New Publisher Listing: Crowdbound
firstwriter.com – Thursday July 17, 2025
UK crowdfunding and crowdpublishing platform that exists to support books that cover important social or environmental themes, by authors who come from disadvantaged or under-represented backgrounds.
New Literary Agent Listing: Lauren Liebow
firstwriter.com – Tuesday July 15, 2025
Interested in representing authors across literary and upmarket fiction as well as non-fiction. In fiction, she is drawn to projects that feature voice-driven narratives and is most fascinated by genre-bending novels written in beautiful prose. She’s looking for timeless stories that explore topics such as migration, family, socioeconomic inequality, and speculative worlds that also expose complicated truths about our own world. She’s also interested in working on nonfiction projects, focusing on narrative nonfiction, memoir, and investigative journalism. Across all genres, she’s keenly interested in books that uplift historically underrepresented voices.
The Novelry Offers $100,000 Prize to Break Publishing Barriers
publishersweekly.com – Monday July 14, 2025
The Novelry, an online creative writing school founded by Booker Prize–longlisted author Louise Dean, has launched a $100,000 writing prize aimed at reaching writers outside traditional publishing circles. With submissions closing July 31, the Next Big Story competition has already received over 5,000 entries and expects to reach more than 10,000 total submissions. An entry requires the first 1,500 words of manuscript and a $15 admission fee, submitted through Submittable.
Dean said the competition aims to reach nontraditional writers. "What I'm really interested in is reaching people who would exclude themselves from writing way before they got to apply for scholarships and bursaries," she told PW. "These are the sort of people who would have been where I was and made the assumption that to be a writer, you've got to be clever or posh. I don't think I had those, therefore, I won't. But I discovered that in fact, you don't need either of those, and they can be quite detrimental."
The competition requires only the first three pages of a novel concept, an approach Dean said targets "real people who probably love really high drama, high concept things" and "probably heavy consumers of genre fiction."
The Sunday Post short story writing competition is back for 2025
sundaypost.com – Sunday July 13, 2025
The word is out. The Sunday Post is on the hunt for Scotland’s best unpublished, amateur fiction writers and you may well be among them.
If you can spin a good yarn, if your imagination knows no bounds, if the characters in your head won’t rest until they’re on the page, then we want to hear from you.
Today The Sunday Post launches its hotly awaited annual Short Story Competition – the third since it began in 2023.
So popular was are the contests that the crème de la crème of Scotland’s writers – Sir Alexander McCall Smith, and Bloody Scotland festival founders Dr Alex Gray and Lin Anderson – are back to judge entries, along with The Sunday Post and P.S. magazine books editor and competition co-ordinator Sally McDonald.
So, if you’ve missed our previous contests, or entered and didn’t win, now is your chance.
Stella women's literary prize picks battle with non-existent enemy as it fights 'male gender bias' in the book industry
skynews.com.au – Sunday July 13, 2025
Australia's 2026 Stella Prize - for women authors - includes a male judge.
If inclusivity is embraced to the extent that gender is no impediment to judging a gender-specific prize, then inclusivity has been rendered relativist to the extent of being just ideology with good branding.
Paradoxically, it would be considered insensitive, in the current climate, to allege that a male judge was hindering representation and the distinctive voice of dozens of prospective female judges, whose lived experience and perspectives as women might make them inherently more suitable as a judge of a literary prize from which men are exempt as entrants.
The Stella Prize claims to fight for gender equality.
The Stella website says it “takes an intersectional feminist approach to privilege and discrimination. We are committed to actively dismantling all structural barriers to inclusion for women and non-binary writers”.
This is a sociocultural delusion, ignoring that the publishing industry is disproportionately, almost overwhelmingly dominated by women - roughly 60 to 70 per cent of Australian novels published in recent years have been written by women.
The most up-to-date Lee & Low publishing survey found that 71 per cent of people in the US industry are women, including 74 per cent in editorial roles, 70 per cent of book reviewers, and 78 per cent of literary agents, with that number replicated in a scroll through the Australian Literary Agents Association website.
Bestsellers LLC Unveils Data-Driven Publishing Model to Transform Authors into Industry Dominators
westernslopenow.com – Sunday July 13, 2025
SAN DIEGO, CA, UNITED STATES, July 12, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- New "Bestseller Blueprint" Guarantee Program Cuts Through Publishing Guesswork, Using Analytics to Land Titles on Amazon, WSJ, and USA Today Lists
Bestsellers LLC, the publishing industry's first data-engineering partner for authors, today launched its flagship Guarantee Program designed to propel books into bestseller rankings through algorithmic targeting, strategic launch sequencing, and hyper-optimized Amazon campaigns. Unlike traditional publishers or à la carte services, Bestsellers LLC treats every book as a "product launch," deploying market analytics to secure visibility, sales velocity, and category dominance.
