News
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UK rights in David Day's Antarctica sold to OUP
07 Dec 2011
David Day’s regular British publisher, OUP, has bought his biography of Antarctica to be published next year by Random House (Australia).
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Gypsy book sold to One World
06 Dec 2011
Award-winning author and campaigning journalist Katharine Quarmby’s new book has been sold to One World. The Outcasts looks at the plight of the travelling community both in the UK and further afield weaving the inside story of the Dale Farm eviction into a larger tale of how Gypsies and Travellers have been seen in Europe for centuries.
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Casey Watson & Cathy Glass remain in best seller lists
06 Dec 2011
Congratulations to Casey Watson and Cathy Glass who continue their run in the best seller lists at 10 and 14 in the paperback non-fiction chart.
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Agency sells TOWIE memoir to S&S
02 Dec 2011
Simon and Schuster has bought UK and Commonwealth rights to a memoir by Sam Faiers, star of hit TV show, The Only Way is Essex and will publish in Spring 2012. The book will be written by agency author Emma Donnan and was sold in association with Adam Muddle at Money North.
The book will lift the lid on Sam’s childhood, her rise to fame, her friends and relationships, her style and what it is like to be a part of the huge ITV2 show. The book will be backed by a big PR and marketing campaign including signings and targeted online activity.
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City Girl enters Guinness Book of Records
30 Nov 2011
Congratulations to agency author Barbara Stcherbatchef, author of City Girl, who has entered the Guinness Book of Records as follows:
Fastest marathon in an animal costume (female) Barbara Stcherbatcheff as a peacock, 3h 42m 11s
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Two agency titles in best seller lists
30 Nov 2011
Casey Watson and Cathy Glass remain in the non-fiction paperback list - Watson at no 6 and Glass at no 12.
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Agency titles no 6 & no 7 in best-seller lists
23 Nov 2011
Agency authors, Casey Watson and Cathy Glass, continue their stint in the best seller list - Cathy Glass for the last nine weeks - respectively at number 6 and number 7 in paperback non-fiction with only 262 copies separating their sales this week.
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Katharine Quarmby wins prize for Scapegoat
22 Nov 2011
Katharine Quarmby has won the Literature category of the Ability Media International Awards for her book on disability hate crime Scapegoat.
The Awards, which are now in their thirdyear(www.amiawards.org), were developed, as part of the ongoing work of Leonard Cheshire Disability, to indentify and celebrate outstandingly creative achievements that promotes a more inclusive world for people with disabilities. As such the awards acknowledged both disabled and non-disabled individuals who are champions in this field and have demonstrated high achievement and outstanding creativity in their work.
Previous winners have included the novelist Sue Townsend, the journalists Peter White and Frank Gardner and such organisations as the Royal Shakespeare Company, the English National Opera and the Donmar Warehouse.
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Australian rights in Can we cook the dwarf?: Confessions of a reluctant lad’s mag editor sold to Random House.
15 Nov 2011
Random House (Australia) has bought Australian rights to Paul Merrill’s hilarious memoir Can we cook the dwarf?: Confessions of a reluctant lad’s mag editor. A UK deal should be announced shortly.
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Agency diary mentions in the Independent
15 Nov 2011
The agency ghosts’s Halloween lunch on 31st October made The Independent
The Independent on Sunday then ran a story on 13th November on agency submissions.
Literary editors receive some strange messages – PRs misaddressing emails to the wrong newspaper, out-of-work writers demanding reviewing work with menaces, or authors wanting us to read their self-published conspiracy theories that no publisher will touch because they are “afraid of the truth” – but they’re nothing, it seems, compared to the postbag of a literary agent. Andrew Lownie has been in touch, directing me to the website of his agency, which specialises in history and biography (not poetry and short stories, aspiring writers please note) and has a list of handy tips for authors wishing to submit their masterpieces. Among the tips are many we agree with, including: “My rule is that the longer the parcel takes to open, the quicker it is to discard. Anything with too much sellotape and staples suggests a mad person.” Here at IoS Towers, the longer a book takes to unwrap, the less interesting it inevitably is. Another is: “Address the agent correctly.” He’s right: for a person who claims to be a writer or reviewer, for whom spelling and attention to detail are quite important, getting the addressees name right is particularly important. Mr Lownie tells us that he has recently been addressed as: Hello dear Andrew; Dear Mr Townie; Hello Angel; Dear Mr. Dolby; Top of the day to you; and Do your current interests include ferociously paced, commercial Tartan Noir? His correspondents have signed off, variously: In His Holy Name; PLEAS CONTACT ME FOR FUTURE TALK; Artistically Yours; If there’s a zombie apocalypse, good luck!; and i need to get published man. hope to hear from you guys. Peace. If you have recently sent a submission to the agency including one of the above, then sorry, but it doesn’t look like you’re going to be published any time soon. Please, though, don’t call us.
Good to know the website is being read.
