The Bookseller.com

17th May 2008

Alison Flood is The Bookseller's news editor.

Tops and flops at LBF

11.04.08

I looked back through The Bookseller archives at how we reported some of the most-hyped London Book Fair deals in recent years for a feature this week Risk assessment: here are some of the more notable books with details of how they actually did. Feel free to use the comments thread to add to the list!

2001:

“One of the biggest buzzes surrounded a first novel by an unknown British author agented by Curtis Brown wunderkind Jonny Geller. World English rights reportedly netted £1.25m for Hari Kunzru’s The Impressionist, with Penguin imprint Hamish Hamilton beating two other publishers before the fair to win UK rights to the title.”
Sales to date: 79,563

2002:

“Lynne Drew, newly at HarperCollins, is rumoured to have paid £400,000 in an auction for two novels from London-based actress Kathleen Tessaro. The first, Elegance, was pitched as a ‘Pygmalionesque romantic comedy’ by Jonny Geller of Curtis Brown.”
Sales to date: 151,941

“The biggest début thriller deal of the year to date is for Spiral plus a follow-up. Spiral, due out next spring, is ‘a mind-crunchingly literary thriller with a highly original central hook and an art-world setting’. Kate Lyall-Grant at Simon & Schuster secured the two books with a “very high six-figure pre-emptive offer”.
Sales to date: 3,281

2003:

“Andrew Wylie, newly representing Ann-Marie MacDonald, sold world English rights, excluding Canada, for seven figures to Terry Karten at HarperCollins in the new novel, The Way the Crow Flies, set on a Canadian military base in the 1960s.”
Sales to date: 14,436

“Mark Lucas at LAW sold rights just before the London Book Fair to Malcolm Edwards at Orion in Orange [Prize] founder Kate Mosse’s ‘Barbara Erskine-ish’ novel Labyrinth. Deals are now rumoured to total seven figures.”
Sales to date: 1,076,509

“Giles Gordon at Curtis Brown sold world rights to Alexandra Pringle at Bloomsbury in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. It was bought on the first 737 pages of a manuscript that will be 1,000 pages.”
Sales to date: 303,163

2004:

“Lynne Drew at HarperCollins paid a substantial six-figure sum for two novels by Harriet Evans, fiction publisher at Headline. The first novel in the deal, Shoot, Shag, Marry [now retitled Going Home], will be published in autumn 2005. Evans’ agent, Mark Lucas of LAW, said her authorial voice was ‘very mature, warm and embracing, a combination of the familiar and the edgy. It is very assured and fresh.’ “
Sales to date: 83,871

“Faber won world rights to Paul McCartney’s unagented book, High in the Clouds, and will publish in 2005. It has been written in conjunction with Faber author Philip Ardagh, and author and animator Geoff Dunbar. Subtitled ‘An Urban Furry Tale’, the book is a ‘fast, furious and funny’ 64-page story for children aged five-plus about two squirrels and a frog.” Sales to date: 14,060

2005:

“Simon & Schuster UK landed the biggest pre-fair coup, buying up world rights in Pele: the Autobiography.”
Sales to date: 132,924

“Transworld took LBF rights offers for one of its biggest thriller buys of recent years, The Chemistry of Death by Simon Beckett. It bought world English rights in the novel last month in a six-figure, three-book deal.”
Sales to date: 52,094

2006:

“Bloomsbury is on a non-fiction buying spree, beating off stiff competition from rivals to acquire Gary Barlow’s autobiography. Alexandra Pringle, editor in chief, won the auction for world rights in Gary Barlow: My Story [now called Gary Barlow: My Take], signed through Eddie Bell at the Bell-Lomax Agency. Bell said: ‘A very wide range of publishers expressed interest, but Bloomsbury was very keen—Alexandra kicked the door in, as it were.’ ”
Sales to date: 159,395

“Lionel Shriver, author of the Orange Prize-winning We Need to Talk About Kevin (Serpent’s Tail) is to move to HarperCollins Worldwide for her next novel. A ‘significant six-figure deal’ (clearly beyond the budget of Serpent’s Tail) has brought to HC The Post-Birthday World. Amanda Ridout bought the book in the UK, describing Shriver as ‘a unique author who brilliantly combines literary quality with huge commercial appeal’.”
Sales to date: 16,102

“The ‘most synchonised worldwide submission we have ever done’ that Jamie Byng of Canongate was promising for The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall is already paying dividends, with successful pre-emptive orders from Italy and Greece. “If I haven’t sold this novel in 20 languages by the end of March I will be shocked,” Byng predicts (29 was the final total).
Sales to date: 21,134

2007:

“The White Tiger, a novel by Indian author Aravind Adiga, has sold on pre-empt to Einaudi in Italy, with a further pre-emptive offer on the table in Holland. UK agent Cathryn Summerhayes at William Morris, who likened the book to Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, expects four to five foreign deals by the end of the fair, and says she has ‘editors dragging at [her] ankles’.”
Sales to date: 342

“Auctions for début children’s novel Before I Die by Jenny Downham are currently underway in Israel, Brazil, Japan and several eastern European countries, with the book already sold in 10 languages. David Fickling bought world English rights from Catherine Clarke at Felicity Bryan just before the fair. The book has sold for large sums, including a ‘substantial six figures’ in Germany.”
Sales to date: 15,781
 

* Sales figures are as recorded by Nielsen BookScan UK, in all editions since publication up to 15 March 2008. Therefore totals do not include sales through some non-traditional retail channels, or income from international rights and serialisation.

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