The Breakdown - February, 2021

Well, hello there! I’m so glad to be back with some very interesting publishing and entertainment trends and developments for you. But first, welcome to all my new subscribers! I’m so happy to have you aboard, and I hope you get plenty of insight and value from The Breakdown!

Also, don’t be shy. I’ll probably start throwing out some open Q&A style posts in the future to gather your questions, feedback, and thoughts. But in the meantime, you can always reply to this email if you’re reading The Breakdown from your inbox, or email me at paulagwriter@gmail.com, or leave a comment! I promise. I don’t bite. 😄

And just so you know, I’m currently working on the next Industry Deep Dive for Premium Subscribers, similar to Inside the Lit. Agent’s Brain, as well as some Writer’s Workshops. So, in between news posts, will be:

• Industry Deep Dive #3 - Selling Your Screenplay

• Writer’s Workshop #4 - A breakdown of a Paranormal Romance submission

• Query Letter Workshop #2 - An Adult Mystery query with a bit of snark

Okay, with those updates tackled, let’s dig into the news!

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News

(Click the titles for the source articles)

I’m going to group these two articles together and hold off on commenting on them, since the acquisitions are quite new and no one, outside of the companies involved, no one knows what the impact of the deals will mean for any of the companies involved. More thoughts on these acquisitions later, as information is released and events develop.

Wattpad, the storytelling platform, is selling to South Korea’s Naver for $600 million

Out of all the many articles about this merger, I chose this TechCrunch article because they include a video trailer of a Webtoon animated show, there’s a bit more speculation about the merger itself, and there are links to some of what Naver is up to with Webtoons.

Wattpad, the 14-year-old, Toronto-based, venture-backed storytelling platform with reach into a number of verticals, is being acquired by Naver, the South Korean conglomerate, in a $600 million cash-and-stock deal.

Naver plans to incorporate at least part of the business into another of its holdings, the publishing platform Webtoon, which Naver launched in 2004, brought to the U.S. in 2014, and that features thousands of comic strips created by its users. It also has a huge audience. According to Naver, Webtoon was averaging more than 67 million monthly users as of last August.

NetGalley and Its Parent, Firebrand, Sold to Japan’s Media Do

Fran Toolan—founding CEO of Firebrand Technologies, which owns NetGalley—has announced that both companies have been sold to Media Do International. Seated in San Diego, Media Do International is the American subsidiary of Tokyo’s Media Do Ltd. In Japan, the company was founded in 1994 by Yasushi Fujita, reportedly while in his junior year in college. The US company was created in 2016.

NetGalley.com delivers digital galleys to approved recipients on behalf of more than 300 publishers in North America, Australia, France, Germany, and the UK. It also offers publishers expanded tracking and analysis of NetGalley trends, data-derived input that they can use to better support their “marketing, publicity, and sales strategies, while expanding their pre-publication reach to new audiences.”

Media Do in Japan is described as a major eBook distribution company, controlling “the largest share of Japan’s US$3.7 billion eBook market.” The American subsidiary, Media Do International, is tasked with “realizing a sound creative cycle for copyrighted works by distributing them as widely as possible under fair use and maximizing profits to publishers and/or authors and rights owners.”

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Audiobook Trends and Statistics for 2020

Digital audiobooks continue to be the fastest growing segment in publishing. Not only is the entire publishing industry making more money, but there is more choice available for customers. Last year audiobook sales increased by 16% in the United States and generated over $1.2 billion in revenue, whereas in 2018 it only made $940 million, an increase of 25% from 2017. What’s surprising about the $1.2 billion that digital audiobooks made is that eBooks only made $983 million, so for the first time ever, US audiobook sales have eclipsed eBook sales.

So, this article presents one of the most comprehensive overviews I’ve seen as far as the state of audiobook and audio-first productions to date. It was published in June of 2020, so it incorporates some of the pandemic lockdown uplift, although not all of it. There are a TON of numbers and stats in the article, so I wanted to highlight some of the more interesting stats and projects below, to give you a sense of the growing trend, overall.

• Edison Research national survey of American audiobook listeners ages 18 and up found that the average number of audiobooks listened to per year increased to 8.1 in 2020, up from 6.8 in 2019. The most popular audiobook genre continues to be Mysteries/Thrillers/Suspense. 57% of frequent audiobook listeners are under the age of 45; this is up from 51% in 2019.

