BookBrunch Publishers Weekly Frankfurt Show Daily 2016 - Day Two

Frankfurt

Thursday 20 October 2016

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Fairgoers’ solidarity with Turkish writers “Stand by us, the other Turkey,” pleaded exiled Turkish journalist and newspaper editor Can Dündar, who presented the German translation of his new memoir We Are Arrested: A Journalist’s Notes from a Turkish Prison on Wednesday morning at the Frankfurt Book Fair, Ed Nawotka writes. Sitting alongside Frankfurt Book Fair Director Juergen Boos and his literary agent Nermin Mollaoglu of Istanbul’s Kalem Agency, Dündar spoke about his frustration with Western governments’ lack of engagement with the regime of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has “imprisoned thousands, including hundreds of writers and journalists” and has

“effectively ended freedom of speech as we know it”.

Dündar was editor-in-chief of Turkey’s Cumhuriyet newspaper, and writes of having been sentenced to solitary confinement in November 2015 after reporting on illegal Turkish arms shipments. Biteback has signed UK rights.

Mollaoglu’s Kalem Agency celebrated the opening of the Fair with a large party in Frankfurt on Tuesday night, and instructed partygoers to wear something red. Erdogan’s crackdown was the main topic of conversation, and several key figures in the Turkish publishing community (all of whom declined to be named) reported that censorship in the country was rampant. Scores of

publishers have been closed as well.

Frankfurt’s Boos noted that it was just eight years ago when Turkey had been the guest of honour at Frankfurt, and when Erdogan and Dündar (left) and Boos Nobel laureate out a letter by novelist and Orhan Pamuk had shared a rights activist Asli Erdogan stage. The Fair’s opening that had been smuggled out of ceremony on Tuesday night prison. “Conscience is being featured a speech by the European Parliament President trampled upon in my country… they are trying to Martin Schulz, who proclaimed his “full solidarity” kill off truth,” she wrote. Late on Wednesday, French literary with “all authors and agent Pierre Astier hosted a journalists languishing in “meeting of solidarity” in Turkish jails”. Heinrich which Can Dündar read a Riethmueller, who runs the proclamation calling for German Publishers and Erdogan’s release.

Booksellers Association, read

Charkin: IPA supportive In a talk at the Publishing Perspectives stage, International Publishers Association president Richard Charkin, Executive Director of UK Publisher Bloomsbury, said that the situation in Turkey was of grave concern, and that the international publishing community stood in solidarity with Turkish publishers.

Charkin visited Turkey

earlier this month, and released a statement on the IPA website condemning the government’s actions. “If the government continues its vengeful persecution of any individual or organisation whose views differ from its own,” he observed in that statement, “then Turkish publishing, and the country’s creative industries as a whole risk decimation.”

Charkin also defended last year’s decision to extend IPA membership to Saudi Arabia and China, a move that has generated criticism among members concerned with state censorship and abuses in those countries. He stressed that the two nations were admitted by a member vote, and argued that engagement was the most effective path forward.

inside: Fantasy in Vogue

Big Rights deals

Rights Meeting

Translation

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The Markets International Insights

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Thursday 20 October 2016

Frankfurt show daily

Two fantasy debuts nabbed in major deals

By Rachel Deahl Two fantasy series–one YA, and one adult–that sold in high six-figure deals just before the Frankfurt Book Fair are drawing notice from foreign houses in Germany.

The first, a YA trilogy called Ash Princess, was just acquired by Delacorte Press.

The other, which is set in the Laura Sebastian Middle East and opens with a title called Daevabad: The City of Brass, was nabbed at auction by Voyager in a joint US/UK acquisition.

Krista Marino at Delacorte won North American rights to Ash Princess at the end of last week, after a heated auction, paying a high six-figure advance for three books.

The author, Laura Sebastian, who grew up in South Florida and works at New York City’s Housing Works Bookstore, was represented by Laura Biagi at the Jean V Naggar Literary Agency.

Biagi said the series was “perfect for fans” of An Ember in the Ashes and Red Queen, as well as those “who root for Sansa’s grit on Game of Thrones”. It follows a princess who, at age six, sees her country invaded and her mother, the queen, murdered. A decade later the princess, who has remained in hiding in the guise of a commoner, joins rebel forces who bid to overthrow the usurpers. The Naggar agency has received a number of offers from foreign publishers, among them houses in the UK, France and Germany.

SA Chakraborty’s Daevabad: The City of Brass was bought, jointly, by Priyanka Krishnan at Harper’s Voyager imprint in the US and Emma Coode at Voyager UK. Agent Jennifer Azantian, who has her own shingle, represented the author, selling world rights to the three books. The

To contact Frankfurt Show Daily at the Fair, please visit us at the Publishers Weekly stand in Hall 6.0, D42 Publisher: Joseph Murray BookBrunch Publisher: Tobias Steed Editors: Andrew Albanese, Nicholas Clee, Neill Denny Reporters: Jasmin Kirkbride, Ed Nawotka Project Coordinator: Bryan Kinney Layout and Production: Heather McIntyre Editorial Coordinator (UK): Marian Sheil Tankard

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auction for the series involved seven editors, Azantian said, and happened within four days of her sending the book out on submission.

Krishnan said she was beguiled by the way Chakraborty’s epic fantasy drew upon “the history of the Mughal Empire, the Sunni-Shia conflict, Persian and Indian folklore, and Islamic tradition to create this wonderfully rich world; it feels relevant to current events, and yet it’s action-packed, delicious escapist storytelling at its best”.

Chakraborty is from Queens, New York, and has published her short fiction in a number of literary magazines; she’s also an organiser of the Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers’ group. Azantian found her through a literary Twitter event called #DVpit, hosted by the Bent Agency’s Beth Phelan.

Rights in brief National Book Award finalist and New Yorker senior writer Alan Burdick is back with his first book in a decade, Why Time Flies: A Mostly Scientific Exploration, billed as a “witty, graceful, and intimate exploration” of the clocks that tick inside us all. The book was acquired by Alice Mayhew at Simon & Schuster in the US, and will appear in January 2017. Burdick is represented by Flip Brophy at Sterling Lord. Rights have already been sold in Germany.

Faber UK and Farrar Straus US have signed The Secret Life, a new work of non-fiction by Andrew O’Hagan (agent Peter Straus at Rogers, Coleridge & White). Rights have also gone to McClelland & Stewart (Canada) and Adelphi (Italy). The Secret Life (June 2017) is about three people: Julian Assange (whose memoirs O’Hagan was hired to ghost write); Satoshi Nakamoto, the elusive inventor of Bitcoin; and Ronald Pinn​–who does not exist at all, except in the furthest, darkest reaches of O’Hagan’s internet use. Lee Brackstone at Faber said that the book was “destined to become a classic of contemporary non-fiction”.

Andrea Henry at Transworld has bought UK & Commonwealth rights from HarperCollins US to Driving Miss Norma: One Family’s Journey Saying “Yes” to Living by Tim Bauerschmidt and Ramie Liddle. It is the story–which attracted more than 500,000 followers on Facebook– of nonagenarian Norma Bauerschmidt, who after being diagnosed with cancer soon after the death of her husband of 67 years, took a road across the US in a 36-foot RV with her son Tim, his wife Ramie, and their poodle, Ringo.

Juliet Mabey at Oneworld has signed two books by Argentine writer Samanta Schweblin, who was selected as one of Granta’s 22 best Spanish language writers under 35. Oneworld has UK and Commonwealth rights from Hal Fesenden at Riverhead to Schweblin’s debut novel Fever Dream (due March 2017), and her short-story collection, Birds in the Mouth. Both books will be translated by Megan McDowell. Rights have been sold in seven international territories. Fever Dream is a dark novella narrated by a woman in a coma, attempting to piece together how she came to be there.