"The publishing industry runs on hope; we run on data," said the CEO of Bestsellers LLC. "Most authors invest thousands into editing and cover design, only to sell 50 copies. Why? No customer targeting, no Amazon SEO, and no launch science. Our engineers map niches, reverse-engineer algorithms, and deploy precision ads, turning manuscripts into revenue-generating assets."
404 Ink publishing house to close
list.co.uk – Sunday July 13, 2025
Ten years since its inception, award-winning Scottish book publisher 404 Ink has announced it will close next summer. Established in July 2016 by Heather McDaid and Laura Jones-Rivera, 404 Ink has published books by authors including Chris McQueer, Helen McClory and Nadine Aisha Jassat. Last July, the publisher released Victor & Barry’s Kelvinside Compendium by Alan Cumming and Forbes Masson. When we spoke to Laura in February, she talked about some of the struggles the industry is facing.
The publishers described their first book, Nasty Women (inspired by Donald Trump’s infamous description of Hilary Clinton during the US presidential debate in 2016), as ‘a collection of essays, interviews and accounts on what it is to be a woman in the 21st century’. Acclaimed author Margaret Atwood backed the book's Kickstarter appeal, describing it as ‘an essential window into many of the hazard-strewn worlds younger women are living in right now.’ We awarded 404 Ink the top spot in our annual Hot 100 in 2017.
Their ambitious, non-fiction Inklings series, described as ‘small books with a big impact’, is responsible for dozens of titles covering subjects as diverse as colonialism, foot fetishism, Doctor Who, women in hip hop, and the relationship between apocalyptic fiction and contemporary society.
Agents Help YA Authors Find Crossover Success
publishersweekly.com – Sunday July 13, 2025
Not long ago, authors were generally encouraged to stay in their lanes, writing-wise, in order to build name recognition and audiences. Not so anymore.
“We’re seeing more YA authors step into adult spaces—and when that move is intentional and well aligned, publishers are paying attention,” says Regina Brooks, president of Serendipity Literary Agency.
There might be more than one reason for the shift. “For certain genres—such as fantasy and romantic fantasy—the borders between YA and adult have seemed to blur,” says Peter Knapp, an agent and partner at Park, Fine & Brower. “We are finding we often have projects that might land on either a YA list or an adult list.”
Is category hopping only for high-profile authors? Not necessarily. “A strong voice and loyal readership can travel across categories, but it’s not a given,” Brooks says. “Even established YA names have to show that their adult work stands on its own. Brand equity can buy you creative freedom—but not a blank check. Publishers are still weighing risk, and they’re most receptive when the pivot feels organic and makes sense for the market.”
Writing Advice and Literary Wisdom from the Great E.B. White
lithub.com – Saturday July 12, 2025
E.B. White, beloved children’s author (Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, The Trumpet of the Swan), innovative and revered essayist, and co-editor of the indispensable The Elements of Style, celebrates a birthday today. He was born in Mount Vernon, New York, on July 11, 1899. A deeply private man, White, whose full name was Elwyn Brooks White (his Cornell University nickname was “Andy”), had an abiding love for nature and ecology, most evident in his children’s books and essays.
His first publication appeared in The New Yorker in 1925. He went on to become a contributing editor for the magazine in 1927; in this capacity he wrote over 1800 articles. He was credited by famed New Yorker editor William Shawn for inventing a new literary form—the magazine’s “Comment” essay: often personal, incorporating the writer’s first person experience, while also being critical and incisive, as well as accessible to a wide readership. E.B. White loved writing, and given his prolificacy across multiple genres, this versatile wordsmith had some sage advice when it came to craft. Here are some of his most interesting thoughts on writing, creativity, and the majesty of the written word.
Submission Grinder Delists Analog
locusmag.com – Saturday July 12, 2025
Analog Science Fiction & Fact has been delisted on The Submission Grinder due to new terms in the magazine’s recent contracts. Steven Salpeter of parent company Must Read Books has responded that they “are going to be in touch with the folks at the submission grinder to try to resolve the issue.”
According to the the listing, The Submission Grinder has concerns about Analog contract terms “including sublicensing to unnamed other publications, and waiving of moral rights”. This is consistent with the site’s FAQ, which includes “A publication asks for the right to sublicense the work to other publications without…specific approval from the author” and “A publication asks the writer to waive their ‘moral rights'” as possible reasons for delisting.
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