• How are people in the US listening to audiobooks? Smart speakers are becoming increasingly popular from products such as Amazon Echo, Google Home or Apple HomePod. A recent poll from the American Audiobook Publishers Association found that 60% of respondents own a smart speaker, and 46% of smart speaker owners have used it to listen to an audiobook, which is up 31% from 2018. Although the automobile is still the number one place where people listen to audiobooks, the home is where audiobooks are played for longer durations.

• Major publishers such as Audible, Hachette Audio, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster have said that they’ve been investing in opening more studios and hiring more narrators in order to speed up production. This has resulted in an 18% increase in the number of new audiobook titles released. And in 2019, over 60,303 new titles were produced. This is a dramatic increase from the 44,685 new titles that were issued in 2018.

• Laurence Howell, content director at Audible – the Amazon-owned audiobook platform – says they’ve also seen big growth in the 18-to-24 age group. “This is not an age group that is traditionally a strong book-buying group,” she said.

• Amanda D’Acierno, who oversees Audio at Penguin Random House US said in a recent interview “Production values are higher than ever – while the majority of the audiobooks we produce are voiced by a single narrator, we’re always experimenting with new techniques to create an immersive listening experience. We’re producing more full-cast recordings like DAISY JONES & THE SIX, which also incorporates original music inspired by song lyrics from the novel. We’re leveraging our production expertise to publish more audiobooks from genres that weren’t traditionally available on audio too, like picture books and graphic novels such as Victoria Jamieson’s Newbery Honor-winning ROLLER GIRL, which is narrated by a full cast with sound effects and music, including sounds recorded live at a real roller derby match.”

• RBMedia (owned by KKR, owner of Audiobooks.com, Recorded Books, Tantor Media, HighBridge, W.F. Howes, Wavesound, Christian Audio, Gildan Media, and Kalorama Audio and most recently, Overdrive) announced in March 2020, that they have purchased GraphicAudio, a leading producer of dramatized audio content featuring a full cast of actors, sound effects, and cinematic music. The demand for spoken audio is growing rapidly, fueled by innovation in areas such as audio originals, podcasts, and dramatizations. “Since RBmedia is the largest producer of audiobooks in the world,” said Tom MacIsaac, Chief Executive Officer for RBmedia, “the combination of the two organizations will enable us to expand the application of this innovative audio storytelling approach and bring it to many partners and consumers globally.”

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Everything you should know about Hollywood’s new book boom

The so-called IP pipeline, through which stories flow from authors’ screens to yours, is just as vital to the culture economy as oil pipelines are to our fossil-fueled lives. Books have provided essential raw material (a.k.a. intellectual property) for Hollywood since its founding, but the streaming-driven proliferation of content has led to an explosion of book-to-screen deals. It’s one of the few sectors of the business that has actually accelerated during the pandemic.

As Ryan Faughnder reported in The Times in October, more time at home and less in production has freed up Hollywood’s decision-makers to read books: “That newfound availability, coupled with streaming services’ and media companies’ insatiable appetite for fresh material, has led to a substantial uptick in sales.”

Note - The article linked actually summarizes some other articles that cover Hollywood’s book-buying practices. However, some or all, of the linked articles are behind a paywall or may be one of those “one free preview a day” sort of things. I wanted to link to it as a resource for those who do subscribe to the LA Times. And for those who don’t subscribe, while I do believe we should do all we can to support journalism, access is so fragmented these days, that I’ll try to see if I can get us the highlights in a later issue.

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Netflix To Open Canadian Office After Spending $2B In The Country Since 2017

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos has announced that the U.S. streaming giant will open a new office in Canada and hire a content chief dedicated to commissioning local originals.

In a blog post, Sarandos said Netflix has spent $2.5 billion CAD ($2B) in Canada since 2017 and it’s time to double down on its presence in the country, which has provided members with shows including Anne With An E and Workin’ Moms.

“We want to build on that momentum and make a new home for Netflix in Canada – opening an office and hiring a dedicated content executive to work directly with the Canadian creative community,” Sarandos said. “We could only have dreamed in 2012 when our first original production began filming in Ontario (Hemlock Grove) what an important part of our business Canada would become.”

