US audio booms by 29% but overall publishing sales dip
thebookseller.com – Tuesday July 24, 2018
American publishers’ total industry sales dipped slightly in 2017, but audio downloads continued to boom, rising by 28.8% year-on-year.
The Association of American Publishers' (AAP) annual StatShot puts 2017’s industry sales at $26.23bn, showing a slight decline from $26.27bn the year before.
The figures contain publishers’ net revenues from trade, higher education, course materials, school instructional materials, professional books and university press, across all formats from all distribution channels and do not represent retailer or consumer sales figures.
Robertson to leave Faber to start new literary agency
thebookseller.com – Friday July 20, 2018
Charlotte Robertson, sales and marketing director and paperback publisher at Faber, is to leave the company to become managing director of a new literary agency in association with Arlington Management.
Robertson will leave the company at the end of the year and start her own literary agency with Arlington Management, a talent agency which represents people such as Kirstie Allsopp and Ben Fogle. Faber will announce plans regarding the appointment of a successor in due course.
New edition of award-winning mystery writing guide
firstwriter.com – Wednesday July 18, 2018
A new, revised edition of G. Miki Hayden's award-winning guide for mystery writers has just been released, and is now available to buy both in print and as an ebook.
G. Miki Hayden is a long-time member and former board member of Mystery Writers of America, and regularly teaches a mystery writing workshop (and other courses) at Writer’s Digest online university. This third edition of her book, Writing the Mystery: A Start-to-Finish Guide for Both Novice and Professional, provides invaluable step-by-step advice on shaping plots, developing characters, and creating a fast-paced and compelling mystery for the modern market. It includes practical exercises, guidance on how to approach agents and publishers and get your novel to market, and a whole new section on the self-publishing phenomenon that has exploded since the publication of the first edition.
Noirwich Crime Writing Festival set to return for fifth year
edp24.co.uk – Tuesday July 17, 2018
Benjamin Black, Val McDermid, Nicci French and Paula Hawkins are among the authors taking part in the festival which will run from September 13 to 16.
Noirwich is run by the National Centre for Writing (formerly Writers’ Centre Norwich) and the University of East Anglia, and it will see events taking place across Norwich, England’s first UNESCO City of Literature.
Stormzy Launches New Publishing Imprint Called #Merky Books
mixmag.net – Friday July 6, 2018
Grime favorite Stormzy teamed with publishing leader Penguin Random House to create his own publishing house called #Merky Books.
Revealed first on his Instagram, Stormzy also confirmed the first book to be published under #Merky Books will be called Rise Up: The #Merky Journey So Far, which is due out November 1. He's also revealed that he plans to open submissions as well as offer paid internships for students for his publishing channel, all with the shared goal to encourage the next generation of writers.
Pick Up A Pen...It’s National Writing Day
voice-online.co.uk – Thursday June 28, 2018
THIS YEAR’S National Writing Day today (June 27) is being celebrated with a host of literary and writing workshops for adults and children across the UK.
National Writing Day is coordinated by literacy charity First Story and designed to inspire people of all ages and backgrounds to get into writing.
Tor.com Publishing Opens to Novella Submissions
locusmag.com – Wednesday June 27, 2018
Tor.com Publishing will open to novella submissions for two weeks beginning July 30, 2018.
Writing agencies gear up for National Writing Day
thebookseller.com – Monday June 25, 2018
More than 35 writing agencies are coming together for this year’s National Writing Day, which will take place on Wednesday (27th June).
Author William Fiennes, who is co-ordinating the day, said there were “too many events to count” this year, with scheduled highlights including a workshop with writer Sabrina Mahfouz in London, a Twitter Q&A with Jed Mercurio on the BBC website Writers Room, and a poetry workshop with Polly Atkin in Cumbria.
National Writing Day is an annual celebration designed to inspire people across the UK to get writing and grew out of Fiennes’ experience with First Story, the charity he set up with Katie Waldegrave.
‘The Spotify for Books’ hasn’t worked yet. Here's why.
thebookseller.com – Monday June 18, 2018
No term garners more collective trepidation from the publishing industry than ‘the Spotify for Books’. From Oyster to Scribd, and Flooved to Entitle, countless outfits have professed to be on the brink of disrupting the world of books. So why have none achieved the runaway success of Spotify? Is the publishing industry fundamentally unsuitable to a model of unlimited consumption? Many would have you believe so. In reality, whilst the term has inevitably been overused, it has also been misused. This has paved the way for widespread confusion regarding business models and in many cases, unnecessary reticence from publishers.
We now live in a world increasingly skewed towards models of access over ownership. Blame the millennials if you must, but the reality is that we largely don’t actually need to own content that we consume either partially or fleetingly. And therein lies half of the explanation - the model just doesn’t work for books that are voraciously read cover-to-cover. In short, the Spotify model is less suitable for trade publishing. A bold statement, certainly, but one that has been shown to be true time and again.
Halton swaps United for PEW
thebookseller.com – Wednesday June 13, 2018
Margaret Halton has left United Agents to join PEW Literary and will handle all foreign rights for the agency.
Halton joined PEW on Monday (11th June) and will work alongside Patrick Walsh and John Ash as an associate agent.
She has worked in publishing houses and literary agencies on both sides of the Atlantic and has been responsible for selling international rights in non-fiction titles such as Margaret Thatcher’s Memoirs and Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine, as well as novels by Toni Morrison, Zadie Smith and Nick Hornby.
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