Seven Days Of Us (Piatkus, September 2017), a debut by Francesca Hornak, has been sold to Ullstein in Germany for a five-figure sum and to Mondadori in Italy. Andy Hine, Rights Director at Little, Brown, said: “We’re very excited about this title… we have a substantial offer on the table in Norway and heaps of interest.” The novel was signed in the UK by Emma Beswetherick.

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Frankfurt show daily

Thursday 20 October 2016

Frankfurt Rights Meeting focuses on underrepresented languages; ‘sell to the US last’ The annual rights meeting at the Frankfurt Book Fair, previously known as the Rights Directors Meeting and a fixture of the Fair for 30 years, was this year simply Frankfurt Rights Meeting–no doubt a reflection of the Frankfurt Book Fair’s purchase of UK-based rights platform IPR License earlier this year. Showcasing the theme of “surprising successes in challenging times”, the event opened with some rather anodyne advice from rights consultant Kris Kliemann about how to further exploit your backlist–ie. look for backlist rights that can be pegged to the news cycle–while John Donatich, Director of Yale University Press, followed by offering an overview of the US translation publishing landscape.

Donatich began by suggesting that US translation was “opening up to more minor languages or under-represented people”.

Affirming that there remained numerous small US publishers dedicated to literary translation, such as New Directions, Dalkey Archive, and Archipelago Books, Donatich noted that the most prolific publisher of translated fiction in the US was Amazon Crossing. “Metadata is really hard to find about translation, because databases don’t demand this information,” he said.

“Ultimately, when you look at literature and poetry translation, you see the statistics indicate just 0.7% in the United States is literary translation, while in comparison, in France it is 14%.”

In reaction to this dire statistic, Anne-Solange Noble, rights director of France’s Gallimard–speaking from the front row of the audience–suggested that perhaps the best strategy to approaching the US market was to “sell to them last”. “If you sell to a lot of countries, then perhaps the US will then take notice.”

The focus shifted to Europe, where Hungarian publisher Bence Sárközy discussed the unexpected success of his six-year-old

Libri Publishing House; Anne Bergman-Tahon of the Federation of European Publishers in Belgium touted the relevance of the annual European Union Prize for Literature; and French literary agent Pierre Astier touted the merits of working in more esoteric languages. He cited the example of Goce Smilevski, who won the European Union prize in 2010 for Freud’s Sister. “We got the idea from the translator from Macedonian to French, Maria Bejanowska. And we sold the rights of Freud’s Sister for 25 languages and it is now on sale in 35 countries.”

PubMatch v2 ready

PubMatch has continued its development of its online Rights Platform with the upcoming release of Pubmatch v2. According to PubMatch founder Jon Malinowski, the new version–set for launch in the first quarter of 2017–will enable every member to create their own facing on Pubmatch (a website within a website) for featured titles, news, offerings, and other features.

Agents and authors can choose to be totally invisible on the web, or can choose to send clients a password to view their latest offerings or to securely download galleys or files.

Pubmatch’s proprietary Catalog Generation Tool will be enhanced to make it easier and faster to create rights catalogs on the fly in four formats simultaneously (Word, pdf, Excel and HTML). The Rights@Pubmatch transaction tool will also be improved to make it easier to sell backlist titles as well. “After eight years of development, Pubmatch v2 has morphed into online marketing and sales software for the management of rights year round,” Malinowski said. “Agents have been telling us that the need for a rights database is imperative to compete in the rights world today.”

Film awards

Michael Pietsch (left), Hachette Group CEO, and Tim Hely Hutchinson, Hachette UK CEO, are pictured at the group’s party, the traditional eve-of-Fair gathering.

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Frankfurt has named Nocturnal Animals, Tom Ford’s film version of Austin Wright’s novel Tony & Susan (Grand Central/ Atlantic), as the outstanding film adaptation of a literary work. In the children’s category, the award has gone to Ma Vie de Courgette, Claude Barras’ stop-motion animated film of a novel by Gilles Paris.

Ma Vie de Courgette was shown at the Cannes Film Festival and is Switzerland’s official entry for the Foreign Film category of the 2017 Academy Awards.

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Frankfurt show daily

Thursday 20 October 2016

The Markets puts spotlight on global opportunities The second iteration of Frankfurt’s The Markets: Global Publishing Summit took place on Tuesday, Ed Nawotka writes. It is the opening event of the Fair’s premium events space dubbed “The Business Club”, and offers insight into seven publishing markets around the world. This year, the UK was the most robust market, and was of interest to most because of the consternation over Brexit. But those coming to The Markets do so largely out of curiosity to explore developing markets, which this year included the United Arab Emirates, the Philippines, and Poland. The Frankfurt Guest of Honour, The Netherlands and Flanders, was represented, as well as two established markets that have suffered setbacks in recent years, Spain and Brazil.

For many markets, a moment in the Frankfurt spotlight was an opportunity to educate audiences. For example, it is unlikely many in attendance were aware that “just 40 years ago, half the population of the UAE was illiterate”, said Walid Aradi of Tahseen Consulting in Dubai, “and today that is just 1%.” The country imports more than $100m in books a year, largely education and textbooks, and all in English (currently, the UK dominates the import market there, though the US is expected to overtake it this decade).

Ala’ Al Sallal is the founder and CEO of Jamalon, a Dubai-based online retailer known as “the Amazon.com of the Arab world”. He noted that, following the troubles that have hit Egypt, the UAE now rivalled Lebanon as the home of Arabic books. His own firm has added POD services to help some 3,000 publishers in the region, reaching new markets by reducing production and distribution costs.

With the Philippines in the spotlight this year, more than 40 representatives from the country’s publishing industry made the trip–the largest constituency ever. Among those was Andrea Pasion-Flores, the nation’s only literary agent, as well as Alvin Juban, President of the Game Developers Association of the Philippines, who joked that the country of 100 million people had become “fatalistic” about its place in the world, and about the fact that the country’s best known export was domestic labour. “But, I am here to tell you, we are the future,” he said, noting that the Philippines had the highest rate of internet consumption in the world, at some six-and-a-half hours a day. “Can you imagine what that does to productivity in the workplace?” he joked–and by extension, what the opportunity might be for content creators.

As always, innovation remains a byword when it comes to those discussing “the future” of publishing, The Markets had its share of digerati. But it was Antwerp-based mobile developer Jef van der Avoort of Squirl–an app that adds an augmented story layer to maps facilitating book discovery– who stood out from the crowd, not only for his bright orange shirt emblazoned with his company’s logo, but in noting that he was “an outsider” who came to the book business from Lego, where he worked in marketing. “What surprises me,” he said, “is that this is the only industry I know where the people who work in it consume more of their product that do the consumers themselves. Everyone here is a book lover. Our challenge [as an industry] is in reaching the people who are not book lovers.”

Rights in brief Head of Zeus has signed Mike Cooper’s The Downside, winner of the $25,000 MysteriousPress.com Award, after helping to select it in conjunction with fellow Mysterious Press publishing partner Open Road and four other houses in Europe and Asia. Publication will be next year.

The novel stars cyber criminal Finn, newly released from prison and broke, and involved in a job that requires cracking the most heavily guarded private vault in North America. Boston-based Cooper has won a Shamus Award, a Thriller nomination, and inclusion in Best American Mystery Stories. His most recent novel is Full Ratchet (Viking).

Charles Spicer at St Martin’s Press has signed a new book by Helen Rappaport, author of The Romanov Sisters and the upcoming Caught In The Revolution. In The Race to Save the Romanovs, Rappaport tackles one of the few remaining mysteries of the Russian Revolution–the failure of plans to prevent the execution of the Romanov imperial family.

Publication will be in 2018, the centenary of the Russian Revolution and of the murders. The agent is Caroline Michel of Peters, Fraser & Dunlop.