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Imagine Entertainment And Impact Launch Screenwriter Search For Basketball Comedy

Brian Grazer and Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment is partnering with Impact to launch a global call to discover an emerging writer to pen a new basketball comedy. An idea hatched by Imagine, the feature is described as a “School of Rock meets Moneyball.“

Similar to Impact’s content accelerators, applicants vying to claim the role as screenwriter for the project will go through an extensive review process. The top candidates will interview with Impact before making it to the finals where they will present to Imagine — who will make the hiring decision. Writers of all levels are invited to apply with a well-thought out take on the open writing assignment (OWA) and a writing sample. Submissions will be accepted starting today through March 7.

The logline for the project is: “When an NBA legend enrolls his superstar son at a local STEM academy, the washed-up basketball coach must team up with an enthusiastic math teacher to implement an unusual coaching system to transform a bunch of brainy misfits into a contender.”

For details about submitting visit impact.net.

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Why Retell 'Romeo and Juliet' in Screen Life Format? 'R#J' Director Carey Williams Explains

The “Screen Life” format has become especially popular in the horror genre with films like 2014’s Unfriended and 2020’s Host delivering scares through stories told entirely on computer screens, tablets, and phones. 2018’s Searching successfully took the format into the dramatic thriller zone, but perhaps the biggest genre swing yet for screen life is the Sundance 2021 official selection, R#J.

The movie is an adaptation of the William Shakespeare classic featuring a cast of “Montague and Capulet Gen Z’ers” using their phones to capture the rift between their communities. And, of course, as that feud intensifies so does the romance between a young Montague and Capulet, Camaron Engels’ Romeo and Francesca Noel’s Juliet.

I’ve included this story because given the restrictions of COVID on film and TV production, I had a sense this filmmaking format might grow in popularity. I even briefly considered turning one of my current stories (written as a group chat and built around some vintage photographs) into what’s known as a Screen Life film; basically, turning the group chat into a Zoom chat and filming it that way. It’s called The Descendants. Click on the title to check it out!

Now, since I loved Searching, I thought the conversion would be easy to do. Oh, boy, was I wrong! First off, the issue of formatting a script for a Screen Life film is very challenging. I’ve Googled, researched, and asked my industry contacts for a copy of the Searching or Unfriended script and no one had one, so without those as a reference, I’d be going in blind. Also, you really have to rethink almost every aspect of your script and character communication to turn it into a Screen Life film. Needless to say, I did a pivot a quarter of the way through the project and rewrote the story as an audio drama instead. Much more doable and much more fun in the end!

You can watch a video interview with the R#J director, Carey Williams, below or watch it from the article which has a time-stamped table of contents.

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Rom Com Pictures Launches; Production Company To Focus On Inclusive Romance Movies

In an effort to expand the scope of representation and inclusion in the TV movie space, producers Jessica Yingling and Adam Ripp have launched Rom Com Pictures, which aims to develop and produce inclusive romance movies written by under-represented writers whose stories appeal to audiences of all ages.

Rom Com’s current slate of projects includes 16 completed scripts and 30 fully-developed pitches with budgets ranging from $2-5M. Over the last year, Rom Com Pictures partnered with ProPath Screenwriting to create an in-house, self-generating pipeline devoted to developing romantic comedy scripts. The company’s slate comes from women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ+ community.

I found this piece particularly interesting because it points to the need for newer players in both the publishing and entertainment industries to focus on niche audiences rather than taking on the Goliaths in either field directly. But also because, when taken in conjunction with the announcement in January’s newsletter about the company Meet Cute raising $6 Million to produce diverse Rom-Com podcasts, you can see a very interesting trend developing. 👀

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Book Deals

Here’s a key to the deals when mentioned.

Book Deal Sizes

"nice deal": $1 - $49,000

"very nice deal": $50,000 - $99,000

"good deal": $100,000 - $250,000

"significant deal": $251,000 - $499,000

"major deal": $500,000 and up

• Marisa Crane's EXOSKELETONS, set in an alternate reality where rulebreakers are marked with extra shadows, and one queer woman grapples with grief, new parenthood, and a corrupt surveillance state, pitched as DEPT. OF SPECULATION meets Black Mirror, to Alicia Kroell at Catapult, at auction, by Maggie Cooper at Aevitas Creative Management (NA).

• Grace D. Li's PORTRAIT OF A THIEF, a heist novel based on a true story of Chinese art vanishing from Western museums, pitched as The Farewell meets Ocean's Eleven, about diaspora, unlikely friendships, the colonization of art, and the complexity of the Chinese American identity, to Amber Oliver at Tiny Reparations Books, in a pre-empt, by Hannah Fergesen at kt literary (world English).

