Category: Film & TV

Digital serial books subscription service Serial Box raises $4.5 million. Partners with Marvel. But still we’ll be told people are reading less

Posted onLeave a comment

Founded in 2015 by former Penguin Random House global digital director Molly Barton and co-founder Julian Yap, Serial Box is just one more example in a never ending list of digital operators that are stealing readers from mainstream bookstores and online stores, creating the fallacy that people are reading less. Serial Box is a clever play on Read More …

‘Jessica Jones,’ ‘Punisher’ Canceled. Netflix led the streaming surge and now pays the price as suppliers copy the Netflix model and content is siloed

Posted onLeave a comment

“Jessica Jones, Punisher Canceled as Netflix Completes Marvel Purge” runs the headline in The Hollywood Reporter, but it’s not so much a purge as the inevitable consequence of the direction video streaming is taking. And publishing is not so far behind. Original content is of course a great draw for consumers, to a degree. But Read More …

With no new Harry Potter books, Pottermore sales and revenue declines as Harry Potter remains inaccessible to much of the globe

Posted on1 Comment

It’s been a while since the release of The Cursed Child, the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and the Hogwarts Library digital audiobook, and revenues have been hit, as The Bookseller reports. In the period, revenues were £32.8m, down from the previous year’s £40.3m. Pretax profit was £3.4m, compared with £3.5m. Nevertheless, the result showed that Pottermore Read More …

Start The Day Global – 5 Not to be Missed Publishing Stories from Around the World

Posted onLeave a comment

Unusually we Start the Day Global today in Michigan, USA, where this delightful story caught my eye over at Publishers Weekly. Girls of the Crescent: Teen Sisters Promote Stories of Muslim Girls When sisters Mena and Zena Nasiri, both avid teen readers, noticed a dearth of YA books featuring Muslim females like themselves, they took Read More …

Books and comics drive the biggest global box office revenue in history

Posted onLeave a comment

The numbers are in and the numbers are: $42 billion globally, with North America contributing an impressive $11.9 billion of that. As reported here at TNPS last month, US takings were on target to beat the 2016 record of $11.4 billion, and final results show a 4% jump on 2016, and 6.7% growth on the Read More …

Vietnamese children’s book debuts as a Broadway-style musical at the Ho Chi Minh City Opera House this weekend

Posted onLeave a comment

Diary of a Cricket, as the English translations of De men phieu luu ky runs, is a 1941 children’s book by To Hoai now debuting as a musical thanks to the Ho Chi Minh City Ballet Symphony Orchestra and Opera. Composed by Vu Viet Anh and conducted by Tran Nhat Minh, who together wrote the Read More …

So much for video streaming killing publishing and the Box Office. A record year for Hollywood, driven by books and comics

Posted onLeave a comment

There’s still a week to go – and the busiest week of the year at that – and US Box Office takings are on target for $11.8 billion in 2018, compared to 2016’s previous record of $11.4 billion. And it’s not just revenue. Attendance is up too, by between 5%-7% year on year. So much Read More …

Self-published comic book to become Netflix series – Again

Posted on1 Comment

What are the chances? You self-publish a comic book. Someone finds an old copy in a trash can. He happens to be a TV director. Next thing you know, your self-published comic book is a TV series. Now try count the odds for it happening twice! Okay, so there was no trash can involved the Read More …

A reminder that Wattpad is not just about teen romance

Posted onLeave a comment

Debut novelist Sam Marsden is the latest author to grab the attention of the moving pictures folk, with a preemptive TV and film rights deal just before Frankfurt. Stampede, Deadline explains, The book is set in a glass-domed Martian colony and follows 17-year-old Eva Knight, the daughter of colony’s president who detests life on Mars and Read More …

The Week In Review

Posted onLeave a comment

In case you missed any, the past week’s posts from TNPS: As the National Library of Paraguay gets a new Director, Paraguay’s publishing future is digital 2020 World Book Capital’s censorship double standards: It’s one rule for Malay titles and another if the book is in English Mark Williams At Large Amsterdam’s Festival voor het Afrikaans Read More …

