The Breakdown - January, 2021
Hello, hello, hello! I truly hope your year is starting out well - disregarding all upheavals, crises, and general chaos!
So, I am back and back with lots of interesting news and developments for you! But first, I want to say just how much I’m enjoying your feedback! I’ve gotten some private comments and questions (you can always reply to this newsletter or email me at paulagwriter-at-gmail.com, anytime) as well as lovely comments on the posts, here on the site.
I know not all of you can see the comments on the Premium posts, but sometimes they spark a deeper dive or revelation that’s worth re-sharing. As Jackie highlights in her comment below, one of the takeaways from the series of agent videos featured in the Industry Deep Dive - Inside the Lit. Agent’s Brain (preview here), was that getting published is more about “making the sale” over and over and over again than it is about talent or interest. Sure, for many agents and editors, talent and interest play an important role in their decision-making, but publishing is a business, and so the key, critical factor is almost always “Can I sell this?” It’s asked by the agent, by the editor, by sales and marketing—and pre-2020 to some degree—booksellers and librarians, who through word of mouth and recommendations “sold” readers on their favorite books and authors. This is such a truism of the publishing industry; and yet, for some reason, so many writers I interact with just don’t seem to get that.
Also, a hearty congratulations to Michael Estrin!
Michael, a reader and Premium Supporter of The Breakdown, made the quarterfinal round of the ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story contest, a contest he learned about right here, from this newsletter! I can’t tell you how thrilled I am by Michael’s achievement and also by the fact that the information in The Breakdown is indeed helping writers!
Alrighty, with all that said, let’s take a look at what’s happening in publishing and entertainment these days!
P.S. I wanted to get this issue out to you as soon as possible, so please forgive any sleight typos and feel free to chastise me if there are any big ones!
News
(Click the titles for the source articles)
While not planned, many of the stories I researched for this issue ended up revolving around one particular theme - audio. There are so many developments on the audio front that I considered making this an Industry Deep Dive, but didn’t want a Premium Post to be the first issue of the new year. However, I have started working on that Premium Post and it will fall along the same lines as the last one which focused on truly understanding how literary agents think. So, in that vein the next Industry Deep Dive will be Breaking in as a Writer in Film & TV.
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Audible to Provide Authors with Returns Data, Starting in March
Beginning in March, authors using Audible’s Audiobook Creation Exchange will be able to see data on returns, including number of units per title, both in their account dashboard and in monthly financial statements. The move is a response to continuing pressure from the Authors Guild and ACX authors for changes to the company’s returns policy, after its negative financial impact (reportedly reducing sales anywhere from 15 to 50 percent over time) became apparent last fall. This follows Audible’s decision last month to pay authors royalties on returns made more than seven days after purchase, which the Authors Guild and others criticized as not going far enough, asking for a maximum of 48-hour returns.
The ACX blog announced two other changes. Effective February 1, rights holders of DIY or pay-for-production titles can return to non-exclusive distribution after 90 days on sale. All ACX Rights Holders will be able to terminate after 90 days of distribution, “but Rights Holders with Royalty Share or Royalty Share Plus deals must provide Producer consent when making their request.”
It’s fantastic that the concerted efforts of authors and author organizations, which I wrote about in the December issue of The Breakdown, actually moved the needle. Not only was this grassroots effort able to shrink the return window from 365 days down to 7 days, but to bring in a sorely needed element of transparency (letting authors see their own return numbers) means that, collectively, we as creators can fight back, can make a difference, and can turn a very disadvantageous situation into a better one.
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Google wants to offer audio versions of more books using auto-generated narrators
Google is now working on auto-generated narrators that can turn more books into audiobooks.
This feature is intended to benefit the Google Play Books store by making many more audio titles, with their inherent convenience, available. The company points out how “not all books, like the one written by your favorite indie author, are converted into an audiobook.”
But Google’s solution is to automate the process and it’s working with US and UK publishing houses that own the rights to books. A number of existing Google technologies can be tapped to power this feature.
So, quick commentary on this one — this is pretty groundbreaking, folks. I’ve included a couple of links to sample narrations, and while the voices lack the emotion and inflection of human speech, the flow and natural cadence is astounding. This advancement will make generating audiobooks, especially nonfiction, both easy and economical.
Google Play Auto-Narrated Audiobooks - Only Project Gutenberg works for now.