Anna-Sophia Watts at the Bodley Head has bought No Brainer, in which neuroscientist Gina Rippon will debunk the notion of the male and female brain. Bodley Head has world English rights from Maggie Hanbury at the Hanbury Agency. Rippon, who is based at the Aston Brain Centre at Aston University in Birmingham, argues that brains reflect the world they grow up in, not the sex of their owners. Watts said: “No Brainer will be an exciting, accessible book with huge repercussions for the gender debate, for education, for parenting and for how we identify ourselves.”

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Jenny Parrot at Point Blank, the new literary crime imprint at Oneworld, has signed two novels by Will Dean from Kate Burke at Diane Banks Associates.

Point Blank has UK and Commonwealth rights. Sweet Rot (2018) and Red Snow (2019) star a deaf Swedish journalist, Tuva Moodyson, who finds herself in the middle of a serial killer’s web. Parrott said: “Will is a fantastic new British writer with a wonderful voice and a deliciously dark view of the world, who gives us a fresh take on Swedish noir. He writes addictively, and I defy anyone to read Sweet Rot and think of an ice cube tray in quite the same way ever again.”

Jo Fletcher at Jo Fletcher Books (Quercus) has signed Into a Darkening Sky, described as “Hustle set in space”, by Dom Dulley. Quercus has world rights through Ian Drury at Sheil Land. The novel stars Aurelia Kent, a young space grifter who learned from the best conman in the quadrant–her father. When she and her father are betrayed, she finds herself with only an obsolete ship to help her as she battles to save the solar system. Fletcher said: “Not since I bought Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space have I been so excited about a space opera: it’s high time we had a new Stainless Steel Rat running around the skies.”

Anthony Horowitz is to bring his teenage hero Alex Rider out of retirement in a new novel for Walker Books. Jane Winterbotham at Walker signed UK, Commonwealth and English language export rights in Never Say Die (June 2017) through Jonathan Lloyd at Curtis Brown.

Horowitz is busy: he is also writing a new James Bond sequel (Cape) and two detective novels for Century/Arrow. The storyline of Never Say Die will follow that of Alex’s “final” adventure, Scorpia Rising.

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Thursday 20 October 2016

Making connections: the Frankfurt Fellowship As Germany’s publishing industry is spread across multiple cities, any attempt to try to get to grips with it is impossible without something of a grand tour–a happy fact for those lucky enough to take part in the annual Frankfurt Fellowship, writes Anna Kelly.

In October 2015 a group of 18 Fellows travelled to Cologne, Berlin and Frankfurt. We represented an impressive spread of nationalities: as well as Western European countries and the US, there were publishers from China, India, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Georgia, Russia, Anna Kelly Indonesia, Turkey and South Africa.

Near the beginning of the Fellowship we had a day to introduce ourselves and the particularities of our market to the other Fellows. Did you know that France is the world’s second biggest consumer of Manga, after Japan? Or that the Georgian language is written in a unique and beautiful script, all elegant loops and curls, which isn’t shared by any other language in the world? Imagine the distribution challenges for publishers in Indonesia, which comprises more than 13,000 islands. Or, how different the publishing landscape is in a country with as many languages as India.

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Enriched with international context, we turned to the publishing scene in our host country. We visited an array of different publishers in Germany–from famous houses like S. Fischer, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Dumont and Suhrkamp, to smaller independents. One timely highlight was visiting Matthes & Seitz in Berlin, an indie with a distinctive aesthetic and a discerning list, which was riding high on a golden moment: Frank Witzel’s novel The Invention of the Red Army Faction by a ManicDepressive Teenager in the Summer of 1969 had just won the Deutscher Buchpreis, which in Germany must have felt very similar to Oneworld’s triumphant Man Booker win with Marlon James in the same year.

As we talked to publishers from Cologne to Berlin, established and young, literary and commercial, I found it interesting to consider the balance of tradition and change. In some ways the German publishing industry gives the impression of being more at liberty to enjoy continuity, a certain way of doing things, than we are in the UK. Thanks to the fixed book price, the hardback market is still strong. Readers happily pay to listen to long author readings, and the combination of Germany’s excellent printers and the lack of aggressive discounting seems to mean that even debut literary novels often boast luxurious production values– with printed endpapers, twelve different types of foil and perhaps a holographic ribbon, just because.

The identity of publishers such as Suhrkamp and S. Fischer is tied up very closely with tradition and prestige, and at Fischer we talked about founder Samuel Fischer’s publishing philosophy, namely that publishers should direct readers to what they should be reading, rather than respond to the demands of the market. On the other end of the spectrum we visited Bastei Lübbe in Cologne, a commercially orientated large independent, which bought self-publishing platform Bookrix in 2014, and talked enthusiastically about digital strategies. Germany’s publishing geography is also undeniably changing slightly in response to Berlin’s increasing importance as a cultural centre. Suhrkamp moved their offices from Frankfurt to Berlin in 2010, and Hanser, based mainly in Munich, set up a sister branch, Hanser Berlin, in 2011.

Last year feels a long time ago already and it’s been an eventful year for many of the countries represented on the Fellowship. In some cases the events have had or will have a direct impact on publishing: the fallout of Brexit is yet to be seen; the many tragic terrorist attacks in France have affected its bookshops, among everything else; and Turkey, at the time of writing, has seen the closure of 29 publishers as well as news agencies, TV companies and magazines. But spending a week travelling with a group of people from all over the world is a very rare opportunity, and one of the effects of the Fellowship for me has been that during this tumultuous year, the rest of the world has felt a tiny bit closer, a little more connected. ■ Anna Kelly is Commissioning Editor at 4th Estate.

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Frankfurt show daily

Thursday 20 October 2016

New for international publishers at BEA As the industry’s major trade shows continue to evolve to meet the changing business landscape, writes Jim Milliot, Reed Exhibition executives are making significant alterations to BookExpo America. Next year’s event will return to New York City’s Javits Center after a one-year trip to Chicago. The BEA trade show will run 31 May to 2 June with the consumeroriented BookCon set for 3-4 June.

Although the trade show will run for three days, the exhibition floor will only be open 1-2 June. The opening day will be devoted to conferences, of which a new Global Market Forum will be a part. Brien McDonald, general manager of BEA, said unlike previous years in which one country was highlighted, the new global forum will include four or five countries that will be featured in different venues during a Wednesday track.

Reed is looking to create sessions in which publishing leaders from different countries can present information that US and other attendees can act on. Roundtables and other interactive sessions are in the works. “We are looking to develop more interaction between publishers,” McDonald says. BEA has a team of people at the Frankfurt Book Fair talking to potential participants for 2017.

To help international publishers deal with setting up their booths, Reed is offering a turnkey package that will include furnishings and other amenities, leaving publishers with only the

task of adding their books and other content to their booths; it will ease the burden of publishers getting off of a plane who then need to oversee the set-up of their booths, McDonald says.

McDonald is also hoping that international publishers will take advantage of the two-day BookCon. The consumer-facing event gives international publishers the opportunity to showcase authors that they think may be ready to breakout in the US, he says.

Countries can also use BookCon to highlight different aspects of their culture beyond books, McDonald says, pointing to the extensive displays that China put together in 2015.

Rights Center move Some other tweaks being made for international publishers include moving the international rights center to the show floor level to make for easier travel for agents and publishers. Reed is also working on setting up offsite events for overseas publishers.

International publishers account for about 20% of the exhibit floor space and McDonald wants to make sure the new reinvented BEA/BookCon combination continues to draw people to New York. He is optimistic that with the London Book Fair set for the middle of March rather than its traditional April slot, international publishers will see the extra time as an opportunity to check out the reimagined New York event. ■

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Thursday 20 October 2016

Korea: The Han Kang effect

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have been surprised if Bogie and Bacall had walked in.

