Olivia Rutigliano talks to the legendary thriller writer about his new (or not so new) change of pace
Links of the week October 28 2024 (44)
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:
4 November 2024
You know Jack Reacher. Now meet twenty more heroes and heavies from the brilliant mind of legendary crime author Lee Child, in this new collection published by The Mysterious Press. These twenty intriguing, thrilling, and rapid-fire fictions are intimate portraits of humanity at its best and worst, sure to please new and longtime fans of Child and to illuminate a side of the author's work unknown to Reacher devotees. Featuring a colorful new introduction from the author, the collection stands as the first book written entirely by Child in four years.
Article continues after advertisementOur editor Olivia Rutigliano sat down with Child to talk about deadlines, inspirations, and becoming a short story writer (or really, having been a short story writer all along.)
The dream of becoming a full-time writer is an exceedingly difficult one to achieve in trade publishing today. Book advances are delivered in multiple installments often spread out months, or even years, apart, requiring a sense of fortitude and a need to secure multiple revenue sources. The vocation, explain authors Rob Hart and Alex Segura, both of whom are full-time writers, requires adaptability and a lot of multi-tasking to make ends meet.
"The full-time writing life is hard," Hart said. "Even if you sign a large deal, there are months between checks, so you have to rethink how you live." Segura agreed: "Rob and I both hustle pretty hard. You have to keep the plate spinning, and while I'm working on the stuff that's coming out now, I have to be thinking about what's coming out in 2025 and 2026."
The two authors' publication schedules this year are cases in point. In June, Hart published Assassins Anonymous (Putnam)-his "nail-biting latest," per PW's starred review-and already has a sequel, The Medusa Protocol, slated for release next June. Segura's next book, Alter Ego (Flatiron), a sequel to the Los Angeles Times Book Award-winning novel Secret Identity, is due out on December 3. And on November 12, Mad Cave Studios will publish The Legendary Lynx, a graphic novel written by Segura and illustrated by Sandy Jarrell that is set in the Secret Identity universe. As if that weren't enough, Hart and Segura also teamed up to cowrite the sci-fi spy thriller Dark Space, published by Blackstone in October.
"It is really meaningful to me that people in their 20s and a little bit younger still have a place in their hearts for my books," the author tells PEOPLE
Jeff Kinney remembers the exact moment he realized how popular Diary of a Wimpy Kid had become.
It was 2009 and the author had just released The Last Straw - the third book in his series, which follows middle school student Greg Heffley as he documents his life in a journal. He pulled up to his book launch event at a Barnes & Noble in Long Island in New York, and was shocked at how many fans had come out to see him.
"I think there must have been 2,000 people at the Barnes & Noble and it was just absolutely overwhelming," Kinney, 53, tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview. "My editor and I looked at each other and we knew that things had changed."
BBC among those opposing plan that would see AI models trained on content from publishers and artists by default
Ministers are facing a major backlash over plans that would allow artificial intelligence companies to scrape content from publishers and artists, amid claims that the government risks "giving in" to the tech giants.
The BBC is among the organisations opposing a plan that would allow tech companies to train artificial intelligence models using online content by default, unless publishers and other content creators specifically "opt out".
In what is becoming one of the first major AI policy rows, a series of meetings and roundtables is being planned to calm the concerns. Some in Whitehall fear publishers have not had a strong enough voice in the debate so far, but any announcement is now on hold until after this week's budget.
The government is desperate to attract investment from tech firms as it searches for economic growth, and ministers have already announced total investment in UK datacentres of more than £25bn since the election. However, Google warned last month that Britain risks being left behind unless it builds more datacentres and lets tech firms use copyrighted work in their AI models.
Cambridge University PressPublishing business of the University of Cambridge; granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534 world's oldest publishing house; second largest university press in world; (http://uk.cambridge.org/aboutus/infoforauthors/electronic.htm) tells you how to submit manuscripts electronically, but only deals with non-fiction. & Assessment (CUPA) is contacting 20,000 authors to request their permission before licensing their content for the training and development of large language models (LLMs).
The academic publisher has adopted an "opt-in" policy for licensing authors' content to generative AI companies, giving all authors the opportunity to understand how their work will be used before giving their consent.
Managing director Mandy Hill said this was a "huge extra investment" for CUPA and has made the process "harder", but that the "author relationship is too important".
