The Breakdown - Important Announcement
And some news and deals to boot!
Hello Friends!
I’m writing to let you know that The Breakdown will be going on hiatus for the rest of the year. During this time, I’ll be evaluating the future of the newsletter, either in its current form, or if it will continue at all, to be honest.
I want you to know that I’ve absolutely loved creating this newsletter. I’ve enjoyed looking more deeply into trends within the publishing and entertainment industries and sharing those insights with you. As well, conducting the Writer’s Workshops and creating the Industry Deep Dives have been illuminating, both for me and hopefully you too.
But current work and life responsibilities have made it harder and harder to put issues together for you in a timely fashion. Also, although the open and read rates for the newsletter have been fantastic, conversion and additional sign-ups have been slow and engagement is not at all commensurate with the overall open/read rates, which sort of puzzles me. So, at some point, I simply have to look at the ROI of an endeavor like this and make critical decisions based on that analysis.
Going Forward
To all of those who’ve read, shared, and voted on this newsletter, I want to say thank you! I hope that you were provided with some unique and helpful insights along the way.
For those who financially supported the newsletter, I cannot thank you enough! Your support made it possible to provide not only a much deeper analysis of industry news and trends, but also more extensive commentary as well as exclusive insights into publishing and entertainment deals.
Now, with the hiatus, how will this all work going forward?
Well, for all readers, both Free and Premium, you’ll continue to have access to the archive of posts, which can be found here: https://paula.substack.com/archive
For Premium Supporters, you’ll be downgraded to the free tier. If you’re a monthly supporter, you shouldn’t be billed going forward (for most of you that means you shouldn’t get a charge in August, although it depends on when exactly you signed up.)
If you’re an Annual Supporter, that means you’ll receive a pro-rated refund. If you don’t see it in the next week or so, please, please do let me know. You can just respond to this email to contact me.
I believe that my Premium posts will remain behind a paywall, but for Premium Supporters, you should have received an email version of these posts. If you can’t find yours or have deleted it, and you’d still like to have access, just let me know and I can send you a special link to that individual post.
In terms of future posts, I would still like to do an Industry Deep Dive on Idea vs. IP. I’d also like to do a Breakdown of the Kindle Vella Launch (oh, boy was that a dumpster fire!) as well as its prospects as a viable alternative to other serial apps. If I do write those up, and you remain on the email list rather than unsubscribing, you’ll receive those emails for free.
Before I go, I wanted to give you one last look at the landscape. As far as the news, I focused on the broader, thirty-thousand-foot view of the creator economy, not just publishing and traditional entertainment because the content creator world is growing so rapidly.
Then, I finish things off with Book and Film/TV deals. Truth be told, those were some of my favorite bits of news to track because it gives you real market insight and is the kind of information that’s hard to keep up with.
All right! With that, let’s do this one last time…at least, for now! :-)
News - Harbingers and Insights
(Click the titles for the source articles)
What the “Creator Economy” Promises—and What It Actually Does
A lattice of new platforms and tools purports to empower online creators. In reality, it’s turning digital content into gig work.
The influencer is a fading stock character of the Internet’s commedia dell’arte. Often a conventionally attractive white woman, she shows off her aspirational life style via social-media channels. She accrues a large following, and then makes a living by getting companies to sponsor the content of her glamorous life. The cliché of the influencer emerged, during the twenty-tens, from multimedia-rich platforms like Instagram and Snapchat, where the goal was to forge as curated and polished an image as possible.
Influencers were social-media users as celebrities, with much of the vanity and purposelessness that the comparison implies. By now, the connotations of being an influencer are mostly negative—edited selfies, vapid captions, faux relatability, staged private-jet photos, and unmarked sponsorships. Accordingly, social-media platforms are embracing a new buzzword as a successor: “creator.”
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Substack makes first major podcast investment
Substack is funding the launch of a new podcast network called Booksmart Studios. It's the newsletter company's first major financial investment in podcasting.
Substack sees the venture as a way to deepen its commitment to podcast publishing on its platform and as a case study for what’s possible for independent podcast networks. The new network is being launched by two seasoned public radio journalists: Michael Vuolo, former producer of WNYC’s "On The Media," and Matthew Schwartz, a Murrow Award-winner and NPR contributor.