Next hot publishing city photo: Stephanie Massey

Han Kang’s victory at the Man Booker International Prize this year was like Mount Vesuvius exploding, writes Barbara Zitwer.

It was a magnificent culmination of 12 years of hard work with Joseph Lee and our “dream team” of international co-agents.

The effects were instantaneous, and are having a positive effect on Korean books and the way Korea is viewed, around the world and in Korea too. International publishers are clamouring for Korean books–and English export sales editions of Korean authors are selling like hotcakes in Korea. Korean books around the world are earning out their advances, and royalties are rolling in.

The Seoul Book Fair this year hosted more foreign agents and editors than ever before.

For the first time, several major British agencies came to Seoul looking for Korean books. The Italian Ambassador’s yearly, endof-the-Fair party at his residence reeked of old-time Hollywood glamour: I wouldn’t

Barbara Zitwer

“More copies of the English edition of The Vegetarian sold in Korea than in the United States.”

So it’s easy to predict that Seoul will be the next hot book fair and publishing city.

Boasting the fastest internet in the world, fabulous food, spectacular shopping and ancient landmarks juxtaposed with sleek modern skyscrapers, Buddhist temples, exotic face creams, outstanding beauty, and an atmosphere free of metal detectors, security checks and armed guards, as well as with reasonable prices, Seoul is a true haven.

Nature is everywhere. And I found that harmony and respect for nature are not just found in Korean literature, but it is how Koreans live day-by-day. I think a new paradigm for international publishing is being established; who wouldn’t want to plug into the biggest market in the world?

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Thursday 20 October 2016

Since the Booker win, the Korean f Continued from page 12 edition of The Vegetarian jumped Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, from having sold 20,000 copies in Malaysia, Japan, China and all of 12 years to sales of 600,000 copies.

Asia are reachable from Seoul. And The synergy between American, Koreans are like us: they are British and Korean publishing was a democratic and open minded. It is fascinating revelation. In bookstores so easy and natural, and a great authors such as Kyoung-Sook Shin, pleasure doing business there. We Sun-mi Hwang, Ji Young Gong and may speak in different tongues; but others are seeing their English we speak the same language. translations selling alongside their The export sales market for Soldiers taking part in the Seoul Book Fair Korean editions as never before.

English-language books is fertile Huge displays of English-language books are everywhere. and booming in Korea, and all over Asia. It is potentially Korean readers want to buy the English-language export the biggest English-language market for Korean books in editions of their Korean authors and they want to own both the world. More copies of the English edition of The languages. This is a phenomenon that is very Korean, Vegetarian sold in Korea than in the United States, and offering new business opportunities to all WEL publishers. sales in Korea of the English editions of The Hen Who Export sales used to be the orphan of the publishing world.

Dreamed She Could Fly (Sun-Mi Hwang) and Please Look Not anymore.

After Mom (Kyung-Sook Shin) were in the tens of thousands. As much as we are discovering Korean books, Korean and Asian readers are discovering Korean books Integral to society through the English-language editions. Koreans are making At the Seoul Book Fair, I did a double take: a reproduction major bestsellers out of some of their best writers only after of an army barracks had been erected, with live soldiers they are published in English. sitting and reading. Soldiers reading. That’s Korea, and more than anything else I saw at the Fair, this image stays in my mind as a cultural epiphany, teaching me how integral books are to Korean society.

The complexity of the issue of North Korea, and how the South Koreans deal with their divided country, is absolutely mind-blowing, mysterious and evolving. The South Koreans seem so blocked about the North that next March, when Bandi’s The Accusation is published, I think they will be challenged and confronted for the first time ever. Over and over, after I met Mr Chogabje (Bandi’s publisher) and Mr Do (the activist who arranged to smuggle out The Accusation), I kept thinking about the power of books–that: “The pen is mightier than the sword.” Books such as Dr Zhivago or the works of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn were groundbreaking and helped change the world. Could it be possible that The Accusation could help free North Korea?

Making the New York Times bestseller list was not what my clients where after; and it seems a snap compared to helping re-unify their country. Never in my wildest dreams could I imagine my journey as a literary agent would lead me to such an endeavour. The Accusation has already been smuggled back into the North and is spreading the seeds.

The World English-language and foreign publications in 16 languages next spring might be an earth-shaking event that makes the seemingly impossible, possible. I feel rumblings, because Seoul, I found out, truly is the place where dreams can come true. Mine did!

■ Barbara Zitwer is literary agent for Han Kang and for The Accusation by Bandi, whose work has been smuggled out of North Korea. Her own novel, When the Sea Belonged to Us, is being sold by Christine Green at the Fair; Aufbau Verlag will publish it in Spring 2017.

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Thursday 20 October 2016

Scholarly stars!

“There’s no red carpet or paparazzi… But highlighting academic discovery is important.”

The work of scholarly publishers is not glamorous: there’s no red carpet or paparazzi’s flashing cameras, writes John A Jenkins. But highlighting academic discovery is important, and the scholarly community does this each year through the PROSE Awards.

Given each year by the professional and scholarly publishing division of the Association of American Publishers, the PROSE Awards have grown steadily. Since the Awards began in 1976, there have been more than 15,000 submissions, and more than 1,000 awards given out. Last year there were a record 551 entries, including books, reference works, journals and electronic products.

We expect at least as many entries for 2016–and possibly more–highlighting the year’s best academic publications as judged by their peer publishers, librarians, academics and medical professionals. If you’re a publisher invested in creating profound research that opens up readers to new observations, we encourage you to enter for one of our 59 awards this year–we are accepting submissions until 31 October, so there’s still time to submit an entry at www.proseawards.com.

Winning a PROSE Award not only adds your name to some of the most impressive in the industry, it helps to spur interest in the work we do. And, in turn, the PROSE Awards are doing more than ever before to recognise the winners.

For example, this year we will feature a short film that takes an in-depth look at the life of last year’s top winner, Aldon D Morris, to learn more about him and what inspired his winning work, The Scholar Denied: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology (University of California Press). Many know Du Bois for his writing, but with his book Morris sets the record straight on Du Bois, whose theoretical systems were not accepted by the mainstream during his time.

The film explores Morris’s experiences growing up in the Jim Crow South and follows him on his own journey of self-discovery through his work on W.E.B. Du Bois’ life and legacy, exploring the current state of African-American studies, while uncovering parallels between the lives of Morris and Du Bois.

The film will debut at the annual PROSE Awards ceremony, where this year’s winners will also be revealed during a luncheon at the professional and scholarly publishing division’s annual conference, on 2 February in Washington, DC. There may not be paparazzi, but the stars of the scholarly publishing world will be there.

■ John A Jenkins is President and Publisher Emeritus of CQ Press, Founder and CEO of Law Street Media and the 2017 PROSE Awards Chairman.

16

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Thursday 20 October 2016

By the numbers–a surge in tra The number of books translated and published in English has jumped a hefty 51% in recent years, writes Chad Post, drawing on data from the Translation Database at Three Percent. In practical terms, there are now around 180 more books in translation published every year than just half a decade ago, a sharp increase and Chad Post certainly an encouraging sign for international literature.

So, what’s driving the surge, or more to the point, which publishers are driving the surge? A big part of the boom can be traced to Amazon. Over the past six years, Amazon’s translation programme, AmazonCrossing, has published 237 books in translation, more than any other press, with Dalkey Archive coming in a distant second with 192.

And though one might have expected the Big Five publishers to use their resources (and their clout as global publishers) to seek out and uncover high-profile international authors–especially after a spate of breakout international bestsellers in recent years including works by Roberto Bolaño, Stieg Larsson, and, more recently, Karl Ove Knausgaard and Elena Ferrante–that absolutely hasn’t happened. Looking at the top 20 publishers of translated books, independent, non-profit, university publishers and, of course, AmazonCrossing, accounted for 84% of the translations published in 2014-16. And that share is actually increasing, up from 72% from 2008-10, and 79% in 2011-13.

