You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
HarperCollins grew thriller writer Karin Slaughter's sales in each region where her book Pretty Girls was published under its global publishing programme, Chantal Restivo-Alessi has told The Bookseller.
HarperCollins confirmed a "huge" performance for the novel in the US and growth of more than 100% in "multiple" territories. Slaughter also toured in Denmark, Finland, France and Mexico.
Restivo-Alessi, who took on the role as vice president for international alongside her job of chief digital officer to run the push, also said the number of titles published as part of the global publishing initiative was set to grow, from 150 in 2016 to 250 in 2017. She reiterated that the programme was done on an opt-in basis, but added that more agents now saw the benefits for those authors who "wanted a joined-up international pathway".
The initiative was first unveiled during the London Book Fair in April 2015 with the surprise announcement of the Slaughter deal, taking the author from Penguin Random House in a four-book deal spanning world English rights and more than a dozen foreign languages. HC added more than a dozen international publishing offices to its operations when it acquired Harlequin in 2014, which have been rebranded as HC.
"We're one year into this," Restivo-Alessi said. "It's been a lot of work. We've been working with the local HarperCollins offices, first to select what titles would work for them, and then on how to build the authors from where they were. In the case of Karin Slaughter, we improved her sales in every market, and established her in new markets where she was not well known."
Restivo-Alessi said the plan was to initially focus on commercial fiction, but this had widened with publication last month of Nujeen Mustafa's refugee memoir Nujeen's Incredible Journey and the launch next month of the six tie-ins to the next Harry Potter movie "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them", with the books published across 19 countries in 17 different different languages on 18th November.
Restivo-Alessi said the publishing was being augmented through global co-ordination of the local publishing efforts. "Every single asset is shared, as are the marketing plans, but each business tailor-makes their own approach, and they make their title selection based on the opportunity. They are not forced to take on any titles, that would do a disservice to the authors because they wouldn't do a good job."
She added that the levels of interaction between the central teams and the local offices had also changed over the past year: "it was initially about taking the lead from the US and UK, but increasingly now there is an exchange in both directions and we learn from each other."
Agents, who have traditionally preferred to do individual territory deals with those local publishers they think right for their author, are also being won over, she insisted. "Initially there was a degree of scepticism, so it's been an education process. But you don't get the deal unless they see the value in the deal. The terms are slightly different and better, and what we've found is that agents. and authors, really appreciate the level of co-ordination we can bring. Where's the difference really? You still have local publishers, you just get more reach."