Unedited: From Idea to Manuscript and Shelf to Screen

Unedited is back, and so is BookCon. In episode 24, Adam, Sarah, and Noah survey the return of NYC’s biggest book event, which has awoken from a five-year covid coma. This time around, the Javit’s Center will host a convention with special focus on those readers romantasy-inclined: signings, meetups, workshops, and a “fantasy ball” are on offer. Less love is being lost across the pond, however, where a coalition of Dutch authors ar...

In Episode 23 of Unedited, Adam, Sarah, and Noah, alongside a special returning guest, take a bite at the apple and discuss whether Original Sin by Tapper and Thompson is actually that original—and whether the real sin isn’t the timing of this safely after-the-fact account? Whatever the answer, it is a truth universally acknowledged that an audiobook company in possession of large fortune must be in want of more fortune, so we brea...

In Episode 22 of Unedited, Adam, Sarah, and Noah—like Odysseus, Aeneas, and Dante before them—plunge into the netherworld. Instead of Virgil, though, we follow the spectre of AI ghostwriters and “reverse harems” through a discussion about the state of self-publishing in the age of LLMs and what this means for the very act of storytelling and editorial collaboration. At the bottom of hell, we encounter “book boyfriends” and ponder a...

In Episode 21 of Unedited, Adam is joined once again by Sarah Elizabeth Hill of Bobi Media and Inkshares editor Noah Broyles to unpack the news that is shaping the global story economy. Audible’s feet-first leap into the AI space leads our discussion, causing the group to ponder what it will mean for aspiring narrators, translators, and listeners around the world to have LLMs telling stories. Speaking of worldwide phenomena, the bi...

The News of the Global Story Economy
In Episode 20 of Unedited, we shake up the format to bring you three bellwether news pieces from the global story economy. Adam, Sarah Elizabeth Hill of Bobi Media, and Inkshares’ own Noah Broyles sit down and unpack the rising phenomenon of publishers acquiring authors who are BookTok stars and what this means for non-viral writers hoping to break into a spice-obsessed industry. We also dis...

Sarah Elizabeth Hill joins us for Episode 19 of Unedited. Sarah is the founder of Bobi Media, a digital marketing and brand management company based in NYC. We chart Sarah’s path from six-year-old poet to anonymous college romance columnist to the world of media and publishing, starting with her time at Bookstr, which she grew to a community of more than three million. We discuss entrepreneurship and the fulfillment Sarah finds in ...

Grant Bayliss joins us for Episode 18 of Unedited. Grant was an elite military operator in the global war on terror, with fourteen years across four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and subsequent private protection for British diplomatic personnel. He is also the author of the forthcoming story and screenplay The Old Believer, which follows a group of disavowed British special forces operatives on a mysterious mission deep into the h...

Marcus Gipps joins us for Episode 17 of Unedited. We trace his career in books, beginning as a sales manager at the flagship Blackwell’s store on Charing Cross Road, followed by his journey up the publishing ladder at one of the UK's oldest and most venerable sci-fi/fantasy houses, Gollancz, which is approaching its centenary. We also recount some of the authors he has worked with, including Andrzej Sapkowski (of The Witcher f...

Nigel Newton, founder and CEO of Bloomsbury Publishing, joins us from the floor of the London Book Fair on Episode 16 of Unedited. We discuss his journey to the top of the book world, from his days at Cambridge, to his time as a graduate trainee at Macmillan, to landing a job as a sales manager at Sidgwick & Jackson. We dive into the birth of Bloomsbury, the business plan for which Nigel wrote while on paternity leave, and we r...

Rick Nicita and Bob Bookman join us for Episode 15 of Unedited. For nearly three decades, Rick and Bob were at the top of CAA's world of talent and book to film. They represented actors including Tom Cruise, Al Pacino, Nicole Kidman, and Sir Anthony Hopkins, and namebrand authors like Michael Crichton, Anne Rice, and Thomas Harris, to name only a few. We discuss how books matriculated through one of the major agencies during t...

Film executive and content innovator Liesl Copland joins us for episode fourteen of Unedited: From Idea to Manuscript and Shelf to Screen. Over a glass of grenache, we discuss her winding road from Mickey Drexler’s GAP, to a brief stint as a cruise director, to the heyday of magazines, and her rise through independent film. As Netflix’s first chief of original content, a fifteen-year veteran of the Endeavor Companies, and most rece...

Lawyer by training and a writer by compulsion Michael Bennett joins us for episode thirteen of Unedited: From Idea to Manuscript and Shelf to Screen. We discuss where funny comes from, what it means to be funny to different people, the evolution of satire from Don Quixote to the present, and whether, in a realm of seven-second Instagram reels, political satire still has a meaningful place in longform literature. As a father of two,...

Manager and producer Brooklyn Weaver of Energy Entertainment  joins us for episode twelve of Unedited: From Idea to Manuscript and Shelf to Screen. We discuss why books remain the bedrock of Hollywood but how other forms of literary material from comic books to short stories are taking increasing market-share in underlying IP. Having managed and worked with top talent from Rob Liefeld to Christian Bale to Stephen Spielberg, Brookly...

Screenwriter and aspiring novelist Will Gish joins us for episode eleven of Unedited: From Idea to Manuscript and Shelf to Screen. Over a glass of Grenache, we discuss the road from Philadelphia to New Jersey to Vermont and eventually, via Mexico City and Tokyo, to LA. We break down the ebbs and flows of humor in publishing, television, and cinema, and ponder whether, in an increasingly dark world, humor has come back around as a m...

Mike Holz joins us on the tenth episode of Unedited: From Idea to Manuscript and Shelf to Screen. We discuss the shift from a producer-led Hollywood to a streamer-led Hollywood, the breakdown of the global-licensing framework in television, and how the “gourmet cheeseburger” is becoming a dangerously popular order on our television menu. Having spent the last decade working in international television at Paramount and other top com...

Noah Broyles joins us for the ninth episode of Unedited: From Idea to Manuscript and Shelf to Screen. Having sat down at fourteen to write his first novel, Noah dipped into several genres and took inspiration from some unique places before his debut novel, The House of Dust, landed on our desk at Inkshares. We discuss his journey into reading, his journey into writing, his experience being published at the tender age of twenty-thre...

Fires began burning in the Palisades on the morning of the 7th of January, ten days ago. They spread. Last Wednesday night, when the Hills lit on fire, it looked like Hollywood was literally going to burn to the ground. We are joined by our Episode 2 and 7 guests, Bob Bookman and Chase Pletts, to find out what the last ten days have been like for them and how they think this is going to affect a Hollywood already in a great deal of...

Chase Pletts joins us for the seventh episode of Unedited: From Idea to Manuscript and Shelf to Screen. We discuss his journey from Brooklyn to Los Angeles and from a young reader of Jack London to a winner of not one but two SPUR awards from the Western Writers of America. Chase also discusses the path from screenwriter to novelist (and then back to screenwriter) and the imperative of mining the pain of one’s own life to suffuse t...

Scott Thomas joins us for the sixth episode of Unedited: From Idea to Manuscript and Shelf to Screen. We discuss the road from smalltown Kansas to Beverly Hills, from family television to horror novels, and what Midwestern gothic means to him. As the earner of top praise from the New York Times to National Public Radio to Joyce Carol Oates, Scott also discusses the craft of writing and why writers should think of themselves as mast...