In fact, of all the successes mentioned above (and you could throw in Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog as well), not one of these authors has been originally published by a large corporate house. Overwhelmingly, it is smaller presses that are discovering the future big names of world literature–something most everyone knows, but that can never be acknowledged enough.

A data milestone Next year the Translation Database at Three Percent will hit a milestone: it will have collected ten years of data on the translation market in fiction and poetry, including information on publisher, translator, author and translator gender, price, publication month, language and country of origin. On the eve of this anniversary, I took a look at the nearly nine years of data currently tracked in the database (acknowledging that 2016 may be somewhat incomplete) to spotlight some trends.

To make the data a little more digestible, I broke them into three-year periods: 2008-10, 2011-13 and 2014-16.

First observation: as noted above, the sheer number of translated books published each year is growing sharply. In 2008-10 there were 1,066 books in translation published, rising to 1,381 in 2011-13, and 1,614 so far from 2014-16. But what’s not quite so encouraging is that almost all of that growth comes from fiction,

Visit us at Hall 4.2 - Stand J72 Thursday 20 October 2016

in translations with poetry remarkably static. There were 233 poetry collections published in 2008-10; 239 in 2011-13; and 239 so far in 2014-16.

Another worrisome trend: the percentage of books in translation written by women remains far too low. In 2008-10, only 25% of the fiction and poetry published in translation was written by women. This rose slightly to 27% from 201113, and now sits at just 31% for 2014-16, which is appalling.

Perhaps this will start to change with the success of Elena Ferrante and recent public awareness campaigns (various online hashtag campaigns have called for a “year of publishing only women”). We’ll be watching the data closely.

There has also been little change in where translated works are coming from. There’s an expectation among journalists, reviewers, editors and translators, that publishers will start scouring countries after a big book breaks–for example, Italy for the next Elena Ferrante. The data, however, does not bear this out.

French, Spanish and Germany are numbers one through three in each of the three-year windows in terms of the most translated languages. And in fact, most of the top ten most-translated languages have remained pretty much the same. The main exceptions in terms of growth (at least among the mosttranslated languages) have been Swedish (rising from 39 in 2008-10, to 70) and Chinese (rising from 35 in 2008-10, to 64).

The next decade Although the data we’ve collected over the last decade represents just a sliver of the history of literature in translation, the Translation Database at Three Percent is a vital resource, providing raw data for researchers or publishing professionals to spot trends and make larger statements about international literature in our time, and culture. And, it is now the only one of its sort in the world, given the shutdown of UNESCO’s Index Translationum.

Which leads to a question: what other uses and what other kinds of data would be useful to see included in the database? For example, what impact do translators have on whether or not a book gets published in translation? Some languages tend to have only a handful of professional translators, for example, which may explain why some books never find their way into English.

In that same vein, what is the impact of genre on whether or not a book is translated? Are publishers overlooking works of science fiction, romance or horror with high sales potential in order to focus solely on “literary” works? And how do sales correlate with publisher? With language or country of origin? What is the effect of a bestselling work in translation on future publications, and how long does it take for these impacts to show up? Some of these suggestions would require coding new information into the existing database–but nothing’s impossible, especially if the potential results would be interesting and/or beneficial.

If this sort of trend analysis excites you, please do get in touch. As the database’s 10-year anniversary approaches, I am already looking forward to 20 years–and a resource more interactive, and vital than ever.

■

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Chad W Post is the Publisher of Open Letter Books at the University of Rochester.

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Thursday 20 October 2016

Poland: LBF Market Focus 2017 While we extend a warm welcome to all our publishing friends in Flanders and the Netherlands here at Frankfurt, please allow me to divert your gaze a little further to the east–to Poland, which is Market Focus at the London Book Fair (LBF) next year, writes Jacks Thomas.

This culturally rich country is both familiar and unknown. While Polksi sklep (Polish shop) may be a familiar sight on many UK high streets–and the Polish diaspora a familiar part of society across Europe–in the UK our knowledge of the country itself, and especially Jacks Thomas its writers, remains limited. Beyond a few household names like Joseph Conrad and Czeslaw Milosz, people might struggle to name five Polish authors.

All of which means, of course, that the need for Poland to be Market Focus at LBF is greater than ever. Polish publishers recognise that the LBF is the gateway to the English market and they want more exposure for Polish writers around the world; international publishers want the opportunity to hear new voices, even more so when the Polish diaspora grows all the time.

This will be our 13th year of running the Market Focus initiative, the aim of which remains boosting knowledge of

publishing in other countries and facilitating the flow of books and ideas in an increasingly global industry.

The Polish book industry is fascinating.

Operating in a free market economy since 1989, Poland sells around 106m books a year, and while almost 50% of book purchases are still made in bricks-and-mortar bookshops, its ebook market, which was valued at £10m in 2014, grew substantially by 16.5% on the previous year.

Foreign literature occupies a market share of 20.5%, making the country of great interest to foreign publishers. A debate is currently underway concerning the introduction of a fixed price system in order to protect bookshops and introduce stability into the market; and there are familiar concerns over levels of book readership given the temptations and distractions of today’s electronic devices.

While in Poland in the summer, I was lucky enough to be introduced to some of the great initiatives underway to get people reading ebooks, as well as experiencing some of the nicest bricks-and-mortar bookshops I have seen. Working with our partners at the British Council and the Polish Book Institute, I know that the programme of cultural events running alongside next year’s Market Focus will be specjalny (special). Publishers will have the opportunity to meet and hear from a wide range of contemporary Polish writers who will be coming to London and taking part in events both in the capital and further afield.

Professional programme The professional programme, organised by LBF and the Publishers Association, will provide an essential insight into the Polish publishing industry and highlight mutual business opportunities. It will also show the Polish market’s importance in the wider context of international publishing.

After Frankfurt I am very much looking forward to joining the fact-finding trip to the Conrad Festival in Kraków, which leads into the Kraków Book Festival, itself celebrating its 20th anniversary. The trip is organised by the British Council and will include booksellers, publishers, agents and festival directors; it will prove invaluable in the planning and evolution of the 2017 LBF Market Focus programme.

The Conrad Festival will play host this year to Man Booker winners Eleanor Catton and Richard Flanagan, as well as Michael Cunningham from the US and Michael Faber from the UK, among others–more than demonstrating its status on the world stage. I am also looking forward to “The Book Industries”, a series of talks and discussions involving critics, editors, publishers and booksellers to be held in the wonderfully named bookstore De Revolutionibus in Kraków.

Meanwhile, the LBF Market Focus Poland bus itself is getting ready to leave–we look forward to welcoming you on board. ■ Jacks Thomas is Director of the London Book Fair, which next takes place 14-16 March 2017, in Olympia, London.

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Challenges and opportunities post Brexit There is an enormous amount to be optimistic about in UK publishing, writes Stephen Lotinga. The sector continues to go from strength to strength, but there are of course challenges in sustaining that. One of the major concerns at the moment, held in common with many other UK businesses, comes from the continuing uncertainty about what the recent Brexit vote will actually mean for our members, and relations with the rest of the world.

Stephen Lotinga Government ministers are leaving British business in no doubt that “Brexit will mean Brexit”, even if there are financial consequences. However, getting clarity as to what that actually means beyond rhetoric is difficult so early on.

During the EU Referendum Campaign many people predicted that if the UK voted to exit the EU there would be enormous damage done to the UK economy. The commonly held belief was that such a shock to a fragile recovery could lead to an immediate recession, and that consumer spending and book sales would take a hit. Those predictions have thankfully not come to pass and it would appear that UK consumers are, in the short term at least, more bullish in their shopping habits than many predicted.

