SMU’s Dallas Literary Festival Goes Virtual
prestonhollowpeople.com – Wednesday February 24, 2021
The theme of the Dallas Literary Festival, hosted by SMU, is a fitting one for the times — turbulence.
The free, virtual program will be from March 26-28. For the full schedule and to register, visit dallasliteraryfestival.org.
The event begins at 5:30 p.m. March 26, with Alice Johnson, author of After Life: My Journey from Incarceration to Freedom in a keynote conversation with Mitchell Jackson, author of Survival Math. March 27-28 will be devoted to panels, readings and author interviews featuring New York Times columnist and author of The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto Charles M. Blow, the first Native American Poet Laureate of the U.S. and author of the memoir Crazy Brave Joy Harjo, Pulitzer Prize in poetry winner and author of Leadbelly and Olio Tyehimba Jess, the author of Where Reasons End and Must I Go Yiyun Li, and the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Sontag: Her Life and Work Ben Moser.
Lit Agent Brooks Sherman Leaves Agency, Dropped by Authors
publishersweekly.com – Sunday February 21, 2021
Literary agent Brooks Sherman is no longer affiliated with Janklow & Nesbit Associates, where he has worked since 2017. He has also recently been dropped by a number of his clients, most prominently Angie Thomas, whose bestselling YA novel The Hate U Give has been added to school curricula around the country and was made into a film that grossed $35 million at the box office—and whose sale, at auction for a rumored six figures, cemented Sherman as a major player in the children's publishing world.
“We have parted ways,” Thomas told PW yesterday by telephone from her home in Jackson, Miss., confirming that the break took place within the past week. She declined to disclose why she parted ways with Sherman or who initiated the split, but Sherman told PW in an email that Thomas fired him, adding, “It was an honor to have an opportunity to work with her for the past five years.”
Creative Writing M.F.A. Student Launches Literary Magazine
news.uark.edu – Wednesday February 17, 2021
Samantha Campbell, a first-year M.F.A. student in fiction writing in the U of A Program in Creative Writing and Translation in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences has co-founded Black Moon Magazine, an online literary arts journal featuring fiction and poetry.
According to its mission statement, Black Moon Magazine "dedicates itself to the discovered intersections of mixed-medium, art, and diversity."
Why your favorite magazines are morphing into books
edition.cnn.com – Saturday February 13, 2021
Shopping in the pandemic often means buying supplies for working, cooking and exercising at home. But consumers are also looking for ways to pass the time, and for some, that means picking up a magazine while they're out and about.
Those who braved a drug store, supermarket or newsstand this past month may have seen in the magazine section copies of Better Homes & Gardens' "Secrets of Getting Organized," Delish's "Keto Comfort Foods" and Time's collector's edition on the Korean pop band, BTS.
But these are not traditional magazines. They are what some in the media industry call "bookazines" — a blend of books and magazines — and in recent years, they have become more crucial to publishers' success.
Agents Kingsford and Campbell part ways
thebookseller.com – Friday February 12, 2021
The agency Kingsford Campbell is splitting up, after Julia Kingsford and Charlie Campbell decided to separate their activities after seven years of working together.
Kingsford will continue to represent her clients, as Julia Kingsford Ltd, while maintaining her involvement in The Good Literary Agency, which she co-founded with Nikesh Shukla in 2018, as well as her consultancy work for publishers, writers and production companies. She can be found at juliakingsford.com and julia@juliakingsford.com.
Saint Patrick Centre launches international writing competition to celebrate 20th anniversary
irishnews.com – Thursday February 11, 2021
A CO Down centre which tells the story of Ireland's patron saint has launched an international writing competition to celebrate its 20th anniversary.
The Saint Patrick Centre in Downpatrick is inviting young people to write about issues such as human trafficking and faith.
The International Spirit of Patrick Writing competition is open to young writers aged 16 to 20, as St Patrick himself was trafficked to Ireland, as a young person, around 400AD.
St Patrick is believed to have been trafficked at age 16 and held captive in Ireland for six years before he miraculously escaped, having found God in his isolation and suffering.
Ten Things I Hate About Your Book By Charley Brindley Released For Worldwide Distribution
einnews.com – Thursday February 11, 2021
Ten Things I Hate About Your Book (AISN: B08VQP8D4L, 2021) by Charley Brindley has been released for worldwide distribution. The book is a must read for anyone aspiring to be a fiction writer or even for accomplished fiction writers looking to sharpen their writing skills. In this book, Brindley, an acclaimed fiction and nonfiction author writes what the top ten mistakes literary agents pointed out to him when he first aspired to be an author and how to avoid these mistakes in writing. Brindley writes how these are common mistakes that many writers make can be lethal to a writing career. Ten Things I Hate About Your Book is available in Kindle format for 99 cents or free on Kindle Unlimited.
“Ten Things I Hate About Your Book is the prefect book for anyone seeking to be an author or someone who is an author and looking to refresh their writing skills,” said Charley Brindley. “The ten errors I write about in the book that were pointed out by multiple literary agents are some of the most overlooked errors authors make and totally avoidable. Avoiding these errors can mean the difference between being published or being rejected by the publishing industry.”
Exposing Audiblegate
thebookseller.com – Tuesday February 9, 2021
A few months ago, the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi)’s watchdog desk, which which monitors the self-publishing sector, rates the best and worst services, and offers a partner membership to approved services, downgraded Amazon ACX/Audible’s rating as a self-publishing service from "Recommended" to "Caution”.
This was done with a heavy heart. Unlike other publishers, indie authors have good reason to be grateful to Amazon for the tools and platforms that underwrite the author-publishing revolution. That gratitude remains but independent authors know, better than anyone, that Amazon’s publishing platforms are not perfect, and ALLi has always encouraged its members to publish widely through other distributors, aggregators and retailers, and their own websites, as well as Amazon. The ACX platform has been a cause of particular concern for some years, its payment percentages, exclusivity conditions, and licensing terms the worst in the self-publishing sector.
That concern started to intensify in the last quarter of last year, when a company glitch at ACX gave author-publishers a peek behind what had, until then, been a thick curtain of non-transparency.
Major UK publishers’ ebook sales up 15%
booksandpublishing.com.au – Monday February 8, 2021
In the UK, the top six trade publishers recorded a total 15.5% rise in ebook sales in 2020, the first double-digit percentage bump in seven years, reports the Bookseller.
Collectively, Hachette, Penguin Random House (PRH), HarperCollins, Pan Macmillan, Bloomsbury and Simon & Schuster sold 54.5 million consumer ebooks through UK retailers in 2020, up from the 47.2 million in 2019.
Class-Action Lawsuit Alleges Amazon Colluded with Publishers to Fix Ebook Prices
tidbits.com – Saturday February 6, 2021
Remember 2013, when the US Department of Justice and 33 states prevailed in an antitrust suit against Apple and five major publishers? Back then, a common complaint from Apple fans was, “What about Amazon?” Our comprehensive coverage in “Explaining the Apple Ebook Price Fixing Suit” (10 July 2013) pointed out that the case was about Apple’s behavior, not Amazon’s, while also explaining Amazon’s instigating role and suggesting that the online bookseller might face its own antitrust charges.
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