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Tumblr debuts Post+, a subscription service for Gen Z creators
As Twitter launches Super Follows, YouTube adds new monetization tools and Instagram embraces e-commerce, the social media sphere is heating up with new ways for creators to make a living. Now, Tumblr is joining the fray with Post+, the platform’s first attempt at allowing users to monetize their content. Post+ is debuting today in limited beta for an exclusive selection of creators in the U.S., who were hand-picked by Tumblr.
Like Twitter’s Super Follows, Tumblr’s Post+ lets creators choose which content they want to put behind a paywall, whether that’s original artwork, personal blog posts or Destiel fanfic. Creators can set the price for their subscriber-only content starting at $3.99 per month, with additional tiers at $5.99 and $9.99. Tumblr will take a 5% cut from creator profits.
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Tumblr Owner Automattic To Buy Podcast App Called Pocket Casts
Automattic, the parent company of a microblogging website called Tumblr and website-creator tool called WordPress is planning to acquire a podcast application Pocket Casts from public radio groups including NPR and BBC Studios. Along with it, Automattic is also looking for ways of incorporating Pocket Casts multi-platform nature into its blogging tools. Co-founders Philip Simpson and Russel Ivanovic will remain in charge of the podcast app post the acquisition.
The company reports, "As part of Automattic, Pocket Casts will continue to provide you with the features needed to enjoy your favorite podcasts (or find something new). We will explore building deep integrations with WordPress.com and Pocket Casts, making it easier to distribute and listen to podcasts." Inferring from a statement on the official blog post, users will be able to add a podcast subscription block pattern to their WordPress website.
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Behance subscriptions feature offers creators an alternative to Patreon
Behance, a platform for creative individuals to showcase their work and skills, has added a new subscription option that allows creators to earn money from followers in a manner similar to Patreon. Followers have the option of subscribing to a creator, while that creator can make special content available only to their subscribers.
If you’re a visual artist, there’s a good chance you already have a Behance page. The service, which was acquired by Adobe in the relatively recent past, can essentially function as an online portfolio for creators to upload their work, earn followers, share their social and website links, and showcase which tools they use.
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YouTube’s newest monetization tool lets viewers tip creators for their uploads
YouTube announced its latest feature, Super Thanks, on Tuesday. This is YouTube’s fourth Paid Digital Good, which is what the platform calls any product that lets fans directly pay creators. So far, these tools include Super Chat, Super Stickers and channel subscriptions — but Super Thanks is YouTube’s first of these features that allows fans to tip creators for individual uploaded videos rather than livestreams.
If a viewer wants to show extra appreciation for a video, they can pay creators with one of four pre-set amounts, ranging between $2 and $50 in their local currency. When viewers buy Super Thanks, they can leave
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Facebook Bulletin Gets an Infusion of New Creators
More than 30 new creators are joining Bulletin, the platform for independent writers that Facebook initially discussed in March and debuted last month.
Each creator on Bulletin has a standalone website under their own brand, and they can customize the color palette, logo and name of their publications, as well as customizing their articles with multimedia embeds and other styling options.
Bulletin writers start under multiyear licensing deals and keep all subscription revenue for the length of their partnerships with Facebook. They will be able to take their subscriber lists and content with them at the end of those deals.
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Norby raises $3.8M for an all-in-one creator marketing platform
Early in the pandemic, Nick Gerard, Steven Layne, and Samantha Safer Valentine had a hit on their hands. In the era before Zoom fatigue set in, the trio launched Mainstream Live, a website and newsletter that curated live virtual events across platforms and gave people text-based reminders to check them out.
“We started with the discovery problem of people looking for cool things to do online,” Gerard told TechCrunch. “Right away we knew that we were tapping into something.” Overnight, tens of thousands of people were on the site, browsing for online events to keep them connected in a period of unprecedented social isolation.
After going viral, the Mainstream Live team found itself inundated with questions about the tools it used to surface events and keep its community in the loop. As the team built more services for its own needs, it eventually opened its custom toolkit, sharing the code to other community leads and content creators who implemented the same set of tools with a rebrand.
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Looking back on 10 years of Twitch’s experiment with livestreaming
Twitch has generated more than 67 billion hours of livestream viewership since 2011, or enough for every person on Earth to watch over 8 hours of video each. And one of the people who has been there for most of the time is Marcus “djWHEAT” Graham, the head of creator development at Twitch.
Graham’s job is to build programs that amplify and invest in the creators at Twitch. He has been at Twitch since near the beginning, as he was employee No. 19. And he has watched Twitch grow through the years, beyond the $970 million Amazon acquisition in 2014 and into the heady days of 2021.