What is in absolutely no doubt is that the British public voted on 23rd June to leave the EU and that therefore the UK’s relations with the rest of the world will change.

Whether people agree individually or not with the result of the vote is rather a moot point. The vote has happened, and we must now make sure that we shape and make a success of whatever comes next.

Still optimistic For the Publishers Association (PA) our immediate priority has been to try and ensure that trading conditions remain favourable for our members. In practical terms that means trying to ensure there are no immediate threats to individual businesses from either loss of investment or public funding. Having surveyed our membership, we know that many are still optimistic about the future and more than 70% remain confident enough to continue with their investment plans as before.

Our next priority has been to make the case as to why the UK’s hard fought-for strong copyright framework should remain intact. We need policy makers to understand the damage that would be caused if they listened to the siren calls of certain tech companies, who claim that a new UK economy can blossom through fundamental changes to our laws. We are clear that what they really offer is a barely concealed attempt to profiteer from the endeavour and intellectual property of others.

A further, and related, issue for UK publishing comes from our ongoing concern about the lack of consumer

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choice in the book market, particularly when it comes to ebooks. When we have one dominant player accounting for more than 90% of domestic sales it is hard to imagine how that does not affect choice and innovation, and prevent new entrants coming into the market. The European Commission has of course opened a formal investigation into certain business practices

by Amazon and we’ve been assured that this will continue despite the Referendum vote.

We await progress on this matter, but if that is not forthcoming before we leave then we will have to look at using the UK’s regulatory authorities to resolve this. Whether our domestic authorities will match the EU’s willingness to grapple with such thorny competition issues is yet to be seen.

The UK now has around two years to work out what type of country it wants to be in the longer term. The Referendum vote was held on our membership of the EU, but for some it would seem it was also an opportunity to express a deeper dissatisfaction with immigration and a sense of being left behind by globalisation. If there is an existential threat to publishing from Brexit then this is where it lies as politicians react to demands for a more closed country. In their eagerness to be seen to respond, there is a danger that they restrict access to the talent we need in our businesses, limit the students who fund our universities and put off the investors who help us grow. All of these are vital to the publishing industry.

Variety and diversity We must respond by being clear that one of the main reasons the UK’s creative industries thrive is because of the type of country we are. The English language may have been one of our greatest exports many years ago, but it is the variety and diversity of those who have come to our country which continue to invigorate and sustain us.

If the culture of openness we so often take for granted changes dramatically then I have no doubt there would be an impact on publishing’s capacity to create, to educate and to inform.

While there are of course challenges to any dramatic political shift, there will equally be opportunities that arise from the new freedoms the UK will enjoy. It is inevitable that when agreeing rules and practices with 27 other nation states that compromises for the common benefit must be made. UK publishing has an opportunity to remind people why we have some of the best, most creative and innovative publishing businesses anywhere in the world. We must then make the case as to why certain measures such as tax relief or export support can make us even more successful in the future.

■ Stephen Lotinga is Chief Executive of the Publishers Association.

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Widening publishing horizons So, Brexit. After the UK’s decision was announced on 24th June, the literary community entered a period of hand-wringing, writes Erica Jarnes.

What were we going to do in this horrible new future, where there would (might) be less trade with European houses, where there would (might) be fewer EU subsidies and grants available, where we would (might) need visas to attend Frankfurt Buchmesse?

There has been a lot of uncertainty around, but two things seem clear: where there is love in Erica Jarnes the UK for Europe–from Ferrante Fever to the current craze for hygge–the love will remain and continue to grow; and where the love is absent, it has been absent for a while. The UK is a sadly divided country when it comes to attitudes to the outside world; I think the Brexit vote has revealed this more than it has anything about the workings of the EU. I hope the UK’s experience of the past few months will shake everyone up in this regard and get us actually talking to each other.

The Brexiteers told us–before trying to run away–that this is a golden opportunity to look beyond Europe. There is a whole world out there to do business with! I can certainly agree with them on this point when it comes to translated literature. UK

publishing in translation is heavily weighted towards European books and authors, which is not surprising given that this is an industry built on relationships, and it is easier to form relationships with editorial and rights counterparts who are nearby than those who are far away.

Beyond Europe The few non-European translated writers who have broken out in the UK make a disproportionately large splash precisely because they are so unusual on the scene. I’m thinking of South Korean Man Booker International Prize-winner Han Kang, Colombia’s IMPAC winner Juan Gabriel Vásquez and Kenyan heavyweight Ngugi wa Thiong’o–incidentally all winners of English PEN translation awards. Asian and African writers are still seen as niche in the UK, despite the large numbers of British bookbuyers of Asian and African heritage, not to mention the incredibly rich literary wealth of countries such as Pakistan, Algeria and Senegal, which everyone should have access to.

As usual independent publishers are leading the way and there are a number who proudly emphasise non-European

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talent–among them Saqi/Telegram, Comma Press, Peepal Tree, Cassava Republic, Jacaranda Books, HopeRoad and the recently established Tilted Axis Press, set up by Han Kang’s translator Deborah Smith. Perhaps Brexit can be an invitation to the big players to follow suit.

PEN Presents…

In September English PEN launched the latest round of its “PEN Presents” initiative, which goes to a new region each year to find hot new titles for UK publishers to acquire. Last year the focus was on Europe; this year it is on East and Southeast Asia. The way it works is this: literary translators are invited to submit an author whose work they want to translate into English and develop for publication; the top six books will be presented in a dedicated catalogue at the 2017 London Book Fair, as an exciting list that UK publishers should take seriously. The books (and the translators) will also be featured in the prestigious Asia Literary Review magazine and showcased at a live event in London in June 2017. All six selected translators will also win a small prize. The deadline is Monday 5 December, so please help to spread the word!

At the time of writing, three of the six titles selected for “PEN Presents... Europe” are under discussion with UK publishers. The

hope is that “PEN Presents... East and South-east Asia” will bring to light contemporary writers in Asia–beyond Europe, beyond Murakami, beyond Han Kang–whom UK publishers will welcome onto their lists and whom UK readers will grow to love in years to come. The initiative also aims to foreground the efforts of translators as direct champions for international literature. We need this dedicated and curious cohort now more than ever, and I think we should recognise them at every turn.

By the time you read this I will have made my own exit–I am moving on from PEN to be Managing Director of the Poetry Translation Centre (PTC), a nimble and brilliant organisation that translates poems from Asia, Africa and Latin America into English. The PTC’s Founder and Artistic Director Sarah Maguire says that translation is the life-blood of poetry–and I would extend this to literature in general. Not only does it open readers’ eyes to new stories and perspectives, it actually enriches the way we (readers and writers both) look at our own literature, and even language itself. If we approach the world–and the world of foreign rights–with this mindset, how can we fail to be excited by what lies over the horizon, however Brexit unfolds?

■ Erica Jarnes is the Managing Director of the Poetry Translation Centre.

She previously worked as the Writers in Translation Programme Manager for the literary organisation English PEN.

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Thursday 20 October 2016

Books and reading in the digital age No, the printed word is not dead–in fact, confirms the latest research from the Pew Research Center, print books are showing surprising staying power. But reading still faces stiff challenges from other electronic media, and beyond format changes, the internet has forever changed the way people connect not only to books, but to each other.

Andrew Richard Albanese caught up with Pew Executive Director Lee Rainie to talk about Pew’s latest survey on people’s book reading habits, and the future of reading.

Lee Rainie

AA: I was a little surprised that the media coverage of your latest report focused so much on the finding that print books are still hanging on. Was that a major take-away that you saw here?

LR: Yes, and we stressed it in our write-ups of the findings, in part because it continues to surprise people that printed books have life, which maybe cuts against the conventional wisdom that the printed book is, you know, struggling.

