Happy Friday, writers! We hope you had a great week and the weather is nice and warm whereever you are. It has been toasty here in Toronto, but after what felt like the world’s longest winter (it snowed in May!), I am here for it.
We welcomed the newest member of Kobo Writing Life to the team this week, and we continued our month of Live Q&A’s with KWL, chatting with our Europe team about global reach and international markets. If you missed the live event, you can check out the Q&A here:
Now onto this week in publishing.
Starting with some terribly sad news, author Lucinda Riley has passed away after a four-year battle with cancer.
Bestselling Irish author Lucinda Riley, best known for the Seven Sisters series, has died after battling cancer for four years. The global publishing community who worked with her over the last decade of her career have paid tribute to her life and work.
UK group AuthorSHARE is making it possible for authors to earn royalties on secondhand books.
Unlike regular book sales or library borrowing, authors do not receive a penny from the sale of secondhand editions of their works – but a new scheme dreamed up by used booksellers is set to change this for the first time.
A lot of Goodreads reviews have gone missing thanks to a bug and authors are understandably upset.
Earlier this week, book reviews and ratings began to disappear from popular social cataloging website Goodreads. The lost entries include positively-rated, often five-star ratings accompanied by reviews written by Goodreads users. This is not okay. I am hearing of more and more @goodreads authors loosing a significant number of their reviews.
Oxford University Press is closing their printing arm, marking an end of an era for the publisher.
Oxford University’s right to print books was first recognised in 1586, in a decree from the Star Chamber. But the centuries-old printing history of Oxford University Press will end this summer, after the publishing house announced the last vestige of its printing arm was closing.
Frankfurt Book Fair is planning a live, in-person event in October.
Germany has begun to open to travelers and the Frankfurt Book Fair is planning on hosting a live, in-person fair this October 20-24. “It will be smaller in scale and more focused,” Juergen Boos, the fair director, told PW.
Last week, we shared an article about Elin Hilderbrand coming under fire for a line in her latest book. This piece looks at the pressure social media is putting on authors and whether or not it’s going too far.
Elin Hilderbrand writes novels about people who summer in Nantucket and have lots of family secrets and complicated love lives. The books-whose covers feature beach scenes with women in sun hats and sherbet-colored towels fluttering in the sea breeze-reliably make the bestseller lists every July, snapped up by fans in search of vacation reading.
by Michelle Good has been optioned by Prospero Pictures to be adapted as a limited series. Shannon Masters, who is of Cree Métis and Ukrainian descent, will serve as writer and showrunner. She has previously worked on series such as CBC’s and Burden of Truth.
Emma Donoghue is publishing a new historical fiction novel in August 2022.
Books Haven is set in Ireland around the year 600, in a time of plague and terror, when three men vow to leave the world behind them. Award-winning author Emma Donoghue has a new novel coming out in August 2022.
Crying in H Mart – the beloved New Yorker essay turned New York Times best-seller – is now set for a feature film adaptation. In a competitive situation, MGM label Orion Pictures has picked up the rights to Michelle Zauner’s memoir, with Stacey Sher and Jason Kim on board to produce.
Attention Bridgerton fans: Rupert Evans is joining season 2 of the Netflix series.
Lady Whistledown has a new report. Dear reader, Bridgerton is about to get even more charming… Evans will portray Edmund Bridgerton, late husband to Violet Bridgerton ( Ruth Gemmell) and father to the entire Bridgerton clan. Netflix describes him as “a loving and devoted husband, whose true love match with Violet Bridgerton gave them eight perfect children.
Lastly, I have two favourite pieces to share this week. The first is this essay on the mythologized idea of being a writer.
I suppose I started writing because it was the easiest way to dump out my imagination and play with it. There were few costs and no barriers to entry, no special tools or equipment or collaborators needed.
And as a grammar nerd I found this history of gender-neutral pronouns fascinating (spoiler: they’re not new).
People tend to think of they, Mx., and hir as relatively recent inventions. But English speakers have been looking for better ways to talk about gender for a very long time.
Have a great weekend!
Staff Pick
Rachel, Author Engagement Coordinator
“I haven’t had a chance to finish Honey Girl yet, but if I didn’t have to sleep it would have been devoured in a day. This book starts out with a cute romcom premise – Grace Porter, a type-A PhD grad who always has a plan, gets drunk and marries a stranger in Vegas – but it quickly develops into an examination of loneliness, identity, and the standards we create for ourselves. I can’t wait to finish this book on the weekend, and I really hope Grace gets the girl.”
Great round up! I haven’t heard of the Goodreads bug but you think for a site that’s owned by Amazon, they could back up those reviews and not let this happen! Someone got fired!
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Great round up! I haven’t heard of the Goodreads bug but you think for a site that’s owned by Amazon, they could back up those reviews and not let this happen! Someone got fired!