Frankenstein - https://play.google.com/books/listen?id=AQAAAEDsrWvtlM
War of the Worlds - https://play.google.com/books/listen?id=AQAAAEDsnznfxM
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OpenAI’s GPT-3 Wrote This Short Film—Even the Twist at the End
According to Vanessa Bates Ramirez, writing for SingularityHub, OpenAI’s text generating AI has gotten a lot of buzz since its release in June. It’s been used to post comments on Reddit, write a poem roasting Elon Musk, and even write an entire article in The Guardian (which editors admitted they worked on and tweaked just as they would a human-written op ed.)
It’s also learned to autocomplete images without having been specifically trained to do so, write code, translate between languages, and do math which is just mind-blowing. However, there are still some serious issues with GPT-3, like it’s inherent bias and penchant for bigotry, as well as its ability to create an astonishing array of disinformation and fake news.
But there’s another feat to add to GPT-3’s list: it wrote a screenplay.
Truthfully, the film is bad and pretty incoherent—in the aggregate. But there are also brief moments that are intriguing, even emotional. And given that the AI wrote a twist ending, well…it really gets you thinking, and if you’re a writer…kind of nervous.
So, if you combine this technology with the highly advanced Google Auto-Narration, and some of the other big technological breakthroughs that have happened—just in the past year—does this mean writers are, inevitably, on the verge of obsolescence?
If you watch the short film based on the AI script, you’ll see that we’re probably pretty far away from that. But, not as far as you think. Trust me. I’ll be digging into this trend more deeply in future issues.
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Meet Cute Just Raised $6 Million To Shake Up The Podcast Industry With Diverse Rom-Coms
Founded by former investment analyst Naomi Shah, Meet Cute is a romantic-comedy podcast series made up of original 15-minute episodes. Since launching in February, its more than 200 episodes have been listened to by one million people who want to be entertained.
The team, which has been releasing new episodes three times a week, creates content via Zoom and Google Hangout with the help of its sound engineering team, allowing for talent in different cities to collaborate. “We’ve had the ability to democratize access to creators,” she adds.
Investors have latched on to the idea. Shah just closed a $6.25 million Series A funding round, bringing her total amount raised to $9.25 million. Backers include Local Globe, Lerer Hippeau and Newark Venture Partners, as well as Union Square Ventures, Shah’s former employer.
I listened to a few episodes, and I have to say that they’re well done and entertaining. Whether a company can remain focused on such a niche market—Rom Coms—and survive and grow remains to be seen. But scripted audio is growing in popularity, so if they can evolve into perhaps a subscription model and can get their name out there, this might point to a new model for storytelling.
The other thing I noticed is that the company received a nice investment from Union Square Ventures, an investor that likes to focus on new media as well as creator platforms such as Wattpad, Soundcloud, and Kickstarter. It would be great to see more synergies between their portfolio companies to allow for more multi-platform content and entertainment.
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Medium Acquires Digital Reading Platform Glose
Digital publishing platform Medium has acquired Glose, a digital reading platform and e-book and audiobook retailer based in Paris. Glose incorporates social media elements and allows readers to create book lists, comment on books, share a variety of information from passages highlighted in books to their personal reading goals.
According to the company, what differentiates Glose from similar reading apps is that the sharing elements are more tightly integrated with the reading experience itself, allowing readers to comment from within the book, rather than opening a separate page.
The company recently launched Glose Education, aiming for students and teachers to purchase and read books as a group. The company said it has signed up 25 universities, including Stanford and Columbia in the United States.
In July 2020, HarperCollins named Glose as their e-book provider in North America and the U.K. for direct sales to consumers.
Now, I took a look at the website for Glose, and from what I saw, it felt a bit like a combination of the Kindle eBook app (where you can highlight) and Goodreads (where you can build lists and make comments.)
There didn’t seem to be a lot of user activity on the site, though. But again, what is on the horizon and how have the societal effects of the pandemic affected our behavior such that technology like this might take off? Between Twitch concerts, Clubhouse audio-social clubs, Discord communities, and the ever-present “Watch Party,” finding ways to make experiences virtually social is becoming a much more important feature to offer readers, users, and consumers. So, we’ll have to see where this particular venture goes.
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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
Taylor Hahn's THE LIFESTYLE, a modern take on Jane Austen's EMMA in which a woman embraces swinging to fix relationships…her own and everyone else's, to Caitlin Landuyt at Anchor, in a good deal, in a pre-empt, for publication in spring 2022, by Jamie Carr at The Book Group (NA).
