Bagging a top literary agent is not always the golden key to success - I've had three of them, so I should know, writes Sorrel Pitts
Links of the week February 5 2024 (06)
Our new feature links to interesting blogs or articles posted online, which will help keep you up to date with what's going on in the book world:
12 February 2024
I still have the letter. It smells musty and is splatted with celebratory red wine. It wasn't meant to happen. Getting a literary agent, everyone had told me, was hard, but I'd landed my first choice. Moreover, she (let's call her Agent 1) wanted to contract me immediately. I was invited up to her London offices, where praise was lavished upon my debut novel, The River Woman.
Like many young writers, I knew little about agents. "Choose an author you look up to," I'd been advised. "Then approach the agent who represents them." For me, that author was John Fowles - and, incredibly, I was being signed by his agency.
Six months later, I wasn't so ecstatic...
Print continues to serve both ends of the marketplace, but it's hard to see the wider digital market as a failure.
A decade ago in a "Newsnight" interview the thriller writer Lee Child announced that the Kindle had been a failure for its creator Amazon. "It hasn't worked as well as Amazon wanted it to work. It's settled into a good, solid niche." At the time Amazon was in a terms battle with Hachette, that was two parts economic, one part philosophical. It wanted to sell e-books at cheaper prices than publishers would allow, but it also wanted to make the wider case for digital reading.
Child's comment was counter-intuitive. At that time Kindle sales were still looming, with the breaks that publishers were able to put on the market growth only just starting to be felt. For his Reacher books digital would have been at least half of sales at launch, and still growing as a proportion. Not bad from Amazon for a standing start. And yet, he was right.
If it was Amazon's intention to upend the traditional book market, it did not work.
It's 9:30 on a freezing Monday night in January and there's a line stretching down the block outside of the Book Club Bar in the East Village of Manhattan. The occasion: a midnight release party for fantasy author Sarah J. Maas' new book, House of Flame and Shadow, the third entry in her Crescent City series. The twist-there's always a twist where Maas is concerned-Maas is on her way to surprise the throng of almost exclusively female fans willing to wait in the cold for a chance to get their hands on her book the minute it becomes available.
For the occasion, Maas wears a glittering black Valentino skirt that calls to mind the motif of starlight that plays throughout her books. When she enters through the shop's front door around an hour later, fans are so busy sipping on themed drinks (like the sparkling purple White Raven's Special) and getting ready for a round of trivia that, at first, she goes relatively unnoticed. There are a few stunned gasps. Then the cheering begins.
In Ten Little Rabbits, a new posthumous picture book by Maurice Sendak, Mino the Magician waves his wand and, poof, a rabbit appears. Another wave and out springs a second and then a third. By the forth rabbit, Mino yawns. By the sixth, he's annoyed. Ninth, he's exasperated, as the rabbits crawl all over him. So back they go, one rabbit at a time, giving readers the chance to count up and back again by the time Mino is done.
But it's the unruly rabbits and Mino's many facial expressions that kept this reader turning the page. Once again, Sendak's knack for capturing just about every kind of emotion is on full display, 12 years after his death, in this book being brought to the public for the first time.
Over millennia publishing has cycled through scepticism, experimentation, iteration, improvement, and ultimate acceptance of new technologies. From clay tablets to papyrus, printing presses to desktop publishing, and bound books to ebooks, publishing has always experimented and innovated. The same pattern is unfolding with AI, but the pace of experimentation and implementation will be exponentially faster than ever.
Naturally, and quite rightly, there is a lot of preoccupation with copyright, which is largely a matter for the courts in various jurisdictions to decide. Aside from that, it seems to me that where AI can bring things never before available to publishing - because they were unfeasible, uneconomic, or the industry didn't have the relevant skill-sets - it should be embraced. For instance, Shimmr AI creates custom automated advertising for each book. When AI enhances efforts by tackling tedious tasks, such as proofing manuscripts or exploring contract variances, adoption should be swift. However, when AI intersects with human creativity and judgement we must exercise both caution and care.
