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This week's London Book Fair saw a return to the hectic fair auctions of pre-recession years, with some literary fiction said to be going for "silly money".
Orion General Division m.d. Lisa Milton called the fair "really buzzy and confident". She said: "Everyone seems to be very positive, which after a couple of years of doom and gloom is very encouraging." HarperFiction publisher Kate Elton said the fair had been "really energetic and positive", adding: "We've stopped obsessing about the decline in physical and we're focusing more on the positive opportunities of digital."
Hesperus Press editor Robin Harries said: "It has been a really great book fair for us. I've been coming for a few years and this certainly feels busier than than other recent fairs. People are obviously feeling a lot more confident. There is a lot of optimism around."
Debut fiction was a focus for big auctions. A nine-publisher UK auction being run by Curtis Brown's Karolina Sutton for début novel Strange Companions by Emma Healey was reaching best bids on the final day of the fair (17th April). Further auctions were afoot in Germany, Italy, France and Holland, with offers in from the US and Denmark. The novel is narrated by a woman with dementia who is determined find a vanished friend, even though she cannot remember the faces of her own family. As she searches for her friend, memories of the past, and the disappearance of her sister decades earlier, keep flooding back.
Meanwhile, there were international auctions underway at the fair for Jessie Burton's The Miniaturist in Germany, Serbia, Turkey, Poland, Hungary and Portugal, with deals in the Netherlands, France, Japan, Norway, and Italy. Picador saw off competition from 11 other publishers to buy UK and Commonwealth rights in the historical novel, written by Curtis Brown Creative Writing School graduate Burton, from Juliet Mushens at The Agency Group at the start of the Fair.
Alzheimer's is also the theme of another hot fair title, US début We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas, with Fourth Estate winning a seven-publisher auction for UK and Commonwealth rights. Editorial director Clare Reihill bought the tale of a young scientist who develops an early-onset case of the disease from Elizabeth Sheinkman of WME London for a six-figure sum.
Meanwhile Ivan Mulcahy of Mulcahy Associates said there was "an auction happily developing" between UK publishers for his Vivienne Westwood memoir, with the project to be written with social historian Ian Kelly, combining Kelly's third-person voice and Westwood's first person. The agency signed its first deal for foreign rights, selling German rights to Einhorn for £100,000.
One publisher said literary fiction had been going for "silly prices" at LBF, citing a £300,000 price-tag for a two-novel deal. Weidenfeld's Kirsty Dunseath commented: "The market is down, but when a hot début comes long, the figure is still very high. There's a disparity in what happens in the auction and the realities of the market." But Orion's Milton said: "Whilst the focus seemed to be on a few big fiction deals, there was a quiet confidence in quality non-fiction and children's too. Certainly we've had some excellent feedback and some great offers. We're particularly pleased with the high level of interest in our cookery list."
Andrew Stanley, deputy head of sales and marketing at Thames & Hudson, said: "I think there's a really good feeling in the trade right now. There's an adaptability in the book trade that maybe doesn't exist elsewhere. People are finding out what business models work, and there are a lot of opportunities here to try and find that out . . . Some people will say they are cautiously optimistic, but I'm just optimistic."