Four years ago, after several decades writing for TV and film, I decided to attempt a novel, something I had always wanted to do but feared to start. The idea for Reckless came from a magazine article about agencies that arrange discreet affairs for the happily married. I was immediately drawn by the contradiction in that idea, but worried if I was capable of turning it into a novel rather than a screenplay. Although I have read hundreds if not thousands of novels over the years, I had never tried writing one. Would the skills be transferable?
Links of the week July 26 2021 (30)
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:
26 July 2021
Films are about 25,000 words, with TV shows half that. A novel is five times longer. The first draft of a script takes just a few weeks; a novel, years. It was a daunting prospect. Familiar with plot-driven narratives, I gave myself a head start by opting for a genre piece, inspired by examples such as The Girl on the Train and Gone Girl. Surely it would just be a case of imagining the story as a film, then describing everything in prose? It turned out not to be quite so easy.
Jack Ryan, the analytical, yet charming CIA analyst, made an appearance in federal court in Maryland earlier this year. The heirs to Tom Clancy's literary legacy are fighting over him. Unlike in the movies, he's not in a great position to fight back.
It all started when Clancy signed the publishing deal for The Hunt for Red October where Jack Ryan made his debut in 1984. In a departure from common practice, Clancy transferred his copyright in Red October to the publisher. A few years later, Clancy realized his mistake and was able to negotiate return of the copyright for the book. He immediately transferred the reverted copyright to his company.
Here's the crux of the current court battle: When Clancy mistakenly transferred his copyright in the book Red October to the original publisher, did the copyright to the character Jack Ryan go with it? Or did Clancy retain the character copyright? In normal practice, the sale of the right to publish a copyrighted story does not stop the author from using its characters in future works.
Simon Akam says Penguin Random House cancelled his book about the British army, The Changing of the Guard, and demanded back his advance after he refused to let the MoD vet it
In the summer of 2015, journalist Simon Akam was thrilled when Penguin Random House (PRH) imprint William Heinemann won a five-way auction to publish his book, The Changing of the Guard. It promised to be an "explosive, intimate, authoritative account of the British army", with PRH likening Akam to George Orwell, Ernest Hemingway and Michael Herr.
Six years later, The Changing of the Guard was published - but not by PRH. It was released this February by independent press Scribe, after an extraordinary dispute between PRH and Akam resulted in the publisher dropping the book, spending a year chasing Akam for tens of thousands of pounds, and accusing him of not meeting "the standards of balance and accuracy expected of responsible publishers, authors and journalists".
If you want a preview of next year's Emmy Awards, just take a walk past your local bookstore. According to data drawn from Publishers Marketplace, the industry's clearinghouse for news and self-reported book deals, literary adaptations to television have been on a steady climb. The site has listed nearly 4,000 film and television deals since it launched in 2000, and both the number and proportion of TV deals have increased dramatically in that same period. Last year, reported TV adaptations exceeded film adaptations for the first time ever.
Literary adaptations are big business. For streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu, they provide a reliable source of content for limited or multiseason series; Publisher's Weekly reported in 2019 that Netflix was on a "book-buying spree," and the company has shown no sign of slowing. Rotten Tomatoes cites 125 literary adaptations in development right now.
All of this has had a profound effect on the literary world. As you might expect, becoming a TV show increases a novel's popularity enormously. Adaptations can drive book sales, as in the case of this winter's breakout hit Bridgerton. The Regency-era bodice-ripper is not alone: A number of backlist titles, such as The Queen's Gambit, have enjoyed a late-in-life revival thanks to Netflix's attention.
This is a sad story. Wait, let me start first with the happy part of the story, since that's relevant to the sad part. The other day, quite unexpectedly, I got a large, thick envelope from Anthem Blue Cross, informing me that I had qualified for health insurance through the Writers' Guild. Hallelujah! This caught me by surprise, to say the least. I've belonged to the Writers' Guild for many years, but I had earned only a trifling amount on Guild-qualified projects (that is, screenwriting for film or television) so I had never reached the threshold for perks like a pension or health insurance. The most I ever got were screener DVDs during award season and invitations to a few lectures by directors.
I always wondered about it, about this mythical golden embrace of the Guild, since many writers - most famously Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne - quested after that insurance package so strenuously that they took on Hollywood work just to qualify for it. I never gave it much thought because I never imagined I'd earn enough in Hollywood to even come close. I dutifully paid my quarterly dues in the Guild to stay in the union, but that was it.
