Female Top Guns, Jan. 6 Hero Cop, Unsung Soccer Stars + 4 Picks
Female Top Guns, Jan. 6 Hero Cop, Unsung Soccer Stars + 4 Picks
A newsletter about available IP; I do the reading for you
Welcome to The Optionist! As always, thanks for reading. We hope everyone had a great July 4th long weekend. We took a break for the holiday to get ready for officially putting up the paywall with today’s newsletter. I’ve heard from many of you with thoughts about a rate that makes the most sense, best serves our core audience of creative professionals looking for great IP and appropriately values the work. We publish every week (except major holidays) and are offering solo subscriptions for $250 a month (or $2500 a year — that’s two months free if you buy the year up front). We’ll be rolling out a corporate subscription for multiple users within a single organization next week as well. If you’re interested, email me at andy@theoptionist.community for more information.
I continue to hear about deals that originated from a mention here in The Optionist. Just this week news of a few crossed my desk, including one from an early issue that I’m super excited about but promised to keep the details private. I’ll never ask, but if you optioned something that you saw here and want to tell me about it, feel free to email me and remember to subscribe.
I also wanted to flag this piece from The New York Times Magazine before the Fourth about the struggles to diversify publishing. It centers on Lisa Lucas, the first Black publisher in the 80-year history of Pantheon, but it uses her to tell the broader story of what's happening in publishing, which has struggled with its overwhelming whiteness even more than film and TV (hard to believe, I know). The piece was interesting to me for what it says about the changes in the kinds of books being published, what that means for the options pipeline and also what people in Hollywood could learn about fostering diversity. It's a great weekend long read.
Now on to this week's picks. Like many of you, I was glued to TV last week watching Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony about the January 6th insurrection. Coincidentally, I had a book on the same topic that I was considering for today’s newsletter, and her testimony only reinforced my interest. It’s today’s top pick, and I’m sure someone is going to snap it up soon. Ditto with the story of the Navy’s first female Top Gun pilots.