George Walkley reports on a year of thinking about AI in publishing
Last year, the Independent Publishers Guild (IPG) asked me to develop its training offer in generative artificial intelligence. Since we introduced the training last September, I've delivered open enrolment training days to IPG members, bespoke training to individual companies, and previews of the training at the IPG Autumn Conference and at Frankfurt and Sharjah Book FairsInternational Book Fair Information. So far, the training has reached delegates from nearly 200 publishing organisations around the world, with great feedback. Despite the enormous variety of publishers taking part, some key themes have emerged from my conversations.
There's more to AI than ChatGPT
Mostly when I talk to publishers about AI, their main interest is ChatGPT and similar models. That's not surprising: AI's impact on publishing has been a long time coming, but it was the introduction of ChatGPT in November 2022 and the advent of tools that the average user could try in their browser that really started the current boom. Since then, controversies such as the use of pirated ebooks in the Books3 dataset to train large language models (LLMs) has kept them in the public eye.
Did you know?
- Self-published authors earn more than authors who are traditionally published.
- Self-published female authors earn more than self-published male authors
- LGBTQIA self-published authors earn more than heterosexual self-published authors
- Successful self-published authors are not "agreeable" and that's a good thing!
- 75% of book sales were part of a series (fiction and non-fiction)
Read a fascinating range of facts and figures about self-publishing, collated from organizations across the globe.
While some are describing a "definite increase" in audio sales following the launch of audiobooks on Spotify Premium, most agents say it is still too early to have a realistic sense of its impact on revenues.
Earlier this week Spotify released limited data, saying it had paid audiobook publishers "tens of millions" since making 15 free hours available to premium users in the UK, Australia and the US last year, with Britney Spears' memoir The Woman in Me (Gallery UK) the most listened to on the platform.
It stressed the data it has shared "underscores our commitment to incrementally growing the pie for authors and the publishing industry".
While a number of publishers, including Spears' publisher Simon & Schuster, declined to comment on Spotify's claims, a spokesperson for HarperCollins said: "HarperCollins is always keen to explore ways to reach new audiences through different business models for the benefit of our authors, and we are very pleased with results to date from Spotify."
Georgia Summers' first novel The City of Stardust (Hodderscape) bagged the number one spot in its launch week, becoming the second fantasy novel in as many weeks to nab the Official UK Top 50 pole position on the back of a subscription box promotion.
Summers, a former editor at Pan MacmillanOne of largest fiction and non-fiction book publishers in UK; includes imprints of Pan, Picador and Macmillan Children’s Books's Science Fiction and Fantasy imprint Tor, shifted just over 11,000 units through Nielsen BookScan's Total Consumer Market for her début, which was aided by its nod as the Fairyloot subscription service's January Adult pick, plus a Waterstones exclusive edition. This follows the previous number one, Saara El-Arifi's Faebound (HarperVoyager) which had similar boosts from Fairlyloot, Waterstones and the Goldsboro Books' Sci-Fi and Fantasy Fellowship.
It was a strong week overall in the romantasy and New Adult fantasy space with five titles in the Top 50, including Sarah J Maas' A Court of Thorn and Roses (Bloomsbury) bouncing back into the upper echelons of the chart to 35th, ahead of the launch of House of Flame and Shadow (Bloomsbury) which hits shops today (30th January). Maas' newest will almost certainly be next week's number one, with a decent shot of breaking Rebecca Yarros' launch week record for a SFF book of 57,055 copies. If Maas is indeed triumphant, it would mean three different SFF titles hitting number one in succession, a first since accurate records began.
I cherish this august institution. Moving with the times doesn't mean sidelining fellows - or devaluing the society's principles
Years ago, as a black woman from a working-class background, I quickly became aware of how literary happenings were dominated by one particular group: the Oxbridge elite, who not only controlled our country's politics but also its culture.
Sometimes I'd sneak into events as if I were an intruder, do a quick lap around the room, and sneak back out again. It was the same when I became a fellow of the Royal Society of LiteratureThis British site may seem rather formal (stated aim ‘to sustain and encourage all that is perceived as best whether traditional or experimental in English letters, and to strive for a Catholic appreciation of literature’), but has a lively series of lectures and discussions involving distinguished authors. Also administers literary prizes. http://www.rslit.org/index1.html (RSL) in 2004. It's not that some people weren't welcoming, but I felt I didn't really belong there. This is a familiar story for many writers I've encountered who do not fit into an establishment that takes for granted its networks of power and influence.
