Words ’N’ Wishes has acquired Nigel Quiney and Paper Rose
pgbuzz.net – Thursday May 21, 2026
Rod Brown and Carl Salt add two more brands to their publishing portfolio
Nigel Quiney Publications and Paper Rose have been sold to Rod Brown and Carl Salt, owners of the Wigan-based Words ’N’ Wishes.
The news broke late last night, with an official announcement released this morning, 20 May, by Rod who said: “Words ’N’ Wishes is pleased to announce that following lengthy discussions with Paul Taylor we have completed the acquisitions of publishers Nigel Quiney Publications Ltd and Paper Rose Ltd with immediate effect.
“Words ’N’ Wishes has been very fortunate to have built a strong publishing business over the last 15 years and have been looking for a while to find the right opportunity to strengthen our market presence in what has been and continues to be a challenging marketplace.
“Once we got into discussions with Paul regarding both highly-regarded companies it was not a difficult decision to close on. Both publishers have a history of good product and therefore, with the necessary financial support and working capital, will allow them to continue to drive their product strengths.
Filipino CEO pleads guilty in $48M book publishing scam in US
msn.com – Wednesday May 20, 2026
Michael Cris Traya Sordilla, a 34-year-old businessman from the Philippines, has pleaded guilty in federal court in a fraudulent book publishing scheme that defrauded over 800 victims across the United States, resulting in losses exceeding $48 million.
Sordilla is the first of four defendants to admit taking part in the scheme, which primarily targeted senior authors by promising them major publishing deals and Hollywood adaptations in exchange for hefty upfront fees.
Innocentrix Philippines
Sordilla was the founder and CEO of Innocentrix Philippines, identified in the plea agreement as a “business process outsourcing” company.
He and his co-conspirators established fictitious businesses in the US, including: PageTurner Press and Media LLC, founded in California in September 2017, claiming to be a book publishing firm located in Chula Vista, California; Metro Films LLC, incorporated in California in April 2022, claiming to be a motion picture and sound recording company in Los Angeles; and WP Lighthouse LLC, registered in Indiana in July 2024, falsely presented as a book publishing operation in Indianapolis.
How to Write (and Direct) a Contained Story
nofilmschool.com – Wednesday May 20, 2026
Low-budget and accessible—but how do you start?
I'm on a contained story kick right now. My creative partner and I are fresh off a short film shoot and want to make something else, but we want to make it as easy on ourselves as possible in terms of production, and cheap. So, of course, my mind went straight to single-location, contained ideas.
While contained stories are easier to produce and one of the most practical formats for emerging filmmakers, they're also one of the hardest to pull off well at the writing stage. You have to have characters that are interesting enough to carry 90 minutes, as well as a plot compelling enough to keep the audience hooked.
So I was excited to find StudioBinder's breakdown today. It's a good excuse to go through the core mechanics, from the page to the set.
Literary Scout Philippa Donovan Sets Up Screen-To-Book Business Two Script Studio To Facilitate ‘Reverse Adaptations’
deadline.com – Tuesday May 19, 2026
Veteran literary scout Philippa Donovan wants to reverse engineer the books-to-screen market through her new business, Two Script Studio.
The operation will create ‘reverse adaptations‘ to allow producers and screenwriters to turn screenplays into novels at an early stage of development. Book rights are then pitched to literary agents and publishers to build an audience or developed as underlying IP for the film or TV project.
Donovan will also help writers rework dormant scripts for publishers, and is offering mentoring where a pitch deck or script is used for narrative structure.
Two Script is so-named to represent the idea that one story becomes two scripts at the earliest possible stage.
A prize-winning story published in Granta was (very likely) written by AI
lithub.com – Tuesday May 19, 2026
It’s another grim day at the human factory. There is strong evidence to suggest that a prize-winning short story published this week in celebrated literary magazine Granta was entirely generated by AI.
Jamir Nazir’s “The Serpent in the Grove,” was published in Granta in partnership with the Commonwealth Foundation Short Story Prize, which annually recognizes unpublished fiction from around the British Commonwealth. Nazir’s story, which follows a rum-drinking farmer who comes across an enchanted grove, was the recognized entry from the Caribbean region.
