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1 September 2014 - What's new

1 September 2014
  • This week we have another article on the key subject - for all authors - of international rights, News Review on a plunge in print on demand titles in the US, Anthony Horowitz's comments on writing and some tough subjects in our links, such as whether ebooks are destroying bookselling culture.
  • The second article from the MD of IPR, How to get your book in the hands of an international audience, expands on his theme of authors and rights and shows how the international book rights business works: ' It's clear that experience and market knowledge, as well as good contacts, are key elements in the placement of titles and getting deals done. Our licensing manager Caroline Sloan was recruited from Penguin Random House and has a number of years' experience working in foreign rights so she has a wealth of knowledge across a number of territories but that doesn't mean she knows every single intricacy or quirk attached to every single marketplace. But throughout her career what she has done is to make sure that she engages with people on the ground who do. These people are called sub-agents and literary scouts...'
  • This week's Comment is from children's writer Anthony Horowitz: ‘A writer is over when they think they're perfect. Sometimes you just have to rewrite a book: the new Sherlock Holmes novel wasn't working, so 42,000 words in I'm back to the beginning... All writing comes from tension. If you have a nervous energy, a sort of discontentment and unanswered questions, you want to rub and scratch and examine yourself. I tend to get stressed about everything - that is how I am. But if it all comes out on the page, well, at least it's got a home.'
  • Our useful series of articles from and interviews with publishers, Talking to Publishers, gves a direct insight into the approaches of nine different editors and what they're looking for for their lists.
  • Our literary agents' listings offer information on agents in the UK, the US, international and children's agents. Browse through them or use the search to find what you you're looking for.
  • 'Recent figures from Bowker in the US show a startling plunge in the number of titles printed print-on-demand by 46% year-on-year. Even more surprising perhaps is that this decline is not part of the major shift from print titles to ebooks, as the overall print figures declined by only 1.6%. This figure reverses the sector's growth from 2011 to 2012 and shows that the number of print books being produced is remarkably stable. So much for the theory that print books would disappear and be replaced entirely by ebooks as the digital revolution proceeded...' This week's News Review is on Print on demand plunges and the Frankfurt Book Fair sets up self-publishing programme.
  • Our links this week address some tough questions: Are eBooks Destroying Bookselling Culture?; Malorie Blackman faces racist abuse after call to diversify children's books | Books | The Guardian; Ian Grant's authoritative take on the Amazon situation, BookBrunch - Authors demand Amazon's patronage; and, something slightly different, VIDEO: How Fiction Can Change Reality | Electric Literature.
  • From our Writers' Quotes we have Neil Gaiman: 'Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.'