Ridout Forms New U.K. Publisher
publishersweekly.com – Wednesday January 30, 2019
Amanda Ridout, former managing director of Head of Zeus and a prominent figure in the U.K. publishing world, has launched a new publishing house, Boldwood Books. The imprint will bring out its first list this autumn, and in 2020 will publish about 50 titles. It will specialize in commercial fiction.
Ridout has held senior positions at Reed Books, Hodder Headline, HarperCollins, and Phaidon as well as at Head of Zeus (HoZ), which she left at the end of 2017.
United Talent Agency Names 8 New Partners
playbill.com – Tuesday January 29, 2019
United Talent Agency announced the addition of eight agents to its partnership, representing artists and talents from theatre, film, television, literature, music, sports, video games, and more.
Among UTA’s new partners is Mark Subias, a veteran theatre and literary agent who has been with UTA for the past seven years. Subias’ client roster includes The Color Purple Tony winner Cynthia Erivo, Pulitzer winners Suzan Lori Parks and Annie Baker, Eclipsed playwright and The Walking Dead star Danai Gurira, as well as Tony-winning A View from the Bridge director Ivo van Hove, who will direct the upcoming Broadway revival of West Side Story.
Query the Agent(s)
By G. Miki Hayden
Instructor at Writer's Digest University online and private writing coach
firstwriter.com – Monday January 28, 2019
How Many at a Time?
Writing the novel was easy—not! But now comes the hard(er) part. Getting an agent. Well, just take this trip one step at a time—or should I say several steps at time because you need to send out queries as if you were a query-packaging machine.
The Open Library Faces The Society of Authors
forbes.com – Sunday January 27, 2019
In 2005, the Authors Guild, a professional advocacy organization for writers, filed suit against Google, which, in 2002, had quietly begun scanning copies of books for its Google Books project, aiming to build a universal library. Authors and publishers complained, citing the vast potential for lost sales.
Last week, the Society of Authors, a massive trade union in the UK for authors, asked the Internet Archive, purveyor of the Wayback Machine, to stop providing scanned books to users of its Open Library in the UK.
Amazon Publishing Launches Amazon Crossing Kids
publishersweekly.com – Saturday January 26, 2019
Amazon Publishing has announced the launch of Amazon Crossing Kids, a new imprint for picture books in translation. The imprint, the company said, "aims to increase the diversity of children’s picture books in translation and encourage young reading from a range of cultural perspectives."
Amazon Crossing Kids will debut with three picture books, and is seeking picture book submissions from all regions of the world. The first titles on the list are: Spiky, written and illustrated by Ilaria Guarducci and translated by Laura Watkinson, first published in Italy in 2016 and to be released on July 1; A Tiger Like Me, written by Michael Engler, illustrated by Joëlle Tourlonias, and translated by Laura Watkinson, first published in Germany in 2016 and to be released on September 1; and Along the Tapajós, written and illustrated by Fernando Vilela and translated by Daniel Hahn, first published in Brazil in 2015, and to be released on October 1.
Online storytelling community Wattpad launches its own publishing arm, Wattpad Books
techcrunch.com – Friday January 25, 2019
Wattpad, an online community for original fiction whose stories have been turned into streaming hits like Netflix’s “The Kissing Booth,” is now turning its eyes to publishing. The company today announced the launch of a new division, Wattpad Books, that aims to turn its most popular content into future best sellers.
The books division will publish six titles this year, aimed at Wattpad’s largely young adult audience of 70 million users, who collectively spend 22 billion minutes per month engaged with its site and app.
One of the more popular forthcoming titles, The QB Bad Boy & Me by Tay Marley, was read more than 26.3 million times on Wattpad, and will become available in book form on August 20, 2019.
Diana Athill, writer and editor, dies aged 101
theguardian.com – Friday January 25, 2019
Writer and editor Diana Athill, whose clear eye on life and literature inspired authors and readers alike, has died aged 101. The news was confirmed by the publisher Granta.
Athill combined a glittering career in publishing, where she worked with writers including Philip Roth, Margaret Atwood, Jean Rhys and VS Naipaul, with award-winning success as an author herself, turning her flinty gaze on love, work and approaching death in memoirs including Instead of a Letter, Stet and the Costa biography prize-winning Somewhere Towards the End.
New Magazine Listing
firstwriter.com – Friday January 25, 2019
Publishes: Fiction; Nonfiction; Poetry;
Areas include: Short Stories;
Markets: Adult;
Preferred styles: Literary
Publishes short and long form fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. No academic essays or book reviews. Do not query or send samples - submit complete ms by post with SASE. If submitting from outside the US, submissions may be sent by email. See website for full guidelines.
If I Hate Violence So Much, Why Do I Love Writing About It?
vulture.com – Thursday January 24, 2019
If anyone asks how I came to be obsessed with wrongdoing in all its most perverse manifestations, I always blame Sunday school. I think back to those weekly lessons in murder, jealousy, lust, betrayal, and revenge that made up an integral part of my childhood. My all-time favorite pulp classic is the biblical tale of King David, who sent a romantic rival to certain death on the battlefield because he’d slept with and impregnated the guy’s wife after spotting her bathing on a rooftop. I like to imagine what the lurid paperback cover for that story might look like: God made him a king. Lust made him a killer.
I recall this upbringing when I consider how exactly I ended up writing crime novels. I am a pacifist by nature — hell, I’m Canadian, which is halfway to being a Quaker — and I favor strong gun control, criminal-justice reform, and turning the other cheek over an eye for an eye. I also spend part of my days willingly and even enthusiastically imagining the most creatively gruesome methods for killing people. I’ve written three crime novels, and they aren’t parlor-room mysteries: Two of them star a gleefully murderous hit man as the hero and one centers on a community of criminals so vile that they’ve had their most brutal memories erased.
I’m definitely interested, maybe unhealthily so, in humanity’s darkest proclivities. Yet I’m also reliably shaken by tragedies like Parkland or the horrific recent story of Jayme Closs, a 13-year-old girl abducted from her home after watching her parents get murdered. I struggle to reconcile my aversion to real-world violence with my willingness to conjure it on the page. My mother, a very supportive and loving person who taught Sunday school, had this reaction when she finished my first novel: “I just kept wondering what kind of person could think of such things.” Me, Mom — I’m that kind of person. And I wonder about that, too.
New Publisher Listing
firstwriter.com – Wednesday January 23, 2019
Publishes: Fiction; Nonfiction; Poetry;
Areas include: Arts; Culture; Current Affairs; Literature; Music; Philosophy; Politics;
Markets: Adult
Aims to publish in every sphere and genre, "combining vigorous dissent and a pragmatic willingness to succeed". Submit complete ms via online submission system.
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