Deb Rogers's FLORIDA WOMAN, pitched as BUNNY by Mona Awad meets Kristen Arnett's MOSTLY DEAD THINGS by way of Tiger King, about a struggling young woman who trades jail time for community service at a Floridian monkey refuge run by three beguiling women who are embroiled in something far more sinister than first appears, to Grace Towery at Hanover Square Press, by Hannah Brattesani at Friedrich Agency (world).
Claire Kohda's WOMAN, EATING, a literary vampire novel pitched as Ottessa Moshfegh meets My Sister, the Serial Killer, in which a young, hungry vampire must reconcile the conflicts within her—between her demon and human sides, her mixed ethnic heritage, and her relationship with food and, in turn, humans—if she is to find a way to exist in the world, to Tara Parsons at Harper Via, in a six-figure deal, in a pre-empt, for publication in spring 2022, by Sam Copeland at Rogers, Coleridge & White (NA).
Ava Wilder's HOW TO FAKE IT IN HOLLYWOOD, a romantic comedy pitched as A Star is Born meets Emily Henry's BEACH READ, in which a Hollywood starlet with a promising future and a reclusive A-lister with a complicated past enter into a fake relationship cooked up by their savvy publicist—and find that their feelings for each other might be more than just a PR stunt, to Shauna Summers at Ballantine, in a six-figure deal, in a pre-empt, in a two-book deal, for publication in summer 2022, by Jessica Mileo and Claire Friedman at Inkwell Management (world English).
Note - I’d be interested if this one ends up getting a TV deal because from the description, it sounds remarkably similar to Famous in Love, which was on Freeform. Now, as we know, it’s the execution of an idea that is the valuable IP, not the idea itself. However, given that Famous in Love is based on a book, that would be an interesting “full-circle” moment.
Ally Wilkes's ALL THE WHITE SPACES, set in the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration, in which a trans man narrates the fate of an expedition as something unnamed and terrible picks off his shipmates one by one, against the backdrop of the pitch-black polar night, to Lara Jones at Emily Bestler Books, in a good deal, in a pre-empt, in a two-book deal, for publication in spring 2022, by Oliver Munson at A.M. Heath (NA).
Katie Runde's THE SHORE, a humorous novel set over the course of one summer in a Jersey Shore tourist town, about a local family running a precarious small business while encountering loss, first loves, the complicated past and the unknowable future, to Kara Watson at Scribner, in a significant deal, at auction, for publication in summer 2022, by Elisabeth Weed at The Book Group (NA).
Gillian Libby's debut SOMETHING REAL, a three-book series following three 20-something friends as they move out of New York and their lives take different shapes from anything they had originally planned, finding love along the way, to Rachel Gilmer at Sourcebooks, in a nice deal, in a three-book deal, by Joanna MacKenzie at Nelson Literary Agency (world English).
University of Pittsburgh MFA grad Ashleigh Bell Pedersen's THE CROCODILE BRIDE, about a family torn apart by generations of abuse and bound together by the handed-down fable of the eponymous crocodile bride, who lives on the bayou and has healing hands, selected as part of Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain Fund series, to Meg Reid at Hub City Press, in a nice deal, for publication in May 2022, by Jon Curzon at Artellus (NA).
Maayan Eitan's LOVE, about a young sex worker whose life blurs the boundaries between violence and intimacy, objectification and real love, to Christopher Richards at Penguin Press, by Susan Golomb at Writers House (NA).
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Reader Question
I’m noticing, in perusing these book deals week after week, that the vast majority of deals are being made on behalf of female authors.
Do you think it’s harder for male authors to get published in general fiction and genres that don’t lean heavily into gender (SciFi, Thrillers, Romance, etc.)? Or is this just a reporting bias I’m seeing. I’d love to know your thoughts.
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Upcoming Book to Film & TV Adaptations
Netflix Lands Adaptation Of YA Graphic Novel ‘Heartstopper’
Heartstopper tells the story of Nick and Charlie, two British teens at an all-boys grammar school. Charlie, a high-strung, openly gay overthinker, and Nick, a cheerful, soft-hearted rugby player, one day are made to sit together. They quickly become friends, and soon Charlie is falling hard for Nick, even though he doesn’t think he has a chance. But love works in surprising ways, and Nick is more interested in Charlie than either of them realized.