AA: What surprised me most is that we have a boom in ebooks going on, with self-published authors coming into the market, and yet the average number of books read isn’t rising, a trend that runs counter to what we see with other media. Do you get any sense that publishers may be missing an opportunity by not pushing more aggressively into digital books?

LR: I’m not sure about missed opportunities. The fact of the matter is that there’s a large market for books in this country, at least in the sense of people still reading them at minimal levels, and there are a lot of people who read lots of books. And it strikes me that the publishing industry is innovating–the number of genres, formats, and in more ways in which they are marketing and finding pathways to readers. You know, they’re working at it.

AA: But as the number of ebooks being published has exploded, and people can now take libraries around in their pockets, wouldn’t you expect the data to show an increase in the average number of books read with all of this innovation going on?

LR: Yes, when supply increases, you would think that that would affect demand. But of course, this is not taking place in a static universe. The number of other claimants on people’s time and attention is also growing, and book publishers are not just competing against each other, they’re competing with a host of other enterprises that are making pretty compelling pitches to people for their time.

With so many ways people can allocate their time now, I think the surprising thing for us is that books are holding their own.

26

AA: You started looking at people’s reading habits in 2011, and a lot has changed since then. Has the survey evolved too?

LR: Well, we did a quite extensive survey about the state of reading when we began this work in 2011. In 2011, benchmarking was an important thing to do because ebooks were coming of age, and we had just gotten a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to do research that they hoped would be useful to librarians trying to figure out their futures. So we believed that getting a big, rich, broad fix on the state of reading and the state of books in 2011 was a logical starting point for this work.

In subsequent surveys, we haven’t gone into that much detail, in part because our sense is that people’s book reading habits are not changing dramatically year-to-year.

It’s not like their political views, where measuring it with a lot of regularity makes sense because people change as circumstances change. In book reading, year-to-year, there’s not that much change.

One of the things that has changed, however, is the device people are reading on. There is a big uptick in people using tablets and phones, and not so much dedicated ebook readers. So, you have people who are on the move, people who have commutes, and things like that, and are taking along a device that’s makes books accessible to them in circumstances that aren’t classic book-reading circumstances. So now, books can be omnipresent in people’s lives, if they want them to be. And our data are very clear that there is a class of Americans who just can’t get enough books, and if they can’t be with the format they love, they love the format they’re with.

AA: How might you change or augment for future surveys?

LR: It would be fun to do genre-specific queries. I think people want to know much more about what’s going on with romance novels, or with colouring books, science fiction or biographies.

The other thing that I think will show up in our work in years to come is how traditionally book-centred stuff changes with the rise of virtual reality and augmented reality. If you look at the folks who think smartly about the future of books, they’ve been predicting this for a while.

Some publishing houses have given it a little bit of a try. It hasn’t really become enormously compelling yet, but that moment is in our future is my guess. Today people can access factoids, or real-time information, like how to get to somewhere. But also, they can be transported to a much richer world of the imagination. So trying to watch for that and capture the moment when it sort of reaches its tipping point would be something that would be important for us to do.

Thursday 20 October 2016

AA: In 2012, Pew pointed out that ebook

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“It continues to surprise people that printed books have life, which… cuts against the conventional wisdom that the printed book is… struggling.”

readers are a breed apart–they read double the number of books as print readers, on average.

They read more for pleasure, and for research.

And they buy more books. But as the market has changed in recent years–the major publishers have raised prices, for example– ebook sales have declined. Do your data suggest that ebook readership has also stalled?

LR: The word we’ve used is plateau. Stalled isn’t quite right. The growth rate has declined, which is not the same as, you know, measuring ebook consumption through sales statistics.

But our data show that the number of people who are reading ebooks has slowed down just in the last five years. But, again, that’s an interesting part of this story, because, remember back to 2008-20092010, predictions of the death of printed books were fairly abundant, and there was this palpable sense that the disruption was going to be abrupt and complete, and that ebooks would essentially take over the world. That hasn’t happened.

AA: But, if ebook readers are such power readers, as your 2012 data suggested, isn’t this ebook plateau a problem for publishers?

LR: So, there are a lot of reasons why books have staying power. And one of the things we hear when we talk to consumers about print books is that print is a fabulous technology. Ink on a page is amazingly portable, longlasting, sharable. Print is still amazingly attractive to people. And, my general sense is that readers are happy with their pathways to books.

Now, speaking to your earlier notion–that we have this explosion of supply now in an ebook age–ebooks are only one of any number of disruptions that have occurred in the book world over the past generation. But if you look at Gallup numbers, they suggest that the number of book readers overall and the number of books read overall really hasn’t changed all that much. The number of book readers has shrunk a bit, and the number of non-book-readers has grown a bit. That’s there, and it’s meaningful, but it’s not hugely striking. Overall, the story is that through this boom in the supply side of the story, the demand side has been relatively stable.

AA: Beyond your work with Pew, you co-authored a fascinating book called Networked, and I wanted to ask you about that book, because we seem to talk about digital in publishing most often as it relates to the format of ebooks. But the internet has more fundamentally changed the world for books, hasn’t it?

LR: Yeah, so, in the book, our grand argument is that the basic atomic unit of social life in the modern age is

different from the basic unit of social life of days gone by. People today are now living more in loose, far-flung networks, and these looser networks are a different kind of social phenomenon than the tight-knit groups of the past. People today have a lot more relationships–and strands of relationships– than their ancestors did. Today you can be part of a fan group that’s global for a particular author, or genre, and it doesn’t matter whether you find like-minded folks in your local community. You can share what you know with all of those other fans, wherever they are. And that’s a big change in human experience.

Also, there’s this fluidity of connection and contact with relevant things today that is distinct from the past, where people didn’t have the capacity to pick their friends; in the past, your friends came with whoever lived next door. Today you can join groups, and move away from groups at various times, and reignite relationships at times when you’re reminded of them, or when you feel like you have a need. Now, people will wring their hands and say isn’t it awful that people today have these tangential, unimportant strands of relationships? But the other side of that story is that it is really efficient to deal with your relationships today. You don’t have to remember them all the time, but every once in a while, when you express a need on Facebook or Twitter, for example, you get feedback, and learn a greater diversity of things than you ever could get by just saying something over a bar stool at the local tavern.

AA: That feedback loop is key, I believe. Where the internet was once viewed by some as infinite shelf space, understanding and tapping these new networks offers a huge opportunity for publishers, does it not?

LR: There are two ways off the top of my head that I can think of that book publishers might sort of expand their notion of what this networked reality means for them. At the first level, every product can be a community–so if you find an audience for a piece of work, an author, a genre, whatever, you’ve got a built-in fan base and a fan base that you can much more readily identify now than in the past, and once you know who they are and what they want, you can better meet their needs.

The second thing is that in this world where people have to work to learn things and to have their needs met, books– and the knowledge that comes with books–can be really important nodes in people’s networks. You know, people as they try to navigate this ever more complicated world, publishers and librarians serve themselves well by thinking like a friend, by thinking like: “I’m a really smart part of your network. Here’s how I can serve you.”

■

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Frankfurt show daily

Thursday 20 October 2016

Children’s engagement with books In both the UK and the US Nielsen Book Research has, for the past five years, been examining the book reading and buying habits of children and teens in the context of their wider leisure activities, writes Jo Henry. These regular studies examine the role that books play in children’s lives and look at how they are faring against other leisure activities, digital and physical, that are increasingly available.

In the UK study in 2015 it was revealed that nearly twothirds of 0-17s read (or were read to) for pleasure on a weekly basis, with two in five doing so daily, and nearly all doing so at least sometimes. However, the proportion of 0-17s reading weekly had fallen by 1% point in 2015 vs 2014, and was 7% points lower than in 2012. The decrease was seen among girls as well as boys, and was most marked among 3-10s, dropping fastest for boys aged 8-10.