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Isaac Hayes III's Fanbase app offers an alternative to predatory social media platforms
Isaac Hayes III, son of famous soul singer Isaac Hayes, has made it his mission to get his father's music rights back to the Hayes family. Over the years, he has watched Black culture become the epicenter of cool and the Black creators behind it not be properly compensated. Now, as a tech entrepreneur, he's unleashing a new social media platform aimed to make sure no one gets robbed the way his father did.
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Substack continues its acquisition streak with public correspondence startup Letter
Substack has acquired Letter, a kind of public correspondence startup founded by Dayne and Clyde Rathbone. Neither Letter nor Substack revealed the price of the transaction. Letter, outside of a small round of angel investment, has never raised any venture capital.
The acquisition comes as Substack’s biggest, newest competitors are trying to position newsletters as one hub in a larger relationship between creators and their audience.
Substack, newly flush with venture capital funding, is countering with features and services designed to support writers, not just as independent businesses, but as thinkers and authors, connecting writers to one another and aiming to foster more community between its writers and their readers.
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Lastly, a few quick flybys that might give you some additional insight into the evolving nature of this very platform, Substack. This speaks more to the shifting landscape of non-fiction media and journalism, but with the emergence of more and more new writing and serialization platforms by the day, the changes may still serve as a harbinger of change for fiction writers as well.
Substack Dives Into Comics, Hires Amazing Spider-Man Writer Nick Spencer
Substack signs ex-Forbes writer as it seeks to disrupt book publishing
Acclaimed film critic Ty Burr leaves Boston Globe after 19 years to start a Substack newsletter
Substack faces backlash over the writers it supports with big advances
Book Deals - Fiction Debuts
Debut author Z.W. Taylor's THE BITE, in which a girl on the run from her troubled past finds herself transformed into a werewolf and things will never be the same, to Deanna McFadden at W by Wattpad, in a nice deal, for publication in winter 2023 (world).
Author of UNSLUT: A DIARY AND MEMOIR under the pen name Emily Lindin, Meghan Joyce Tozer's NIGHT, FORGOTTEN, following a married woman who discovers she is pregnant after an assault and works to put the pieces of what happened that night back together, to Deanna McFadden at Wattpad, in a nice deal, for publication in fall 2022 (world).
Author of the forthcoming THE LAST SHE H.J. Nelson's THE LAST CITY and THE LAST CREATION, books two and three in the dystopian sci-fi series that follows the only female known to survive a devastating virus, to Deanna McFadden at Wattpad, in a nice deal, in a two-book deal, for publication in fall 2022 and fall 2023 (world).
Author of the forthcoming CROSSBONES Kimberly Vale's DARK TIDES and book three in the Kingdom of Bones series, two follow-up books completing the high stakes on the high seas pirate trilogy, to Deanna McFadden at Wattpad, in a nice deal, in a two-book deal, for publication in fall 2022 and fall 2023 (world).
PitchWars alum Regina Black's THE ART OF SCANDAL, in which a woman's agreement to play the role of the perfect Black trophy wife for her cheating husband's political campaign is challenged when she falls for a much younger man and reconsiders her ideas of life and love, pitched as Jasmine Guillory meets Shonda Rhimes, to Seema Mahanian at Grand Central, in a pre-empt, by Sharon Pelletier at Dystel, Goderich & Bourret (NA).
Rita Zoey Chin's THE STRANGE INHERITANCE OF LEAH FERN, a road trip novel about a lonely young empath, a coven of artist-witches, and the mysterious letters that connect the two, pitched in the vein of Aimee Bender, Alice Hoffman, and Kristen Arnett, to Alyea Canada at Melville House, by Janet Silver and Maggie Cooper at Aevitas Creative Management.
Melodie Edwards's JANE AND EDWARD, pitched as a loose JANE EYRE retelling set at a high-powered Toronto law firm, to Kate Seaver at Berkley, in a good deal, in a two-book deal, for publication in spring 2023, by Melissa Edwards at Stonesong.
Father and daughter team Kurt Johnson and Ellie Johnson's THE BARRENS: A NOVEL OF LOVE AND DEATH IN THE CANADIAN ARCTIC, a white-water adventure combined with a coming-of-age tale that features two young women canoeing on one of North America's most remote rivers, set amid their tragic love and loss, to Cal Barksdale at Arcade, in a nice deal, for publication in spring 2022, by Philip Turner and Ewan Turner at Philip Turner Book Productions (world).
