Julia Wisdom, publisher at HarperFiction, has bought UK and Commonwealth (excluding Canada) rights to Girl A and The Conspiracies in a six-figure deal with debut author Abigail Dean. Juliet Mushens negotiated the deal at a nine-way auction after turning down two "significant" six-figure pre-empts within 48 hours of submission. US rights went to Laura Tisdel at Viking in a seven-figure deal at auction by Jenny Bent on behalf of Mushens, while the novel was pre-empted in France, the Netherlands, Italy and Sweden, and sold at auction in Spain and Lithuania. TV/film rights are in negotiation via Sally Willcox at Paradigm.
Links of the week October 7 2019 (41)
Our new feature links to interesting blogs or articles posted online, which will help keep you up to date with what's going on in the book world:
14 October 2019
Dean said: "HarperFiction's pitch was incredible: smart, creative and full of passion for the novel and its characters. I'm so excited to be working with Julia, Laura and their fantastic teams to introduce Girl A and the Gracie family to readers across the world. The last few weeks have been dreamlike, and I'm in awe of my agent, Juliet, who has worked tirelessly to make all of this happen."
The number of books self-published in the U.S. saw more rapid growth in 2018, jumping 40% over 2017, according to Bowker's annual survey of the self-publishing market. In its report, "Self-Publishing in the United States, 2013-2018: Print and E-books," the total number of print and e-books that were self-published in 2018 was 1.68 million, up from 1.19 million in 2017.
Amazon is considered to be largest publisher of self-published e-books, even if no number is available. Amazon's CreateSpace division dominates the print self-publishing market, with 1.4 million self-published print titles last year, up from 929.290 in 2017. Lulu published the second most print self-published titles last year, with its output rising to 37,456 titles, from 36,651 in 2017, according to Bowker. Author Solutions, through its many different imprints, released 16,019 print self-published print books last year and 10,585 e-books, with both figures slightly higher in 2018 over 2017.
Is Netflix a friend or foe to the book business? That question was addressed by the Global 50 CEO Talk 2019, which featured a conversation with Kelly Luegenbiehl, VP International Originals of Netflix, hosted by publishing consultant Ruediger Wischenbart and with the editors of global trade journals.
Netflix, Wischenbart pointed out, spent in excess of $10 billion on content development every year - the global revenue of Penguin Random House is about $3.5bn. Luegenbiehl said: "We look at the publishers and editors as partners, that is the best word. For us, the more collaboration the better. Our goal is to bring books to life on the screen in a way it has not been done before."
In the Golden Age of British detective fiction in the 1920s and 1930s, four women were universally considered the four Queens-Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh, and Dorothy L. Sayers (don't forget the middle initial, please, she was most adamant about that). She earned that title largely on the strength of eleven extraordinary novels published between 1923 and 1937, featuring the iconic character of Lord Peter Wimsey and, in four of them, the inestimable Harriet Vane, as well as dozens of short stories and one stand-alone novel. Her influence on detective fiction went far wider than that, however.
But first the novels! Entertaining, erudite, lucid, filled with ingenious puzzles and even more ingenious solutions, written with grace, elegance, flair, wit, and an acute attention to character and psychological development, these novels combined the best qualities of the detective story with a novelist's attention to the mores and manners of the day.
Seamus Heaney was real. Were he a fictional character, however, we likely would call him unrealistic, his life story and his career too good to be true. Like Robert Frost and W. H. Auden, but perhaps with fewer missteps and regrets, Heaney became the sort of modern poet whose best-known phrases circulate without attribution.
And then - his children grown or in their teens, his job and his reputation secure - Heaney decided to write about happiness. 'Walk on air against your better judgment,' one of the poems from The Spirit Level (2014) suggests. The poet had already moved from earth and water to fire and heat, and then over water again, across the Atlantic. Now he became a poet of air: one who wanted to share with his readers not so much extravagance as confidence, lightness, the ability to stay pleased.
Let me tell you a story. A few years ago, months after this riven old island voted to leave the European Union, and days after an ex-reality TV host became the leader of the free world, a writer happened to win an award. In her speech she thanks this country which has been her home for half her life. She thanks it for valuing her book, for valuing her at this historic moment in time. And she means it. This validation means the world to her. It comes from a country, Scotland, that is not exactly hers but in which she has settled. In which she has produced a mixed-race baby and become a writer.
Afterwards she is whisked away for photos, handshakes, congratulations, the heady stuff of success. Only the following day does she discover what else happened that night. Following her speech, the head of the organisation returned to the stage and made an off-the-cuff comment about this award really ticking "all the boxes". It was nothing really, just a lighthearted joke, more at the expense of funders and their infuriating rules than the writer who happens to be Indian, English, bisexual, a woman, the daughter of first-generation immigrants.