Hill said the response they had received had been positive, as many authors "see the potential for AI to help disseminate their work", with only a small minority declining to license their content. Hill emphasised the importance of keeping authors informed and giving them agency, making licensing feel like a "positive decision for them to be involved in, rather than feel it's something that's been done to them".
The largest book publisher in The Netherlands has confirmed it plans to use artificial intelligence (AI) to translate some of its books into English, The Bookseller can exclusively reveal.
Utrecht-headquartered publisher Veen Bosch & Keuning (VBK) was acquired by Simon & Schuster earlier this year. It was Simon & Schuster's first acquisition of a non-English-language publisher, which it said at the time would help it access "broader European markets".
A spokesperson for VBK told The Bookseller: "We are working on a limited experiment with some Dutch authors, for their books to be translated into English language using AI. There will be one editing phase, and authors have been asked to give permission for this.
"We are not creating books with AI, it all starts and ends with human action. The translations are not yet launched."
Hint: You can't, really.
Last week hundreds of thousands of Instagram users posted a block of text to their accounts hoping to avoid the plague of artificial intelligence online. “Goodbye Meta AI,” the message began, referring to Facebook’s parent company, and continued, “I do not give Meta or anyone else permission to use any of my personal data, profile information or photos.” Friends of mine posted it; artists I follow posted it; Tom Brady posted it. In their eagerness to combat the encroachment of A.I., all of them seemed to overlook the fact that merely sharing a meme would do nothing to change their legal rights vis-à-vis Meta or any other tech platform.
A recent Nielsen BookData and GfK Entertainment report on global book sales for the first eight months of the year shows "rising revenues in fiction, while sales of nonfiction books are declining in many regions. The TikTok community BookTok is playing an increasingly important role."
The overall finding of the research, released during this year's Frankfurt Book FairWorld's largest trade fair for books; held annually mid-October at Frankfurt Trade Fair, Germany; First three days exclusively for trade visitors; general public can attend last two., is that the "global book market in 2024 is facing a challenging environment. While the fiction segment saw increased revenues in 14 of the 16 territories surveyed, and children's and young adult books also showed growth in nine regions, nonfiction struggled. Only five countries reported growth in this segment, which also impacted the overall market. Revenue grew overall in only six of the 16 territories, while this was also true in terms of unit sales."
The writers and agents working behind the scenes tell us how it actually works.
Celebrity memoirs are a dime a dozen, but there's a smaller cohort of stars who have tried to add "novelist" to their résumés. This includes Kylie and Kendall Jenner, who wrote the 2014 YA novel Rebels: City of Indra; Carrie Fisher, author of the deeply autobiographical Postcards From the Edge; and Tyra Banks, whose 569-page Modelland is about a girl named Tookie De La Crème. In early October, Reese Witherspoon announced she was collaborating with the best-selling thriller author Harlan Coben. But what does it mean when a celebrity decides to write fiction?
Here, the writers and agents working behind the scenes on similar books tell us how it actually works.
Report finds ‘shocking and dispiriting’ fall in children reading for pleasure | Books | The Guardian
National Literacy TrustUK-based organisation which has campaigned since 1993 to improve literacy standards across all age groups. Excellent research information and details of the many initiatives the charity is currently involved in. www.literacytrust.org.uk. It also has a useful page of news stories on UK literacy, which links to newsletter http://www.readitswapit.co.uk/TheLibrary.aspx finds only 35% of eight to 18-year-olds enjoy reading in their spare time, a sharp drop on last year to the lowest figure yet recorded
Children's reading enjoyment has fallen to its lowest level in almost two decades, with just one in three young people saying that they enjoy reading in their free time, according to a new survey.
Only 34.6% of eight- to 18-year-olds surveyed by the National Literacy TrustUK-based organisation which has campaigned since 1993 to improve literacy standards across all age groups. Excellent research information and details of the many initiatives the charity is currently involved in. www.literacytrust.org.uk. It also has a useful page of news stories on UK literacy, which links to newsletter http://www.readitswapit.co.uk/TheLibrary.aspx (NLT) said that they enjoy reading in their spare time. This is the lowest level recorded by the charity since it began surveying children about their reading habits 19 years ago, representing an 8.8 percentage point drop since last year.
It is also part of a broader downward trend since 2016, when almost two in three children said that they enjoyed reading.
Available statistics on the UK talking books market vastly underplay its size, says Kelli Fairbrother, who calls for more investment and innovation in the sector.