High school literature teacher and musician Joseph Turkot's THE RAIN, pitched as an apocalyptic update of the Flood Myth via THE ROAD, where a young girl must cross the flooded wasteland that was once America in only a small rowboat, and in a parallel story, a scientist who saw climate disaster coming is on a suicide mission to try to stop further damage, to Daniel Ehrenhaft at Blackstone Publishing, in a pre-empt, for publication in 2023, by Jenny Bent at The Bent Agency.
Ruth Madievsky's ALL-NIGHT PHARMACY, following an emergency room secretary who begins stealing pills to sell on the side before falling in love with a supposed psychic and Jewish refugee from the former Soviet Union, a journey through urban loneliness and sobriety that is sparked by the sudden disappearance of the narrator's sister, to Alicia Kroell at Catapult, by Mina Hamedi at Janklow & Nesbit.
University of Texas Austin New Writers Project MFA and MacDowell Colony fellow Parini Shroff's THE BANDIT QUEEN, about a young woman in a rural Indian village who, when falsely rumored to have murdered her vanished husband, becomes a sought-after consultant for other admiring wives who wish to make themselves widows, much to her surprise and with far-reaching consequences.
Editor and teacher Laura Spence-Ash's BEYOND THAT, THE SEA, in which two families become intertwined when the daughter of a British family is sent to live with an American family in 1940 to be safe from the bombs of World War II, to Deb Futter at Celadon Books, in a pre-empt, for publication in winter 2023.
Bronwyn Fischer's THE RED FERN POEM, pitched as a queer CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS or a modern THE PRICE OF SALT, following a first-year university student and an older woman whose unexpected interest in her sparks an all-consuming and insidious love affair, exploring youthful self-consciousness, self-delusion, and self-definition, to Abby Muller at Algonquin, for publication in spring 2023, by Sam Hiyate at The Rights Factory.
Daisy Alpert Florin's MY LAST INNOCENT YEAR, set on the campus of an elite New Hampshire college in the '90s, where a non-consensual encounter between the daughter of a Jewish grocer from the Lower East Side and one of the only other Jewish students on campus catapults her final semester of college into controversy and isolation, pitched in the vein of Curtis Sittenfeld's PREP with a dash of Philip Roth, to Caroline Zancan at Holt, in a pre-empt, by Margaret Riley King at William Morris Endeavor.
Book-to-Screen Adaptations
TriStar Pictures has optioned movie rights to A Most Agreeable Murder, a whodunit by first-time novelist Julia Seales, who is the writers assistant for Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Donald Glover’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith reboot at Amazon. Seales will adapt her novel, and 3 Arts will produce. A Most Agreeable Murder, described as a novel of manners and murder, a Knives Out meets The Favourite, recently sold to Random House’s Emma Caruso in a pre-emptive two-book deal. It will be published in 2023.
Hulu has given a straight-to-series order for the drama Tell Me Lies, adapted from Carola Lovering’s novel of the same name. Starring Grace Van Patten, Tell Me Lies follows a tumultuous but intoxicating relationship as it unfolds over the course of eight years. When Lucy Albright and Stephen DeMarco meet at college, their relationship begins like any typical campus romance. However, they quickly fall into an addictive entanglement that will permanently alter their lives and those of everyone around them. Meaghan Oppenheimer will executive produce and write the pilot. Emma Roberts and co-founder Karah Preiss executive produce under their Belletrist banner. The series comes to Hulu from 20th Television.
Synchronicity Films is co-producing the new young adult scripted series One Word Kill with Wild Sheep, the Los Angeles-based production company set up by Erik Barmack. One Word Kill is based on Mark Lawrence’s trilogy of books of the same name. Holly Phillips is on board the project to adapt them into a returnable series. In One Word Kill, 15-year-old boy-genius Nick Hayes discovers he’s dying—but that isn’t even the strangest thing to happen to him that week. When Nick and his Dungeons & Dragons-playing friends are joined by newcomer Mia, reality becomes weirder than the fantasy world they visit in their weekly games.
Jackson Pictures & Stampede Ventures have teamed up to land The Debriefing, a spec script by Black Hawk Down scribe Ken Nolan based on the Robert Littell novel. They will fast-track the thriller, and the plan is to get into production next year and the script will be put on submission to directors immediately. The script is based on the novel by Robert Littell, which was originally published in 1979 by Harper & Row.