Twenty years before Peter Handke would become a Nobel laureate, he won another title. In 1999, Salman Rushdie named him the runner-up for "International moron of the year" in the Guardian, for his "series of impassioned apologias for the genocidal regime of Slobodan Milošević". (The winner was actor Charlton Heston, for being a gun lobbyist.)
The Austrian playwright, whose Slovenian heritage had inspired in him a fervent nationalism during the Balkans war, had publicly suggested that Sarajevo's Muslims had massacred themselves and blamed the Serbs, and denied the Srebrenica genocide. Seven years after Rushdie's scorching condemnation, in 2006, he would also attend war criminal Milošević's funeral.
First, the Swedish Academy's apparent commitment to be less "male-oriented" and "Eurocentric" just days before had been quickly proven false, with two European winners and only the 15th female laureate in 120 years. Secondly, having declared that the prize would take a fallow year to reassess its direction after a now infamous sexual harassment scandal, the academy had left observers hopeful that the Nobel would stop eliding controversy with intellectual rigour, and choose authors that could be praised for both their work and their politics.
"Handke is a troubling choice for a Nobel committee that is trying to put the prize on track after recent scandals," said author Hari Kunzru, who has taught the laureate's work to his students. "He is a fine writer, who combines great insight with shocking ethical blindness."
In a shock move, last night Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo were announced as the joint winners of the Booker Prize 2019 at a ceremony at Guildhall in London. The pair will share the £50,000 prize money after the judges 'broke the rules' to award the prize to both authors.
The Booker has been awarded to two authors twice before, in 1974 and 1992, but in 1993 the rules were amended to allow only one winner. Literary director Gaby Wood said that the decision was 'definitively against the rules' but that the panel had chosen to 'flout them'. Peter Florence, chair of the judges, said they were 'Two novels we cannot compromise on', and added that, 'They are both phenomenal books that will delight readers and will resonate for ages to come.' Wood added that the judges left the judging room 'happy and proud'.
When announcing the winner, Florence said that there camea time in the Booker process when you were 'reducing the books that you celebrate, and not only do I want all the shortlist to win the prize, but I want the longlist back as well. And I would like to pay tribute to that longlist." He went on to pay tribute also to the editors, agents, writers, booksellers, librarians and journalists involved in the prize, along with the Booker trustees, his fellow judges, and Gaby Wood. He said: "We love this shortlist... Today, we tried voting. We found that there were two novels - not that we couldn't let go of, but that we desperately wanted to win this year's prize. So we're awarding the prize jointly to both of them. There are two winners of this year's Booker Prize who will share this honour and this money."
With the hindsight of history, the Booker misses plenty of tricks. In 1986, The Handmaid’s Tale, one of the most vital and prescient works of modern fiction, was pipped to the prize by Kingsley Amis’s The Old Devils. With Margaret Atwood now elevated to the status of a contemporary prophet, 2019 may have seemed like an opportunity to redress that mistake. Published with all the fanfare of a new Harry Potter and accounting for 86% of shortlist sales, her sequel has dominated this year’s award, sprinkling some much-needed publishing glitz.
Two extraordinary books, then: but it has to be said that this feels like a fudge, weighing a huge event novel against a more obscure choice and trying to have it both ways. The danger is that the Booker effect that propelled last year's "difficult" winner, the brilliant Milkman, to a wider readership will be dissipated. Perhaps it's best understood as a reminder of how impossible it is, in the end, for the subjective process of weighing one novel against another to come to an objective conclusion.
7 October 2019
Publishing is an industry that can move slowly. Books can take years to write, and then a few more years to publish. There are exceptions, though, and the case of Regan Rose, whose debut novel just sold to Pamela Dorman for high six figures, is unquestionably one.
A week and a half ago, Rose, a pseudonym for a lawyer based in Portland, Me., didn't even have a literary agent. She sent an unsolicited pitch letter to Helen Heller, who has an eponymous shingle based in Ontario, Canada. Heller was immediately struck by the pitch, and requested Rose's manuscript.
"I signed her up the day after she sent me the submission," Heller explained, adding that said submission was "one of the best I've ever seen." After staying up all night to reader Rose's novel, A Kindness, Heller knew she had something special on her hands. The industry reacted in kind. Less than 24 hours after sending the manuscript to editors, there was heavy interest.
Author Jacqueline Woodson recently spoke about books being either mirrors or windows. Mirrors for seeing ourselves, and windows for seeing into other worlds. Growing up, I enjoyed both types of books, from the realistic contemporary fiction of Judy Blume to the epic fantasy of JRR Tolkien. I had access to books by these and every author in between courtesy of a bookstore a short drive from my house. I didn't understand my privilege then, but I've come to understand it better over time.
