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News
Following the sale of Pavilion Children’s Books to HarperCollins, publisher Neil Dunnicliffe has left to set up his own agency, Spring Literary.
The agency will focus on the children’s market, representing both authors and illustrators.
Dunnicliffe said he is representing some of the talent he worked with at Pavilion, including Pam Smy, shortlistee for the Greenaway and Waterstones Children’s Prizes, and John Broadley, winner of the New York Times illustrated children’s book of the year 2021. The agency has also signed Nibbies-shortlisted Ian Eagleton and Klaus Flugge-longlisted Ian Morris and Flora Delargy.
Bedfordshire-based media publishing and distribution company Andrews UK has acquired Devon publisher Arthur H Stockwell.
Arthur H Stockwell was originally established in 1898 in London before relocating to North Devon during the Second World War. It is one of the oldest surviving UK publishers having been family owned since that time by the Stockwell family.
Following the acquisition, Arthur H Stockwell operations have now been transferred to Bedfordshire at its own offices in West Wing Studios.
UK publishing’s total income reached a new high of £6.7bn in 2021, up 5% from 2020. This growth comes despite – or perhaps because of – the pandemic, with the social media platform TikTok emerging as a surprise driving force not only for new books, but backlist purchases.
While the Covid lockdowns forced bookshops to close and subsequent supply chain issues caused delays and headaches for publishers, the appetite for reading soared, with sales up by 5% year on year for both print and digital books, while audiobooks continued the “stellar” performance of recent years with a 14% rise in sales, according to a report from the Publishers Association.
In its effort to help more works of incredible fiction and nonfiction enter the market, Book Puma Services has announced a new live online learning class to help authors create, polish, and submit query letters to literary agents and publishers.
One of the hardest steps for authors seeking a voice via major publishers is retaining the representation of a literary agent to broker those book deals. This often yearslong process of querying agents and waiting for responses is, in many ways, more critical than the works themselves.
Enter Charles Blackstone — award-winning novelist, editor, and instructor at the famed Gotham Writers' Workshop — who will be teaching a workshop at BookPumaOnline.com, which offers a $7.99 per-month subscription that allows writers of all levels to access live and MasterClass-style video courses to improve their craft and learn about the business of publishing.
Blackstone's workshop is set to begin in May and will help authors of all kinds pitch their work to literary agents in a way that will substantially increase their chances of getting representation.
Articles
In 2021 author, poet and teacher Kate Clanchy gained an unwelcome new accolade: the award for the most liberal target of a cancellation yet. Clanchy’s much-celebrated Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, about her experiences of teaching poetry to disadvantaged children around the UK, won the Orwell Prize in 2020. But a year later, thanks to a handful of the book’s sentences being shared out of context on social media, she found herself publicly shamed by today’s self-appointed moral guardians. She went from being applauded for bringing poetry to working-class children to being humiliated into accepting sensitivity-reader approved rewrites of her work.
It might be a new year but Clanchy’s punishment beating continues. It was announced last week that plans for a woke rewrite of Some Kids I Taught had been dropped – not because it was a God-awful idea to begin with, but because Clanchy and her publisher, Pan Macmillan, have decided to part company ‘by mutual agreement’.
The publisher’s statement notes: ‘Pan Macmillan will not publish new titles nor any updated editions from Kate Clanchy, and will revert the rights and cease distribution of Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me and her other works.’ This is an astonishing attempt by a publishing company to distance themselves from an author and her work.
Signing a contract with even a brand-name traditional book publisher initially feels like a ticket to Nirvana. You may expect, for example, your new publisher to set you up with a big fat advance, a multi-city promotional tour, your very own personal PR rep and multiple copies of your book on every bookshelf in the nation (and Canada) for as long as you and your book shall live.
But to understand how book publishers really work, study this list of what I call the four great “myths” of traditional book publishing. Then, by all means, proceed to seek out a publisher if that’s your goal but do so with your eyes wide open. Your relationship with your publisher will run much smoother if you recognize its pitfalls as well as its glories.
I've fallen in love with printed books. Again. Especially those for children.
Twenty years into my book publishing career—which included marketing for trade book publishers and founding a children's imprint—I had the opportunity to go digital, move into the future, hang out with the cool guys, play games, do the bicoastal thing, and grow a ponytail.
In April 2011, Marion Grace Woolley found her first publisher through firstwriter.com's database of publishers. A year later, she has published three books with two different publishers, both from our listings.
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