Okay, this is one of my favorites because, besides being an absolutely delightful love story, Heartstopper, by Alice Oseman, started life as a web comic on Tumblr in 2016, then made its way over to the digital comic site, Tapas, then was published by Hachette Children’s Group, and now is being made into a live-action series by Netflix. And the reason that I love this story’s evolution is that it speaks to the slow-burn (or the long game, as I often refer to it.)
There are two primary avenues to getting your written work to the screen: 1) know someone famous who can hook you up, talk you up, finance, produce, or star in a hoped-for screen adaptation of your work or 2) build that loyal audience that will travel with you (and grow) as your work goes from medium to medium.
Yes, there are exceptions that manage to bypass the first path or shortcut the second. However, I’ve seen this pattern over and over again. A new approach or platform will open up that welcomes new creators (indie films, indie publishing, graphic novels, Kickstarters, Patreon, podcasting, etc.) Ant these creators experience fairly rapid success and make the leap to more traditional media. But as the market grows and gets more crowded, producers and buyers want bigger names attached (see path #1) or bigger audiences from the get-go (see path #2.) Is it a frustrating reality for newer authors, yes. But this pattern also offers new creators a certain amount of hope, especially with the constant birth of new media and the growing population of digital natives who are hungry to consume them.
So, the TL;DR version of this is: look, it’s tough out there and highly competitive, but new creative avenues are opening up all the time so PAY ATTENTION, take chances, and be bold!
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Starlight Media is adapting Rebecca F. Kuang’s series of fantasy novels including The Poppy War
Rebecca F. Kuang’s series of fantasy novels including The Poppy War, are set to be adapted for television after Peter Luo’s Starlight Media optioned the rights.
Starlight Media, which has backed films including Crazy Rich Asians and Midway, has taken the rights to The Poppy War, Dragon Republic and The Burning God.
The company has teamed with financing and production banner SA Inc to develop and finance the female-led, fantasy epic, which combines the history of twentieth-century China and a world of gods and monsters.
Allen Fischer from management/production company Artists First is packaging the project with Starlight, and is in the process of attaching a showrunner.
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Ben Affleck To Direct Adaptation Of ‘Keeper Of The Lost Cities’ For Disney
Ben Affleck continues to build up his future dance card and looks to have found another possible directing job to add to his slate. Sources tell Deadline that Disney is in development on a live-action film based on the bestselling book series Keeper of the Lost Cities by Shannon Messenger, with Affleck attached to direct. He will also produce through his Pearl Street banner and adapt the script with Kate Gritmon. Madison Ainley will board as executive producer.
In the bestselling novel, a telepathic girl must figure out why she is the key to her brand-new world before the wrong person finds the answer first. When 12-year-old Sophie finally discovers where her secret telepathic ability comes from, she learns she’s actually not human but is from another world that exists side-by-side with ours.
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Additional Upcoming Adaptations
– Moving Image Productions has optioned Louise Candlish’s upcoming noir/thriller The Other Passenger. Joseph Cross will produce and direct. Simon & Schuster will publish the novel in July 2021.
– Frenesy (Luca Guadagnino) and Searchlight Pictures have assigned Matthew López to script the adaptation of Christopher Castellani’s Leading Men. The novel was published in February 2019 by Penguin Books.
– Character Seven has optioned a pair of thriller novels by Holly Watt: The Dead Line, originally published in April 2020 by Raven Books, and To the Lions, published September 2019 by Dutton.
– SK Global and The Mazur/Kaplan Company have acquired a whole slew of novels:
Tananarive Due’s upcoming horror novel The Reformatory. Due will script the adaptation with Steven Barnes.
Tim Johnston’s mystery/thriller novel The Current, published in January 2019 by Algonquin Books. Miki Johnson will provide the script.
Ros Anderson’s dark comedy/sci-fi novel The Hierarchies, published August 2020 by Dutton. Margot Robbie will also produce.
Brad Meltzer and John Mensch’s historical novel The Lincoln Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill America’s 16th President—and Why It Failed, published September 2020 by Thorndike Press Large Print.
Final Thoughts
I’m going to keep this one really short because we’ve covered A LOT of ground here, and I want time to digest and ponder some of these new trends and advancements. The huge leaps that technology has taken, combined with the societal changes brought about by the effects of the global pandemic means that we’re on the precipice of some pretty tectonic shifts here.
What does that mean for you as an author, screenwriter, or creator? I’ve got some definitive ideas, but need a bit more space and time to put it all together.
So, for now, I’ll just say…
Until next time!
~ Paula
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Thanks so much for the shout out!
So much great information packed into this one. You're a powerhouse!