• Caribbean-English American writer David Santos Donaldson's GREENLAND, a literary ghost story in which a Black gay writer who is on an obsessive quest to get published seeks to find his own voice while writing a novel about the forbidden real-life love affair between E.M. Forster and the young Black Egyptian train conductor Mohammed el-Adl, to Tara Parsons at Amistad, in a pre-empt, for publication in spring 2022, by Tom Miller at Liza Dawson Associates (world English).

• Maya Deane's WRATH GODDESS SING, an #OwnVoices trans women's literary epic fantasy pitched as reimagining of the Iliad, wherein Athena recruits the young trans heroine Achilles to defeat the omnipotent Helen and her Olympian enablers before she drowns the world in human sacrifice, pitched as a mash-up of N.K. Jemisin's Inheritance trilogy and Madeline Miller's SONG OF ACHILLES, to David Pomerico at William Morrow, by Jason Yarn at Jason Yarn Literary Agency (world).

• Rebecca Kuss at Inkyard has acquired world English rights to IF YOU COULD SEE THE SUN by Ann Liang. This debut YA novel follows a Chinese American teenage girl, who, upon discovering that she can no longer afford tuition at her elite Beijing boarding school, teams up with her academic rival and monetizes her strange new invisibility powers by discovering and selling her wealthy classmates' most scandalous secrets. Publication is set for fall 2022; Kathleen Rushall at Andrea Brown Literary negotiated the deal.

• Lori Anne Goldstein's LOVE, THEODOSIA, about Theodosia Burr, a scholar with the skills of a socialite, who, in the midst of aiding her father, Aaron Burr, in his quest for the presidency in the pivotal election of 1800, falls for Philip Hamilton, the son of his greatest rival, and the two must choose between love and desire, family and loyalty, and preserving the legacy their powerful and flawed fathers fought so hard for, to Lilly Golden at Arcade, for publication in fall 2021, by Katelyn Detweiler at Jill Grinberg Literary Management (world).

• “Peter Lovesey First Crime Novel” Contest winner Eli Cranor's DON'T KNOW TOUGH, about a high school football player with an explosively troubled home life, the idealistic coach who thinks he can save him, and the murder that threatens to tear their Arkansas town apart on the eve of the playoffs, to Juliet Grames at Soho Crime, by Alexa Stark at Trident Media Group (world).

• THE $150,000 RUGELACH, written by Allison Marks and Wayne Marks and illustrated by Ariel Landy bought by Brett Duquette at Little Bee/Yellow Jacket for world rights. This middle grade novel follows two mismatched middle school students who are selected to compete in a high stakes baking contest for a prize of $150,000. Publication is scheduled for fall 2021; The authors were unagented, and James Burns at the Bright Agency represented the illustrator.

• THE ONES WE BURN by Rebecca Mix bought by Alyza Liu at S&S/McElderry. This debut YA fantasy follows a blood-witch whose mission to assassinate the prince she is betrothed to is compromised by the discovery of a deadly plague—and by the beautiful princess intent on stopping it. Publication is set for fall 2022; Kiana Nguyen at Donald Maass Literary brokered the deal for world English rights.

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Book-to-Screen Adaptations

(While I call this section Book-to-Screen, I also include serial fiction, graphic novel, short story, Reddit stories, and other forms of fiction & non-fiction optioned for film & TV)

Apple Studios Lands Hot Package ‘Dolly’ With Florence Pugh On Board To Star

The film is a sci-fi courtroom drama in which a robotic “companion doll” kills its owner and then shocks the world by claiming that she is not guilty and asking for a lawyer. The film, which is inspired by Elizabeth Bear’s short story of the same name, has elements of both classic courtroom drama and sci-fi.

The film was inspired by, Dolly, a short story published in Asimov's Science Fiction in 2011 by author Elizabeth Bear.

The script will be written by Vanessa Taylor ("The Shape of Water") and Drew Pearce ("Hotel Artemis"). 

The sale marks the first big sale for Pearce’s new production company and the project gained wide attention through Pearce’s innovative use of a full video pitch, which allowed the project to be seen by numerous potential buyers simultaneously – something especially useful in a landscape where studios, streamers and investors are proliferating. Pearce successfully sold the Untitled Stunt Man Pitch in a competitive situation to Universal with Dave Leitch directing and Ryan Gosling starring this past fall in Sept. using the same pitch video methodology.

