Will Google ever reopen signups for its Google Play Books self-publishing platform?
9to5google.com – Thursday December 29, 2016
Google “temporarily” stopped allowing new publishers to sign up for its Google Play Books Partner Center more than a year ago, largely due to rampant piracy on the service. Now, a year and a half later (it was originally shuttered in May of 2015), the Partner Center still hasn’t opened back up…
Irish novelist Elizabeth Reapy give her tips on writing a page-turner
irishpost.co.uk – Thursday December 29, 2016
FIRST-TIME novelist Elizabeth Reapy’s debut Red Dirt is a thrilling piece of fiction based on the lives of three Irish emigrants attempting to find their way in Australia.
Here, the Co. Mayo-based author tells Fiona Audley her top tips for any prospective writers…
Rob Carlson, Agent to Top Screenwriters and Directors, Joins UTA
sfgate.com – Wednesday December 28, 2016
Rob Carlson, a motion picture literary agent whose clients include Hasbro, Michael Bay and Jon M. Chu, has joined UTA, the agency announced in a Tuesday statement.
Carlson, who reps some of Hollywood’s top screenwriters, comes from WME, where he began his career in the mailroom and worked for 25 years. He spent eight years as a TV packaging agent before transitioning into movies.
Rick Pascocello joins Glass Literary Management
firstwriter.com – Tuesday December 27, 2016
Rick Pascocello has joined the boutique literary agency, Glass Literary Management, as a literary agent. Rick previously worked at Penguin Random House for 23 years, where he was Vice President, Executive Director of Marketing.
New Literary Agency Listing
firstwriter.com – Tuesday December 27, 2016
Handles: Fiction; Nonfiction
Areas: Autobiography; Biography; Business; Culture; Entertainment; Health; Historical; Media; Sport
Markets: Adult; Children's
Treatments: Literary; Mainstream; Popular
Send query by email only, directly to one of the two agents -- see website for both email addresses. No attachments, picture books for children, or approaches by post. No response to queries not directly addressed to either one of the agents. Send query letter in the body of your email. Response not guaranteed unless interested.
‘I’m at my desk by 9am. I even write on Christmas Day’
theguardian.com – Saturday December 24, 2016
I have been writing every day of my life, seven days a week, for almost 50 years. Even Christmas Day. But I still enjoy it. I have lived in the same house for the last 30 years and I have written in the same room ever since. When I first came to London, I went on a canal boat ride in Little Venice and I remember going past the street where I live now, thinking: “This must be a nice place to live.” I never dreamed that I would one day live here.
My writing room is a cosy, book-lined room, with a dark wooden desk and a window overlooking the garden. There is a little Paddington bear watching over my desk. I am happy here, although on some days, there is rather a lot of traffic on the road and the river and it can be quite noisy.
Caimh McDonnell: too funny and too Irish
irishtimes.com – Wednesday December 21, 2016
Publishing used be a lot like a bad country disco. The publishers in this metaphor are the lovely ladies and the authors are the likely lads. I don’t mean that the ladies stand bored on one side of the hall while the lads are on the other skulling pints. No, this is another kind of bad. Imagine a GAA tournament clashed with a young farmer’s convention and the AGM of the Association of People Called Sean. The ladies are so out-numbered, it’s like the film 300 remade as a romcom.
Good news, though, the publishers found a solution. The ladies hired some bouncers to do their rejecting for them – literary agents. As a lonely author looking for love, you’ve now got to convince one of them to dance with you long before any of the girls will consider it.
Channel 4 begins hunt for new northern writing talent
prolificnorth.co.uk – Wednesday December 21, 2016
Channel 4 has launched its search for new northern writing talent – giving the chance for three writers to win £3,000 bursaries and the opportunity to work on shows including Hollyoaks.
The scheme is open to writers who are new to television and three winners will be placed with independent production companies Lime Pictures and Bonafide Films.
Brisbane author John Birmingham takes leap from trade publishing to go indie
abc.net.au – Saturday December 17, 2016
Brisbane author John Birmingham likens the break with his trade publishers to jumping out a window, but insists the leap was not suicidal and that he has landed firmly on his feet.
The successful author, renowned for his iconic 1994 autobiographical novel He Died With A Felafel In His Hand, has garnered worldwide acclaim in more recent years for mystery thrillers and alternate history novels including The Disappearance trilogy and the Axis of Time series.
All were released with big-name publishers. But in 2015 Birmingham found to his chagrin how quickly those ties could unwind.
My writing day: Maggie O’Farrell
theguardian.com – Saturday December 17, 2016
Most writers’ work happens when they are away from their desks, when they are looking the other way, when they are engaged with some other mundane task. The washing up, the folding of laundry, the school run, the debate with a small child over the merits and demerits of wearing of a coat in December.
This is, at least, what I try to tell myself. The idea that there is a typical “writing day” makes me laugh, with a slight edge of hysteria. Life with children precludes such planning, such routine, such predictability. Last week, for example, my writing mornings were disrupted and erased by, in no particular order: the cat being copiously indisposed on sofa and carpet; my daughter drawing a seascape of swimming lions on top of some notes I had made; one child sent home ill from school; and another requiring lifts to and from concert rehearsals.
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