I've been self-employed for decades. No one has paid for my health insurance, or into a pension fund, or given me sick days or workers' comp, in a million years. This is the way it is for writers.
When I entered the inaugural Montegrappa Writing Prize at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature in 2013, my goal was merely to have my work read by a top London agent. As an aspiring novelist, I spent most of my procrastination time Googling how difficult it was to get an agent, so the chance to have Luigi Bonomi of LBA actually look at my work was one not to be missed. I had only about 30,000 words of the novel at that point, but you didn't have to have a finished manuscript, so I wrote a synopsis, polished the first five pages, and sent it off.
I didn't expect to win, but I did hope that if Luigi saw anything, any shred of talent or promise worth developing, he might give me a nod. I was raising my head a little above the parapet for the first time in my fiction-writing life, and wondering: do I have what it takes, or is the idea of being a novelist just a ridiculous dream?
I can see now that winning the prize was not the end of the process, as one would tend to imagine - rather, it was the beginning of a journey I'm still on today. Being a published author has opened some incredible doors for me. I've discovered that I love teaching and inspiring others, and I've had to conquer my fear of public speaking in order to deliver workshops at literary festivals, in workplaces and in schools. In 2016, I was invited by the UAE government to be part of a think tank to encourage reading in the region, and in 2019, I worked as a writer-in-residence in Dubai Central Prison with author Clare Mackintosh.
I have my own company, Alex Hippisley-Cox PR Ltd, and I handle the PR, Marketing and Communications for a number of book industry clients including Frankfurter Buchmesse (for the UK), the Chalke Valley History Festival, Bitter Lemon Press and the LoveReading LitFest.
I'm really excited to see the industry becoming less London-centric. Some of the big publishing houses are beginning to set up offices in other parts of the UK in order to find different voices and bring some diversity to their lists. I think this is an important and huge step forward. Nothing ever happens quickly in book publishing but I do sense a change right now.
Currently BookTok seems to be taking off massively, with teen influencers having an impact on books racing up the bestseller lists. Their posts can attract millions of views and some are even encouraging some young readers to pick up books for the first time. This is exactly what books and publishing needs right now, and could be the way through to a whole audience. Watch this space!
Take a look at this graph. The blue is Amazon's share of book sales in the past six years. The orange is where we are headed if their average growth rate (8%) continues. If nothing slows their momentum, Amazon will control nearly 80% of the consumer book market by the end of 2025. Every single book lover should worry. After we're done worrying, we must change the way we buy books.
Books are a fundamental social good that have an outsized impact on our development, individually and collectively. They move us forward. They have been fundamental to our moral and social evolution, our inner lives, and our understanding of ourselves, others, and the world. What they give us is too precious to trust to a single entity for whom they are ultimately just a product, and whose algorithms value them only by the revenue and customers they bring in.
Popular books are so deeply discounted on Amazon that other bookstores have found it hard to compete. Why does Amazon sell books at prices so low they lose money? Cheap books are a loss-leader that devalue books to drive competitors out of business and help Amazon gain control of the market, leaving them with near-monopoly power.
LONDON - Digital books on tablets, smartphones, and devices like Amazon's Kindle are certainly convenient, but according to a new survey most people still prefer a good old fashioned paper book. There's just something satisfying about turning the page and holding a physical book in one's hands, as over two-thirds of adults say they always opt for a real book over digital reading.
Put together by Oxfam, researcher polled 2,000 respondents in the United Kingdom regarding their thoughts on paper books versus digital books. Close to half (46%) enjoy physically turning pages and 42 percent prefer the feel of a physical book in their hands. One in four say they love the smell of paper books. Meanwhile, another 32 percent feel like they become much more immersed in the story while reading a paper book and 16 percent go for traditional books because they remind them of libraries.
Despite the fact young adult books are "for" teenagers, it's rarely teens who are shouting the loudest about those books. They're reading them, but they're not necessarily the ones making the most noise about books in the YA "community" on social media.
When YA is defined as a genre, rather than a category, we make our first misstep. When we assume we as adults know what's best for teens, we make a bigger one.
"In lieu of trade organizations and long-established magazines, publicists began to use Twitter to reach out to YA's target audience directly - to everyone from experienced bloggers with established readerships to brand-new sites with only a few posts and regular readers. In doing so, they invited readers into industry conversations as equals, despite how little these readers actually knew about the inner workings of publishing," she explains.