. Per reporting by Hillel Italie at the Associated Press:
James Daunt keynoted the Association of American Literary Agents programme at Publishers WeeklyInternational news website of book publishing and bookselling including business news, reviews, bestseller lists, commentaries http://www.publishersweekly.com/'s US Book Show in New York this week, telling home truths about Barnes & Noble, the company he has helmed since August 2019, in tandem with running Waterstones.
Do we need to care for authors better, rethink staff workloads and pay more attention to each book? Yes. But the short answer to "can we publish less, but better?" is: not necessarily.
Any bookish person who has ever passed through an airport in the United States will tend to have been struck by a contrast. Airport bookshops in the UK are piled high with thrillers, spy stories, romantic comedies and how-to books: untaxing fare for a long flight. Read more
It is not hard - at all - to trick today's chatbots into discussing taboo topics, regurgitating bigoted content and spreading misinformation. That's why AI pioneer Anthropic has imbued its generative AI, Claude, with a mix of 10 secret principles of fairness, which it unveiled in March. Read more
Almost 60% of LinkedIn's users are between the ages of 25 and 34, making it the single largest demographic to use the platform. And this is a demographic with a willingness to pay for news.
'Never use a metaphor and then explain it'
'For God's sake, never use a metaphor and then explain it...
You can assume a world from so little and readers will. So I'm more interested economy than encyclopaedism, in how little you can get away with rather than how much you can cram in...
I don't want to write puzzle stories that can be decoded to the correct answer... Read more