Start The Day Global – 29 September 2018

Posted onLeave a comment

We start the day global today in the USA, where Ron Charles in the Washington Post asked, Do we still need Banned Books Week? Charles, according to Joni Di Placido, writing for the Kobo Writing Life blog, argued that book banning is largely confined to our repressive past. Charles here presumably (the OP is behind Read More …

Mumbai’s 3rd Word To Screen Market at the Mumbai Film Festival

Posted on1 Comment

While some publishers are looking to blame Netflix and binge TV watching for declining readers numbers, those that have books that are also films or TV know that actually, Netflix is the publishing world’s best friend, and is boosting publisher revenue by taking book content to new audiences. In India the Mumbai Film Festival is Read More …

Egyptian Publishers Association eyes the global book market

Posted onLeave a comment

I often talk here about a digitally-driven Global New Renaissance unfolding, where the proliferation of smartphones around the globe and improved internet access around the world means anyone, anywhere on the planet can theoretically consume and produce content from anywhere on the planet. As we’ve seen with Netflix – As Netflix approaches the global revenue Read More …

Ten global publishing stories not to be missed. 13 June 2018 collation

Posted onLeave a comment

The global publishing market has never been more exciting, and every day myriad publishing stories cross my screen that I’d love to develop here at TNPS, but there simply isn’t time. They do make the TNPS twitter feed, however. Follow TNPS on twitter here: @thenewpubstd. But twitter is an ephemeral beast. If you’re reading TNPS in Read More …

Juggernaut India’s answer to Wattpad gets its first movie deal as an injunction against another Juggernaut title is restored

Posted on1 Comment

Just a year after the digital publisher Juggernaut launched its self-publishing arm Writing Platform, one of its authors has signed a movie deal. Writing Platform is a variation on Wattpad, where unknown authors can upload their own material, but whereas Wattpad is global, Juggernaut’s version is limited exclusively to residents of the Indian subcontinent. Launched Read More …

As Netflix prepares to stream one Wattpad novel, another is snapped up by Hulu, while a third is at casting

Posted on11 Comments

On Friday Netflix will commence streaming a contemporary teen romance that is, according to International Business Times, the first English-language film adapted from a Wattpad story. Wattpad of course is well known for its TV shows in the Philippines, 7 million users in the Philippines as Wattpad’s Tencent-backed Asia plans step up a gear and Read More …

7 million users in the Philippines as Wattpad’s Tencent-backed Asia plans step up a gear

Posted onLeave a comment

The Philippines has long been one of Wattpad’s strongholds, but this month comes news from Manila Bulletin that fully 7 million of Wattpad’s 65+ million users around the world are from that one country. After the latest $51 million round of Wattpad funding in January, with a substantial portion coming from China’s Tencent – Tencent Read More …

As Netflix approaches the global revenue tipping point, publishers need to sit up and take notice

Posted on3 Comments

Netflix has beaten expectations yet again, adding another 7.4 million subscribers January through March. And crucially nearly three quarters of them came from outside the US. In the next three months Netflix will, on current trends, reach the tipping point where the bulk of its revenue comes from outside the USA. And here’s the thing. Read More …

Ten global publishing stories not to be missed. 16 April 2018 collation

Posted onLeave a comment

The global publishing market has never been more exciting, and every day myriad publishing stories cross my screen that I’d love to develop here at TNPS, but there simply isn’t time. But if you’re reading TNPS in the first place you probably share my obsession with all things international publishing, and would no doubt enjoy Read More …

The 2nd Saudi Arabia Comic Con. Marvel’s Black Panther to open the newly legalized Saudi cinema. Kalimat sets up a comics imprint. The Arab Renaissance embraces comics

Posted onLeave a comment

The Middle East Film and Comic Con (MEFCC) is underway in Dubai, and the Arabic-language  children’s publishing house Kalimat is set to release the first of its graphic titles, Antara, part of  series first unveiled at the Sharjah IBF 2017 and again at the Paris book fair earlier this year. Among the star attractions at Read More …