News
-
Mum's Way serialised in Mail on Sunday
15 Feb 2013
Ian Millthorpe and Lynne Barrett-Lee’s Mum’s Way, a widower’s account of raising eight children is serialised in the Mail on Sunday this weekend.
-
Thistle Publishing launch
15 Feb 2013
This week’s Bookseller has a piece on the agency’s new imprint, Thistle Publishing:
Andrew Lownie creates own e-imprint Charlotte Williams
The Andrew Lownie Literary Agency has become the latest to set up an in-house digital and p.o.d. publishing imprint. The Thistle imprint will use Amazon publishing programme White Glove to release e-books and print-on-demand copies of titles where the e-book rights are not controlled by a publisher.
Lownie (pictured) said publishers risked being “left behind” by the higher royalty rates authors can command through the Amazon programme, and that the move was also a reaction to publishers commissioning fewer titles.
Meanwhile, Curtis Brown joint c.e.o. Jonny Geller said his agency was pleased with early sales through its digital self-publishing programme, Curtis Brown Creative, launched via Kindle Direct Publishing and CreateSpace in December last year. He said the agency had already seen strong sales, with Alex Gerlis’ debut novel The Best of Our Spiesselling 4,000 copies in January.
Lownie’s fiction agent David Haviland will be overseeing Thistle, with the first title, Conclave by Mary Hollingsworth, an account of the 1559 papal election, released this week to capitalise on its newsworthiness. The White Glove programme pays 70% on receipts to authors, if the e-books are priced between £1.49 and £7.81, with the Andrew Lownie Agency to take 15% commission, paying publicists to support the titles and designing the books’ covers.
Lownie said: “With e-book publishers and Amazon offering up to 70%, publishers will be left behind if they don’t adapt.” He added: “This is something we do in addition to our main job. There are some books that don’t fit the conventional model, where publishers don’t see the market for it, but we do - or they can’t publish it quickly enough … We are still acting as agents - but we are giving a brand, through Thistle, to these particular books. We are giving people the opportunity to earn while we showcase the works.”
Other titles lined up for February release include Rasputin by Joseph Fuhrmann, a biography of the Russian mystic; The Soldier by Darren Moore, about the changing role of the military; and A Polar Bear Ate My Head by Paul Merrill, a memoir of setting up a lads’ magazine in the UK and Australia.
-
Cut is #8 on the New York Times bestseller list.
14 Feb 2013
Cathy Glass’s memoir Cut is #8 on the New York Times e book best seller list.
-
Rave reviews for Fanny & Stella
14 Feb 2013
Neil McKenna’s Fanny & Stella continues to gather excellent reviews across a wide range of media from Gay City News in New York to The Daily Telegraph:
-
The Interceptor sold as BBC 1 drama series
12 Feb 2013
The memoirs of former customs officer and SOCA agent Cam Addicott, The Interceptor, co-authored by Kris Hollington, published by Penguin, has been given a green-light for an 8-episode first season on BBC 1.
https://www.google.com/search?q=BBC+Controller+of+Drama+interceptor&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&lr=lang_en
-
Shanghai Showgirls teaser
11 Feb 2013
Amelia Kallman has produced this teaser for her book and film script Shangai Showgirls
-
The First Western Entrepreneurs in Afghanistan
08 Feb 2013
Bijan Omrani has written a guest article for the British Library:
-
Neil McKenna on Nightwaves
08 Feb 2013
Neil McKenna appeared on Radio 3’s Nightwaves on Monday talking about his biography Fanny & Stella.
-
Recent Foreign Rights Sales
08 Feb 2013
Finnish rights to Nicholas Best’s Five Days That Shocked The World.
Chinese rights to Sean McMeekin’s July 1914: Countdown to War
Hungarian rights to Clare Mulley’s The Spy Who Loved.
-
Two Cathy Glass books in the non fiction ebook New York Times bestseller’s list
07 Feb 2013
Cathy Glass has two books in the non fiction ebook New York Times bestseller’s list with Cut at no 23 and Damaged at no 34.