A set of judges chaired by award-winning novelist Louise Doughty appreciated the story’s “precise yet richly evocative” language, and selected the piece as a regional finalist from a whopping class of 7,806 entries across the board. But literary sleuths smelled a rat.
Ethan Mollick, a Wharton professor who studies AI’s effects on education and the workplace, broke down this “Turing Test of sorts” in a helpful Bluesky thread.
New Literary Agent Listing: Kate Garrick
firstwriter.com – Tuesday May 19, 2026
Looks for projects that demonstrate a clear confidence of intention and a willingness to engage with our changing world with humility and curiosity. She is particularly interested in literary and upmarket fiction, memoir, and narrative nonfiction that endeavors to contribute to the conversations that will move our society forward.
How to protect against scammers – a new guide for authors
writersguild.org.uk – Monday May 18, 2026
An alarming increase in fraudulent activity targeting authors has led WGGB and the Society of Authors (SoA) to join together to issue urgent new guidance outlining measures writers can take to protect themselves.
How to protect against scammers: a guide for authors – which is published today – follows reports of a large uptick in members contacting WGGB and the SoA for advice on scams. Much of this activity is being driven by the rise of AI, which means that scams are taking more sophisticated and convincing forms, including impersonation of agents and publishers. The scammers aim to manipulate writers to part with money or sign away their rights in return for the promise of representation, publication, promotion or important connections.
The guide includes a checklist for authors to help them assess whether offers they receive are genuine or fraudulent. Advice includes being wary of convincing-seeming email addresses which scammers use to impersonate publishers, agents, big-name authors, publicists, marketing providers and others to ‘cold-email’ authors and make unsolicited offers, including attempts to try to acquire rights in books that have not been submitted to them (a practice legitimate agents or publishers would not engage with).
From counterculture to pop culture: The story of indie publisher Headpress Books
mancunion.com – Monday May 18, 2026
It all started with “quite an outrageous horror film,” says David Kerekes, one of the three original founders and head of Headpress. I am on a zoom call with him and the other core member of the team, press officer Jen Wallis, to discuss the company’s story and its upcoming anniversary.
The film David refers to is Jörg Buttgereit’s Der Todesking, the follow up to the German director’s cult horror Nekromantik. Headpress was founded to release Der Todesking in 1991 and the money it made was put into Headpress magazine. David explains that many horror-film-related things emerged from the video’s nasty furor, including a number of magazines. The founders of Headpress were interested in that progression and keen on anti-censorship. Each of them learnt to write on the job.
The counterculture tone of the magazine steadily established itself, its masthead being ‘sex religion death’. David highlights “the circle of interest was really very strong,” especially pre-internet. “It was a touchstone for a lot of people.”
Is ChatGPT a good writer?
the-berliner.com – Sunday May 17, 2026
In the summer of 2022, I met the founder of a Berlin publishing company that used early AI-writing tools like Rytr to write novels. They were quickly going out of business. The writing made absolutely no sense and took too long to edit. Later that year, OpenAI launched ChatGPT, gaining over one million users in less than five days, and AI writing has only grown more sophisticated since. I don’t know if that company is still in business, but if it is, it isn’t alone, because using AI to write a novel is no longer the novelty it once was.
AI is all over publishing. According to a BookBub survey, 45% of authors use it. Penguin Random House recently filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that ChatGPT mimicked and sold a popular German children’s book series, Ingo Siegner’s Coconut the Little Dragon. Last year, the AI firm Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by authors who claimed the company stole their work to train its AI models.
That’s not to mention the Shy Girl drama.
Call for Submissions | Iska Press and Iskanchi Magazine Want Your Unruly African Writing
brittlepaper.com – Thursday May 14, 2026
Iska Press, the Utah-based independent publisher that describes itself as a home for “unruly African literature”, is currently open for submissions on two fronts, and African writers working in English or in translation should take note.
Iskanchi Magazine, the press’s literary journal, publishes short, original, irreverent, disobedient, and experimental work, writing that pushes the boundaries of experimental fiction in both content and form. The Summer Issue is currently open, with a deadline of 30 May. Subsequent submission periods open in August for the Fall Issue and January for the Spring Issue.
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