BCDF Pictures has taken the rights to Christina Lauren’s New York Times bestseller The Unhoneymooners which they’re developing for the big screen. Joseph Muszynski adapted the novel and BCDF Pictures’ Claude Dal Farra and Brian Keady are producing with Kelsey Law. Christina Lauren is the combined pen name of Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings, the No. 1 internationally bestselling authors of seventeen New York Times bestselling novels published in over 30 languages. The Unhoneymooners tells the story of Olive Torres and her nemesis Ethan Thomas, who are the only people not affected when Olive’s sister’s entire wedding party gets food poisoning. Suddenly there’s a free honeymoon up for grabs, and Olive will be damned if Ethan gets to enjoy paradise solo. Agreeing to a temporary truce, the pair head for Maui to assume the role of loving newlyweds.
ZQ Entertainment has acquired rights to Black Cotton Star, a graphic novel that will be scripted by Deric Hughes & Benjamin Raab for Reginald Hudlin to direct. Hudlin will produce with Prime Universe’s Adrian Askarieh, and ZQ heads Ara Keshishian and Petr Jakl. Martin J Barab will be exec producer. The graphic novel focuses on three African American soldiers in WWII who are dispatched on a suicide mission to retrieve the first ever American flag, stolen by a sadistic Nazi commander. Pegasus Books first published in June 2020.
Picturestart, the production company set up by former Lionsgate Motion Picture Group co-president Erik Feig, is developing a series adaptation of Maggie Shipstead’s novel Great Circle. The book, which was published in May and just made the 2021 Booker Prize longlist, covers early 20th century aviation, Prohibition, the Great Depression, World War II and a disgraced Hollywood starlet.
Amblin Partners, Hera Pictures, Neal Street Productions are teaming on a film adaptation of the Maggie O’Farrell novel Hamnet. They’ve set Chiara Atik to write the script. The bestselling historical fiction novel imagines the story of Agnes – the wife of the world’s most famous writer William Shakespeare – as she struggles to come to terms with the loss of her only son, Hamnet. The novel charts the emotional, familial and artistic consequences of that loss, bringing to life a human and heart-stopping story as the backdrop to the creation of Shakespeare’s most famous play, Hamlet.
Julia Stiles is set to make her directing debut with Wish You Were Here, a romantic drama she co-wrote with Renée Carlino based on the latter’s novel. Phiphen Pictures is producing the film. Wish You Were Here centers on Charlotte, a woman who finds herself in a rut, searching for a spark that seems just out of reach. After she has a whirlwind night of romance and imagining a future with a man named Adam, he ghosts her. When Charlotte finally discovers that Adam is terminally ill, she helps him spend his last days living life to the fullest.
MGM has landed rights to the novel The Husbands from New York Times bestselling author Chandler Baker, with Kristen Wiig attached to star and produce a feature film version along with Plan B Entertainment. Baker will adapt for the screen, marking her feature screenwriting debut and serve as an executive producer on the film. The Husbands will publish August 3 by Flatrion. The Husbands follows an overworked mother who, while house-hunting in a nice suburban neighborhood, meets a group of high-powered women with enviably supportive husbands. When she agrees to take on a legal case involving the untimely death of one resident’s husband, she risks exposing not only the secrets at the heart of her own marriage, but the true secret to having it all, one worth killing for.
Final Thoughts
I’m keeping this part very short. Just one last thank you for reading and being on this journey with me! If I find more bandwidth in my life to resurrect this newsletter, trust me, I will.
So, feel free to stay subscribed and you’ll be notified when I do. Or unsubscribe, it’s entirely up to you. Also, I am a book coach and developmental editor. If you’d like to learn more about my services or more details about my “bonafides” (such as my work for ICM, HBO, and consulting work for Wattpad, or my work as a compensated writer and a burgeoning screenwriter), just get in touch!
It’s been fun, folks! Hopefully, I’ll talk to you again soon!
~ Paula
✨ Please feel free to get in touch with me, at any time, on any of the platforms or channels listed here or below! ✨
Thank you for all you do! It matters. And so does our mental health.
I just wanted to thank you for all the time, effort, research and hard work you put into The Breakdown. Honestly, I enjoyed reading each and every issue, and can´t say enough about the invaluable insight you provided. Wishing you all the best in your future endeavours!!