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Sharlene Martin, president and longtime owner of Martin Literary Management, has sold the agency to Jennifer Newens, who has been vice president. The agency will be renamed Martin-Newens Literary Management.

Martin will remain on as a consultant and a senior literary manager of true crime and nonfiction, focusing on selling MLM’s books for adaptation to film and television as an executive producer. Martin says, “I am delighted by the opportunity to pass the baton to Jennifer Newens who will continue to grow the agency while I am staying on and doing the work I love most. Jen is exceptional in every way and has my full support.”

Newens says, “When I was a publisher and acquiring editor, I worked with some of the best agents in the business from MLM, all trained by the incomparable Sharlene Martin. Over the last three years I’ve had the opportunity to be mentored by her. It is an honor to be able to continue Sharlene’s legacy and carry on the agency that she built from the ground up more than 23 years ago. I hope to make her proud.”

Lexie von der Luft has been promoted to associate at the Simon & Schuster speakers bureau.

Adriann Ranta Zurhellen joins as studio head, starting a new imprint of original illustrated children’s books for the reading platform. She was most recently senior director, editorial at Kevin Anderson & Associates, after 15 years as a literary agent.

Novelist and media researcher Arianna Reiche has launched an IP scouting subscription service, which will deliver subscribers monthly reports on “overlooked, optionable literary IP.” Each newsletter will feature seven titles that have not yet reached development executives. Reiche is the author of Warden / Star and At the End of Every Day, and has developed projects for Netflix in the past.

She tells Deadline, “Screen development teams are, in my experience, genuinely hungry for story; they’re just time-poor and the tools available to them have never quite kept pace with the full scope of what’s optionable.”