In the short time that it was open, I developed interests that would shape my career. I grew up at the advent of personal computing, and the books I read helped me along a path to becoming a programmer. I also developed a deep appreciation for comics, thanks to an expansive humour section at the bookstore. Those comic collections helped to prepare me for my dream career as a cartoonist. Had we not had a bookstore nearby during my formative years, I would have grown up to be a completely different person.
Headbutts, snark and furious obsession: a toxic history of literary rivalries | Books | The Guardian
When my first book was published last year I wasn't prepared for how unhinged I would become. I'd expected review-induced nerves and worries that swung from "No one will read it" to "Oh God, someone is actually going to read it". But I hadn't foreseen the appearance of a wholly one-sided and indecorous obsession with another author.
This author's book launched in the same week as mine. It was nothing like my book, a memoir based on lists written by my grandmother, so its existence should not have troubled me, yet my writing life somehow became combatively interwoven with his. I had a review in a broadsheet; the next week he had a full-page spread in the same paper. I did a radio interview; he appeared on the same show. Every time I read about his achievements (pretty much every time I checked his social media), it diminished my own. It was like a nasty bruise I couldn't resist pressing.
Whether you're writing a novel, memoir or how-to book, a manuscript evaluation can be an economical opportunity to have your work reviewed by a professional editor before you begin querying and submitting. It ideally happens only when you've taken your manuscript as far as you can-since it's not going to do you much good if your feedback consists of comments about revisions you already know you have to make.
A manuscript evaluation is a high-level analysis of your manuscript through multiple lenses:
- Structure. Does the story advance appropriately? How are characters introduced and developed? How is the pacing?
- Story. Are the stakes high enough? Is the story goal clear? Is the voice or perspective clear or strong? Does it earn each plot development? Does it require more suspense (or sensuality, or action)?
- Mechanics. Are there recurring grammatical issues? How effective are your word choices, including adjectives and adverbs?
- Genre. For genre fiction, does the manuscript follow the accepted conventions?
Where do Booker-prize authors find their inspiration? The authors on the 2019 shortlist reveal the secrets behind their novels
Chigozie Obioma
I came to the story that would become An Orchestra of Minorities after I witnessed the tragic shattering of an individual whose name was Jay. I was at a university in northern Cyprus in 2009 when he arrived, having been deceived by scammers masquerading as foreign university agents. This man would crumble inwards and fall into a deep psychological crisis that would culminate in a violent death days later - a head-first fall from a tall building. In the days before that fall, Jay had told me he'd come to Cyprus because he was deeply in love with a woman. That knowledge first led me to try to explore what the dynamic may have been between him and his betrothed. What kind of love would make a person sell all they have to be with their lover? So I tried to retrace his journey, an Odyssey of some sort in which my protagonist Chinonso would be sustained for a long time by the reality of love, but ultimately destroyed by the mythology of love.
For Martina Myers, a high school English teacher on the Navajo reservation in Arizona, Sherman Alexie's novel "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" seemed too good to be true: funny, well-crafted and focused on Native American youth.
Her students at Piñon High School, many of whom struggled with substance abuse and mental illness, took to it immediately. They wrote poems in response, on native pride, addiction, self-acceptance and suicide attempts.
So when Ms. Myers learned last year of the allegations of sexual harassment against Mr. Alexie, who issued a statement admitting he had "harmed other people," she felt two waves of betrayal - first for her students and then for herself, a survivor of abuse.
"When the #MeToo movement happened I told my story," Ms. Myers said. She knew some of her students, too, had experienced sexual assault.
But she decided not to tell her class about the accusations against Mr. Alexie. "They thought it was the coolest thing in the world to have that role model; why take that away from them?"
The historical novels The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek and The Giver of Stars, published a few months apart, share some noticeable similarities. Book Woman author Kim Michele Richardson has raised concerns; Moyes denies having read Richardson's book.
"I could only hope there was more than enough room for more than one" novel on the topic, Richardson said in an interview with BuzzFeed News.
She became concerned, however, when a blogger who had received an advance review copy of Moyes' book alerted Richardson in April to what she believed were unusually specific similarities between the two novels; at least one bookseller has also referenced the apparent overlap in a tweet.
"History is not proprietorial," Richardson said. But "the disturbing similarities found in Moyes' book are too many and too specific and quite puzzling," she added in an email. "None of the similarities found in Moyes' novel can be chalked up to the realities of history, nor can be found in any historical records, archives or photographs of the packhorse librarian project initiative that I meticulously studied. These fictional devices/ plot points were ones I invented."