Last year ended #HEA (that's happily ever after) for Romance & Sagas, as sales continued an upward BookTok-boosted momentum to hit £62.4m through Nielsen BookScan's Total Consumer Market. That's the category's second-best total ever, only bettered by 2012's Fifty Shades of Grey-fuelled (£68.3m) climax.
Like something from a second-chance romance, the category, which has fairly consistently hovered around the £20m mark for the best part of two decades, leaped to £53.2m in 2022 and grew a further 17% last year, largely on the back of BookTok.
And that BookTok bump seems more sustainable than the Fifty Shades surge. Yes there were a handful of other authors in the erotica boom, but E L James' three novels accounted for 67% of total volume sales for the category in 2012 (nearly 10.6 million of the 15.4 million units). To put this in perspective, James' trilogy in 2012 alone outsold the entire Romance & Sagas volume output (10.3 million copies) of 2023.
Why a good old-fashioned book is better for your mental health.
Key points
- Research suggests that comprehension is six to eight times better with physical books than e-readers.
- Physical books help readers absorb and recall content more effectively.
- Turning pages as we read creates an "index" in the brain, mapping what we read visually to a particular page.
- Research shows that, despite the prevalence of technology, most people still prefer print books to e-readers.
Book sales boom as readers escape the ‘oversaturation and noise of the wild west digital landscape'
They have killed skinny jeans and continue to shame millennials for having side partings in their hair. They think using the crying tears emoji to express laughter is embarrassing. But now comes a surprising gen Z plot twist. One habit that those born between 1997 and 2012 are keen to endorse is reading - and it's physical books rather than digital that they are thumbing.
This week the 22-year-old model Kaia Gerber launched her own book club, Library Science. Gerber, who this month appears on the cover of British Vogue alongside her supermodel mum, Cindy Crawford, describes it as "a platform for sharing books, featuring new writers, hosting conversations with artists we admire - and continuing to build a community of people who are as excited about literature as I am".
"Books have always been the great love of my life," she added. "Reading is so sexy."
Bolstered US presence sees editors and agents excited for 'buzzier' London Book Fair 2024
The trade has predicted a "far buzzier" London Book Fair (LBF) for 2024 with a return to pre-Covid attendance and a particularly strong American presence, with some major auctions already under way in the lead-up.
Madeleine Milburn, of her eponymous agency, told The Bookseller that the lead-up feels "far buzzier" with what "feels like the whole of America will be in attendance", similar to pre-Covid days. The agency is sending more MMA representatives this year as well. "There's just so much excitement for the fair this year - the fact that so many publishers are attending, particularly from the US, has given the agenting industry huge confidence and we're seeing this already in the number of deals being done on a global level in the run-up" she said.
HarperCollins global revenues grew 4% to $550m (£436m) in the three months to 31st December 2023, compared to the same period last year, primarily driven by higher digital sales, which benefited from strong audiobooks performance and improved return rates.
Figures from parent firm News Corp showed earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) increased 67% to $85m (£57m) from $51m (£40m) the year before. The publisher said this was primarily driven by higher revenues as well as lower manufacturing, freight and distribution costs "driven by product mix and the absence of prior year supply chain challenges and inventory and inflationary pressures, partly offset by higher employee costs". UK results were not broken out.
Two leaders of Worldcon Intellectual Property (WIP), the nonprofit that holds the service marks of the World Science Fiction Society, have reportedly stepped down from their posts following accusations of censorship in the voting process for the 2023 Hugo Awards.
"WIP takes very seriously the recent complaints about the 2023 Hugo Award process," the statement reads, "and complaints about comments made by persons holding official positions in WIP." The Hugo Awards are the most prestigious honors in the sci-fi/fantasy community. The awards, administered by the World Science Fiction Society, are awarded annually at the group's global convention, Worldcon. Last year's Worldcon was held for the first time in China, in Chengdu.