The UK audiobook market blew past £1bn in 2023. It's time to re-evaluate. Audiobooks have been the fastest-growing segment of books in the UK-by far-for more than a decade, delivering consistent 30%-plus year-on-year growth. And yet, it is still often perceived as a relatively small niche, estimating its value at £200m, a fraction of the overall market, easily overlooked and underfunded.
And although £1bn versus £200m feels like too big a disparity to explain away, it's actually quite straightforward. Here's how the maths works.
Let's start with the well-recognised figure of £206m. That is the amount UK publishers made from audio content in 2023, based on invoiced sales reported by the Publishers Association in its annual Publishing in 2023 report.
The challenge with this number is it doesn't show how much retailers made from this content. Total consumer spend defines the market size. Given Audible and Amazon's dominance since 2008, publisher net receipts are likely to be less than half the total value of customer spend. This means that consumers actually spent over £400m buying content from UK publishers who report to the PA.
Aside from the wonder of engaging with tons of stories and fiction across genres, listening to audiobooks also opens older adults up to communities both online and offline.
Studies have shown that literacy engagement improves cognition and processing in older adults. According to the Beckman Institute's findings, regularly engaging with literature enhances the plasticity of one's mind - helping to preserve language, memory, and personality.
Of course, many older individuals may have a more challenging time with traditional reading methods because of poor eyesight or mobility issues that make it harder to flip pages and hold up an e-reader or book for extended periods. This is where the beauty of audiobooks comes into play for adults over 50.
Though a global pandemic darkened the early 2020s, four children's book imprints that launched soon before its onset are shining brightly as they mark their fifth anniversaries this year. Those at the editorial helms of Penguin Young Readers' Kokila, Make Me a World from Random House Children's BooksClick for Random House Children's Books Publishers References listing, Norton Young Readers, and Random House Graphic shared with PW some highlights of their imprint's debut years and a preview of what's ahead.
Kokila
The name Kokila comes from the Sanskrit word for the koel bird, celebrated in Indian poetry and myths as a harbinger of new beginnings. In that spirit, Kokila aims to make space for storytellers to explore the full range of their experiences in books for young readers, and that mission has led to the creation of a diverse list of titles spanning a spectrum of formats and age levels.
Frankfurt then and now, by Trevor Dolby
This year, 42 years after my first Frankfurt, Aevitas's rights assistant Gus Brown attended his first. I gather he had a ball.
In 1982 we had Eurocheques, border police, deutschmarks, landlines, daguerreotypes, horse-drawn landaus, antimacassars on lounge chairs at the Frankfurter Hof, periwigs and bustles, absinthe, Thomas Mann in the corner chatting to James Baldwin.
It was an adventure just getting to the Fair. I didn't fly until the late 1980s. We would load the car with dummies and all the paraphernalia to decorate the stand, cross the channel on the ferry, and drive to the Aachen border post, where we were stopped and checked for contraband by men with machine guns and huge dogs straining at the leash. Once through, on to the autobahn for the no-speed-limit drive via Cologne to Frankfurt am Main.
By my first visit Frankfurt was well on its way to becoming the banking centre of Germany. It had been levelled in the war, literally levelled to rubble, and there were still bomb sites near the Messe.
The end of 'Open Book' offers yet another example of how difficult broadcast media for authors has become.
The diminishing of the books media is nothing new, but the cancellation of "Open Book" is a tragedy for publicists hawking interesting fiction by new writers.
How should books be covered on the radio? Are novels such a niche product that consumers are only interested in the top tier? Where are the critics charged with identifying books from unexpected or unknown places, books that say something important about the world? Discoverability is at the heart of our business, but over many years, the broadcast media has closed its doors on lesser-known names, making the jobs of publicists harder still.
Stewart Collins says support for the Petworth literary festival in West Sussex is growing, and Kathryn Streatfield suggests local events are the solution for a changing festival world
Laura Barton's piece paints an understandably downbeat picture of where we are now in the world of the literary festival (After Baillie Gifford: are literary festivals on their last legs?, 23 October). But writing on day one of the Petworth literary festival, I feel there is another perspective.
The arts as a whole are, without doubt, struggling and the loss of big sponsors such as Baillie Gifford clearly represents a challenge to festivals that have relied on commercial sponsorships. But being at the heart of a community that backs its cultural offerings with private support, our particular festival seems to be riding on the crest of a wave of interest. This, combined with the continuing and active support of the publishing industry, led to our event doubling in size in 2023, and we continue on this huge growth spurt this autumn.
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