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Additional Upcoming Adaptations

• Shirley Jackson Prize winning author Hye-young Pyun's THE HOLE, pitched as a psychological thriller compared to MISERY, to Sam Esmail Productions, by Emily Hayward Whitlock at The Artists Partnership, on behalf of Barbara J Zitwer Agency.

• Rachel Givney's JANE IN LOVE, a romantic debut novel in which Jane Austen ends up time-traveling almost 200 years into the future, where she finds the love she's written about and the destiny she's dreamed of...but is it worth losing her legacy? Optioned to Amazon Studios for Denise Di Novi and Margaret French-Isaac to produce, Givney to adapt, and Elissa Down attached to direct, by Jerry Kalajian at Intellectual Property Group, Jeanne Ryckmans at Cameron's Management Australia, and Daniel Lazar at Writers House.

• YA Edgar Award nominee Elle Cosimano's FINLAY DONOVAN IS KILLING IT, about a stressed-out single mom and struggling novelist who discovers that crime in real life is much more difficult than its fictional counterpart when a conversation about her new novel's plot leads to her being mistaken for a contract killer and inadvertently accepting an offer to dispose of a problem husband in order to make ends meet, optioned to 20th Television Studios, for Marlene King (Pretty Little Liars) to adapt, at auction, by Flora Hackett at William Morris Endeavor, on behalf of Sarah Davies at Greenhouse Literary Agency.

• Gillian Robespierre and Melissa Border will script the adaptation of Melissa Broder’s THE PISCES, a satire of love in the age of consumer capitalism where a woman finds emotional and sexual satisfaction with a mythical sea creature, optioned by Archer Gray Productions. Robespierre will direct, and Claire Foy is set to star. The novel was published in 2018 by Hogarth Press.

• Over at Paramount Animation, Tom Wheeler will script the adaptation to his upcoming children’s book series C.O.S.M.O.S., described as 'Men in Black' meets 'Willy Wonka' with a shout out to 'Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.' The book is the first in the series, The Doomsday Vault, and will be published in March 2022.

• Savvy Media Holdings optioned Alex Davies’ nonfiction novel Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car, published last month by Simon & Schuster.

• SK Global and 6th & Idaho have tapped Elliott San to write the adaptation for Ryan Graudin’s THE WALLED CITY, a YA novel published by Little, Brown in November 2014. The novel, which is in the spirit of Maze Runner, but based in Chinese Mythology, follows teens Mei Yee and Dai, who live in the Walled City, a lawless labyrinth run by crime lords and overrun by street gangs.

• S.A. Cosby's RAZORBLADE TEARS, a Southern noir about two men who team up to seek vengeance for their murdered sons and find redemption along the way, to Paramount Players with Jerry Bruckheimer producing, in a major deal, at auction, by Lucy Stille at Lucy Stille Literary, on behalf of Josh Getzler at HG Literary.

• Kylie Scott's LICK has been optioned to Tosca Musk at Passionflix, by Amy Tannenbaum at the Jane Rotrosen Agency. The story tells of a woman who wakes up from her 21st birthday party in Vegas in bed with a stranger who just happens to be one of the hottest rock stars on the planet. Lick is the first book in the Stage Dive Series.

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Final Thoughts

Other than the fact that books are hot commodities in Hollywood, there’s no other over-arching theme to all the articles in this month’s issue. However, there are definitely a couple of smaller trends to make note of:

• Again…audio, audio, audio. You’ve heard me talk about it before, but it’s the future, folks. Between everyone having an audio device in their pocket to the rapid growth of the smart speaker market, all amplified by habits changing due to the pandemic lockdown, you have a market ripe, and desperate, for stories. How do you crack that nut? Well, we’ve covered some ways in this newsletter (podcasts, audio-first, audio-friendly fiction, serialized fiction, YouTube), so think about where you might be able to slide into that growth market.

• Dang! Rom-Coms are such a hot commodity! I’d heard that the streamers are always on the lookout for Rom-Com’s that can be shot cheaply, that literary editors have been clamoring for them for a few years now, and now we have web series and podcasts joining the mix. Makes you wish you were a funnier and sexier writer, huh?

Well, that’s it for this issue, folks! I hope there’s information in here that can help move you forward on your writer’s journey.

And please, please, please share this newsletter with those writer friends you think might benefit from reading it. There’s so much competing for folks’ attention nowadays, it’s easy to miss timely and helpful information. Word-of-mouth recommendations can really help counteract that!

All right, until next time,

~ Paula

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