Kate Burke joins Blake Friedmann
thebookseller.com – Wednesday January 16, 2019
Kate Burke has joined The Blake Friedmann Literary Agency as a senior agent and will focus on commercial fiction.
Burke previously worked as an agent at Northbank Talent Management for six years, and before that spent 10 years as a fiction publisher, at Headline, HarperCollins and Penguin Random House.
Curtis Brown celebrates 120th birthday with novel-writing prize
thebookseller.com – Wednesday January 16, 2019
Curtis Brown is to celebrate its 120th birthday with a series of events spearheaded by a team of young agents, culminating in the Curtis Brown 120 Novel Writing Prize.
Founded in 1899 by Albert Curtis Brown, one of the UK’s longest running independent literary agencies. This year Curtis Brown plans to “celebrate its heritage and offer a unique opportunity to the future.” Agents including Lisa Babalis, Becky Brown, Catherine Cho, Lucy Morris and Norah Perkins will help lead the year's events.
The celebrations will culminate in the Curtis Brown 120 Novel Writing Prize, a mission to find the voices of the future, launched in partnership with the Curtis Brown Creative writing school. The prize will be open to novels both finished and unfinished, across all genres of adult fiction. Details of judging panels, process, prizes and submission dates will be revealed in April.
Robertson Murray Literary Agency launches
thebookseller.com – Tuesday January 15, 2019
Representing fiction, general non-fiction and children’s books, the agency, first announced last summer, is a division of Hilary Murray's talent agency Arlington Management Ltd and is being headed up by Robertson, who most recently was sales and marketing director and paperback publisher at Faber and Faber.
Want to make your writing more collaborative, cross-platform and creative? Try Collab Writers
thebookseller.com – Friday January 11, 2019
The pitch
Collab Writers is a global community for creatives to connect, collaborate and create on poems, flash fiction, short stories and ;novels - and to get those stories on screen.
At the heart of the startup is a hub where members can collaborate to create and publish their work, with assistance and guidance from the Collab Writers team. They will also connect the best writers to the film world, to help adapt their work.
"Creatives at Collab Writers aren't just writers," says co-founder Jennie Griffiths. "We want to encourage a new wave of surrealist creatives to bring pictures, photos, words, images, illustrations, film and music together. We encourage a mash-up of creative genres and mixed media products including short graphic memoirs, manga and stories told through song and screen.
"Collab Writers is a call to action to rise up off the sofa, turn off the box set and awaken your inner creative through connecting and collaborating with like-minded creatives."
Greek publisher Papadopoulos sets up UK children’s imprint
thebookseller.com – Friday January 4, 2019
Papadopoulos Publishing, an Athens-based publisher that has been running for more than 70 years, is setting up an imprint in the UK to publish children’s books.
Faros Books will be based in London and will launch in February and will publish 10 titles in the first year, 10-14 in the following year and the aim is to publish 15-20 books in 2024. Most will be translated from Greek.
M.d. of Papadopoulos Publishing Ioannis Papadopoulos said he wanted to launch a business in London because the city is a centre of English language publishing across continents, and is closer to Athens than alternatives such as New York.
The Borough Press and The Good Literary Agency open submissions for un-agented BAME writers
thebookseller.com – Monday December 17, 2018
The Borough Press has teamed up with The Good Literary Agency to open submissions for un-agented BAME writers with the one winning applicant set to secure a £10,000 publishing contract, agency representation and mentoring from writer Nikesh Shukla.
Assistant editor Ore Agbaje-Williams is calling for authors from BAME backgrounds who have written a literary or literary-commercial novel in keeping with the spirit of The Borough Press list - books people want to talk about, either to question or agree; books that span the globe, whether near home or far afield; energetic, modern and eclectic books that inspire passion in readers - to enter the open submission.
Eleventh Annual Papatango New Writing Prize Opens For 2019 Submissions
broadwayworld.com – Thursday December 6, 2018
The Papatango New Writing Prize, now in its eleventh year, opens for submissions today, 6 December 2018, until 9pm on 17 February 2019.
The Papatango New Writing Prize was the UK's first - and remains the only annual - opportunity guaranteeing a new writer a full production, publication by Nick Hern Books, a royalty of 10% of the gross box office, and a £6000 commission with full developmental support for a follow-up play.
Publica wants to free publishers and authors from Amazon using the blockchain
thebookseller.com – Saturday November 10, 2018
Publica is a new publishing platform that using blockchain and cryptocurrency technology to innovate how books are funded, distributed, bought, and read. For readers, libraries and institutions Publica offers “books without borders” via an ereader-wallet app for digital book ownership, which is portable to any device. For authors and publishers, it offers personalised online storefronts, designed to their own business models and at their own prices, with their book sales cryptographically protected by a global peer-to-peer blockchain network.
New specialist kids agency launched
booksandpublishing.com.au – Thursday November 1, 2018
Lawyer and writer Justine Barker has launched a new literary agency focusing on children’s and YA books.
Mayfair Literary Agency will represent authors writing picture books, junior fiction, middle-grade and YA titles, and is only open to Australian writers. The agency is currently accepting submissions by previously published authors, and also has a pre-submission pitching service open to unpublished authors.
US trade sales increase despite a fall in publishing revenues
thebookseller.com – Wednesday October 31, 2018
Publishing revenues declined 1.4% in the US in the first three quarters of the year, despite a rise in trade revenues of 4.4%, according to the Association of American Publishers (AAP).
Trade publishing revenues increased 4.4% to $228.3m compared to the same period in 2017 and adult books - the largest category - experienced a rise of 4.4%. Publishers revenue for children’s and young adult books (+3.5%) and religious presses (+7.6%) also increased.
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