Latest News from BBC Writers - Autumn 2024
bbc.co.uk – Saturday November 2, 2024
Jess Loveland gives an update on what we've been up to over the last few months.
One of my favourite parts of this job is meeting a new group of writers as they join us at the start of one of our development groups. Earlier this week it was the turn of the Scripted 24/25 group (the group formerly known as Drama Room). These 12 talented writers were selected following our Open Call, which closed last December. It must feel like a long wait for the group before they finally arrive at the doors of BBC Broadcasting House, but in that Open Call we received a record-breaking number of submissions (just shy of 5000) and it takes us several months to get through the reading process.
The first ten pages of every script we receive through the Open Call are read by one of our team of freelance script readers, with the most promising moving through various stages until we’ve narrowed the submissions down to around 30, with the writers invited to an interview with us in June/July for a potential place in Scripted. These interviews are an opportunity for us to find out more about each writer, their work so far, their passion for television, and what type of stories they are burning to tell. So, as you can see it’s a pretty exhaustive process and the writers who eventually make it into the Scripted group should be very proud of their achievement.
This group will stay with us for a year. The first six months involve taking part in a programme of webinars and workshops exploring the craft of screenwriting and the industry as a whole. They are then paired up with a Script Editor to develop and write a new original television ‘spec’ script which they can use as a calling card to the industry at the conclusion of the programme. We’ll announce this group at the end of their year on Scripted. Keep your eyes open for the announcement of the previous 23/24 Scripted group, who will be finishing with us soon. We can’t wait to tell you about them!
Applications now open for George R.R. Martin Summer Intensive Writing Workshop
medill.northwestern.edu – Monday October 28, 2024
Applications are now open for the second George R.R. Martin Summer Intensive Writing Workshop at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications.
Taught by award-winning novelists and writing instructors, this seven-day, fully-funded writing intensive will support up to 10 mid-career journalists as they seek to publish their first novel. The workshop will take place in Evanston, Illinois, and will run from July 9-16.
“The story telling skills journalists employ every day can be extended into creative works,” said Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, Medill’s George R.R. Martin Chair in Storytelling, who will be leading the workshop. “In our first year of the program, we had 12 fellows who made great strides on their first novels after spending just a week at Medill.”
George R.R. Martin (BSJ70, MSJ71, ’21 H), author of the acclaimed “A Song of Ice and Fire” novels and co-executive producer of the Emmy award-winning “Game of Thrones” series, is generously funding the workshop with a $3 million gift.
RSL launches free writing residencies in Bernardine Evaristo's Ramsgate cottage
thebookseller.com – Saturday October 26, 2024
The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is launching the Scriptorium Awards, offering free writing residencies in President Bernardine Evaristo’s Ramsgate cottage.
The retreats can be for up to a month at a time and the aim is to offer uninterrupted time for "professionally active" writers to focus on their projects.
Participating writers could be finishing a manuscript against a deadline or starting a new project. They will have exclusive use of the house so they can focus on writing but will not be permitted to bring guests.
"The RSL Scriptorium Awards will reward excellent writers of all literary genres who are struggling to find the time and space to write," Evaristo said. "Many writers don’t have a dedicated writing room to themselves, and there might be financial or family demands that are challenges to completing writing projects [...] As a society, we need to build a more supportive infrastructure to help writers from every background thrive and, in so doing, keep literature, in all its life-enhancing manifestations, alive."
‘We’re losing talent’: authors call on Government to fund writing centre in North
inews.co.uk – Sunday October 20, 2024
More than 80 writers have signed an open letter to the Government in support of establishing a centre for the writing industries in the North East
“Hilary Mantel once said she was simply resigned to the fact that as soon as she opened her mouth people thought she was an idiot,” says Pat Barker, the award-winning novelist.
“Anybody who thought she was an idiot for more than five seconds was intellectually challenged themselves.”
The affliction she shared with her friend Ms Mantel, the late author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies and a two-time winner of the Booker Prize, was having a northern accent.
Ms Mantel, who died in 2022, hailed from Glossop, Derbyshire, while Ms Barker, now aged 81, grew up in a working-class family in Thornaby on the banks of the River Tees.
As hugely successful women writers from the North, they are a rarity in England’s literary scene.
A 2021 study by the Publishers Association found 80 per cent of the publishing workforce lived in London or the South East, 7 per cent in the East of England and 5 per cent in the South West – all other regions and nations accounted for less than 8 per cent combined.
Cyber Edge Writing Award Welcomes Submissions for 2025 Contest
afcea.org – Saturday October 19, 2024
AFCEA International’s The Cyber Edge Writing Award contest is now open for submissions. Each year, SIGNAL Media invites thought leaders from industry, academia, government and military backgrounds to address a theme within the cyber domain and share their knowledge with AFCEA’s audience.
The theme for the 2025 contest is Cyber Defense for Critical Infrastructure. Since news broke that Volt Typhoon, a criminal hacker group backed by the Chinese Communist Party, has been infiltrating U.S. critical infrastructure networks for the past five years, experts have said that an even larger threat to cybersecurity could be on the horizon. SIGNAL Media is challenging thought leaders to consider this threat and provide convincing solutions.
The panel of industry experts who review the submissions are looking for articles that not only explain the extent of the threat but offer unique suggestions for strengthening critical infrastructure defense and plans for implementation. Whether the articles touch on emerging technologies, training, tactics, techniques, procedures, policies or partnerships, authors should also recognize challenges to implementing solutions and recommendations for overcoming those obstacles.
So hot right now: literary agents going out on their own
thebookseller.com – Thursday October 17, 2024
The sizzling trend across the British Isles for this autumn/winter? No, it’s not wide shoulders or the return of boho—though we are absolutely here for both of those—it is agents from established larger firms going out on their own.
The exhaustive list of new companies springing up includes (but is not limited to) United Agents duo Seren Adams and Kat Aitken starting up Lexington Literary (see their Frankfurt profile); ex-Darley Anderson colleagues Tanera Simons and Laura Heathfield opening Greenstone Literary; The Marsh Agency joint m.d. Jemma McDonagh kickstarting Jemma McDonagh Associates; Kemi Ogunsanwo launching Seventh Agency after leaving The Good Literary Agency; three-time British Book Awards Literary Agent of the Year shortlistee Amanda Harris announcing she would depart YMU at the beginning of 2025 to start an as-yet-unnamed new company; and Marilia Savvides stepping out from the 42 M&P umbrella to found The Plot Agency.
The trend is so red-hot, other publishing professionals have jumped on board: former HarperCollins Ireland boss Conor Nagle set up The Nagle Agency at the beginning of the year, while just two weeks ago ex-David Fickling and Usborne publicist Carolyn May McGlone launched her Oxfordshire-based May Literary Agency.
'New romance,' a growing literary genre and gold mine for publishers
lemonde.fr – Sunday October 13, 2024
The literary niche, targetting an almost exclusively female audience, saw its sales double last year. Publishers are trying to carve out their slice of the pie.
Peppered with erotic scenes, these romantic tales where an innocent girl falls for a man who is often crazy and sometimes violent but where everything ends well, have the primary advantage of boosting French publishing figures. According to the latest GFK NielsenIQ study, this literary genre, known as "new adult romance", accounted for 1.8% of books sold in 2023, or 6 million copies – and generated €75 million in revenue.
After a decline between 2015 and 2020, the segment is now thriving, having more than doubled compared to 2022. The selection is expanding and appealing to its audience – both adult women and teenage girls. One striking aspect of the study is that the market is heavily concentrated on the top 100 bestselling titles.
So much so that five authors – French novelists C.S. Quill, Emma Green (a pseudonym for a writing duo), Morgane Moncomble, Algerian writer Sarah Rivens and US author Colleen Hoover – who all have huge social media fan bases – can flaunt sales of between 200,000 and over a million copies of each of their books. The film It Ends With Us, adapted from Hoover's book of the same name and released in cinemas on August 14, should further boost sales of this bestseller.
Akoya Publishing launches with slate of 10 books for 2026
thebookseller.com – Thursday October 10, 2024
A new independent publisher, Akoya Publishing, has announced its launch with a slate of 10 books set for 2026. Akoya is a new literary press which "celebrates courageous, visionary and innovative writing". Akoya has been founded by Norwegian entrepreneur Camilla Hagen, with Xenia Stafford as the managing director, and is a "longtime vision coming to life".
The new press will be dedicated to publishing an inspiring range of literary fiction, non-fiction and poetry.
Akoya will begin publishing in spring 2026, with the release of They by award-winning Danish writer Helle Helle, translated from Danish by Martin Aitken.
Hagen acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Gina Winje at Winje Agency with rights sold in six languages. They is the first of three books by Helle Helle that Akoya has acquired, with Hafni Says and Hey Hafni following.
AAP StatShot: US Industry Was up 18.1 Percent for Month of July
publishingperspectives.com – Thursday October 10, 2024
In its July 2024 StatShot report released this morning (October 8), the Association of American Publishers (AAP) cites total revenues across all categories up 18.1 percent over July 2023.
Year-to-date revenues, the AAP reports, were up 7.6 percent at US$7.8 billion for the first seven months of this year.
As Publishing Perspectives readers know, the AAP’s numbers reflect reported revenue for tracked categories including trade (consumer books); religious presses; educational course materials; and professional publishing.
Authors of the July 2024 AAP StatShot report point out that, “Nearly all categories experienced an uptick year-over-year.”
In the trade category, adult book net sales rose by 23.9 percent in July, compared to the same month in 2023. Both fiction and nonfiction contributed significantly to this growth, with fiction sales up 25.8 percent and nonfiction up 21.4 percent. This contributed to a 9.0-percent year-to-date increase in adult book sales, with fiction growing by 13.4 percent and nonfiction by 4.0 percent.
In children’s and young adult (YA) book, net sales increased by 15.3 percent year over year. Within this sub-category, fiction sales grew 21.0 percent and nonfiction decreased by 6.7 percent. Year to date, this sub-category remains relatively flat with a 0.5-percent decrease.
Watson, Little appoints Gabrielle Demblon as foreign rights manager and literary agent
thebookseller.com – Wednesday October 2, 2024
Watson, Little has appointed Gabrielle Demblon as foreign rights manager and literary agent effective 1st October. Demblon succeeds Rachel Richardson, who departed the agency in September to embark on her own venture.
In her new role, Demblon will lead the sale of translation rights for Watson, Little’s roster of authors, while also curating her own list. Demblon joins from Mira Trenchard Literary Scouts (MTLS), where she has worked for the past six years on behalf of a list of international publishers and media clients. Her expertise spans all adult book genres, as well as graphic novels and podcasts, with particular interest in literary fiction, speculative and high-concept narratives, and LGBTQ+ voices. Demblon will work with the assistance of Annie Ku, Rights Assistant, who joined Watson, Little in 2023.
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