For the first time in 2016 the annual US survey also looked at the proportion of children reading (or being read to) for pleasure. Just over half of those aged 0-12 were doing so on a daily basis, compared to only one in five teens, but this rose to an encouraging 82% of children reading on a weekly basis and nearly half of all teens. In fact, on a weekly basis reading was the third most popular activity for 0-12 year olds (with watching TV at number one). For teens, reading as a leisure activity was in 11th place, well behind such activities as social networking, watching YouTube, watching TV, playing games on smartphones/tablets and playing games online or on a console.

Digital Reading Despite the ubiquity of digital reading devices (more than 80% of American children have access to a smartphone and/or computer in their household, and more than half have access to a tablet device), only around one in five 0-17 year olds in the US are currently using smartphones for e-reading, with a third of 0-12s and two in five teens e-reading on tablets. The UK saw similar levels of e-reading in 2015, with 14% of 0-17s using a smartphone and 31% using a tablet–despite much higher proportions having tablet access in the UK than in the US.

But ebooks still account for very small proportions of purchases of children’s books in both the UK and the US according to Books & Consumers: currently 11% in the US, and around 5% in the UK (though double that for YA purchases alone). And while in the UK the number of children who say that they have ever read a digital book is rising slowly, the proportion who say they have or are interested to do so has remained steady at just over 60% since the first children’s survey five years ago.

A clue as to what might encourage not just digital, but all types of reading, comes from the most recent US survey, which asked parents–and teens–what factors would help. While 5% of parents said that there is nothing that will encourage their child to read more, nearly three in five said that the parent reading with the child would help. Finding more interesting books and having a bedtime reading routine were also popular choices, with a website showing books by age and interest deemed the most helpful aid for parents to find more interesting books for their child to read.

Encouraging reading Teens are also looking for more interesting books–and video game/app integrated books were seen by boys of all ages as the most likely thing that would encourage them to read more than they did.

These regular in-depth studies will continue to monitor children’s engagement with books, supplementing the measurement of the children’s book market provided by Nielsen Book’s tracking services. The latest US children’s survey results will be fully revealed and discussed at Nielsen Children’s Book Summit in New York on 23 October (www.nielsen.com/kidsbooks) and a report on the 2016 UK Children’s survey will be available in early November.

■ For further details please contact Jo Henry, VP Insights & Analytics, Nielsen Book Research: jo.henry@nielsen.com. She will be speaking on how children’s use of media has changed at 9.30am on Friday on the Children’s Stage K139, Hall 3.0.

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Thursday 20 October 2016

The bestseller formula–solved?

Michael Bhaskar explains why fiction editors are safe for the moment Here’s a prediction: by the end of the year most commissioning editors in fiction will have read a book called The Bestseller Code.

Why? Because its premise is simple and powerful: to use sophisticated machine learning techniques to process thousands of books and, by doing so, uncover what makes certain books sell more than others.

Written by a former Penguin staffer and a pioneer in the field of computational literary criticism, The Bestseller Code is nothing if Michael Bhaskar not ambitious. It shows an unexpected application of digital technology–not at the consumer end of our business, but right in the inner sanctum: the acquisitions meeting. If anything was safe from the predations of new technology surely it was commissioning, that strange process: part alchemy, part casino and part expertise, but always deeply human, built on years and years of reading books, reports and reviews, talking to writers, browsing bookshops.

Surely that is safe? Not if the authors Jodie Archer and Matthew L Jockers have anything to say about it. Their methodology is based on cutting-edge methods of analysis.

So sophisticated are these literary algorithms that, for example, they might have revealed with confidence that Robert Galbraith was in fact JK Rowling. By working with large datasets, in this case more than 5,000 books, and analysing them in detail, and then comparing the results against sales data, the authors claim to have created a model that can tell whether a book will “bestsell” with 80% certainty. If that claim is justified, it’s not difficult to see the big Manhattan publishers beating down their door holding large piles of cash.

Clear main topic This algorithm is based on several planks. First, the authors argue that having a clear main topic is important, and moreover that the topic of “human closeness” is always important. But you also need something else. Their model selected (blind) Danielle Steel and John Grisham as the two authors most likely to sell the most; both qualify on the human closeness criterion, but both always have another strong anchor too–in Grisham’s case, the law. Modern settings are better than historical or fantastical, but place is less important than might be supposed. Surprisingly, Archer and Jockers say that sex does not sell; having made this claim, they have to go to great lengths to explain the success of Fifty Shades of Grey.

There is a clear preference for plots that seesaw back and forth. The book considered most exemplary in this respect is The Da Vinci Code, the plot of which, when graphed between emotional highs and lows, resembles a wave–the

30

ideal plot form. Language should be simple and direct–contractions such as “I’m” and “can’t” are a good sign. The verbs “need” and “want” are key bestseller indicators.

Archer and Jockers have views on everything from how to construct characters to how to write dialogue and how much of a book should have dialogue. Titles and instances of the word “the” alike are analysed and tabulated as part of the great bestseller formula.

At the end of the book they list the 100 books their algorithm predicted to be bestsellers. It’s a strong list. But have they really cracked the formula?

There has been a degree of scepticism. The New Yorker argued that the book had just simply told editors what they already knew. There is a degree of truth in this. For anyone working in commercial and genre fiction, much if not most of the book will be unsurprising. But the criticism is also slightly unfair.

80% hit rate First, even the most successful editors don’t have an 80% hit rate, although that perhaps says more about the competitive market for the hottest manuscripts than the tastes of editors. Second, what’s so fascinating about the book is not necessarily the conclusions, but the way in which they were reached. Here is a new and different grounding for thinking about which books to publish and why. Beyond our prejudices and idiosyncrasies, it offers an objective view of certain features of books invisible to readers. We don’t usually count instances of the word “the” in books and then map them on to sales to see if there are correlations worth pursuing for evidence of a deeper connection–at least, no editor I know has done this.

No, we aren’t going to fire editors. In fact the human judgements of editors, aside from their project management, commercial vision, packaging ability and priceless author care, will, I believe, only become more and more valuable in crowded markets. But that isn’t to say these machine learning techniques aren’t interesting or valuable as a complement to editors’ skills. They offer simple tactics for selling more copies. Hence my prediction that most fiction editors will have read the book by the end of the year. Here’s another: that whether we like it or not, a Rubicon has been crossed, and machines, for better or for worse, have breached the editorial meeting.

■ Michael Bhaskar is Co-Founder of Canelo and author of Curation: The Power of Selection in a World of Excess and The Content Machine. He is on Twitter @michaelbhaskar.

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Thursday 20 October 2016

Brazil: still the land of opp Crisis equals opportunity, says the old cliché. And this couldn’t be truer, or more clichéd, in Brazil today, writes Carlo Carrenho.

Indeed, the Latin American giant is in the middle of a crisis that has greatly affected the book market.

According to the Brazilian Publishers Union and the Brazilian Book Chamber, the Carlo Carrenho book market in Brazil declined 12.6% in 2015, reaching US$ 1.325 billion in publishers’ revenues. In 2014, the market had decreased 5.16%. And 2016 will probably bring even worse news.

The Brazilian market is deeply dependent on government purchases, which traditionally represent about a quarter of publishers’ sales. In 2015, the Brazilian Federal government was responsible for 23.5% of the publishers’ sales; however, most of these purchases were related to programmes launched in 2014 or before, and the government has since delayed programme launches, catalogue selections and even payments. Thus, the consequences of reduced government purchasing will likely hit the market hard in 2016.

The Federal government did change the composition of its purchases last year. Basically, no trade books were acquired, only textbooks. This has deeply affected some trade publishers who, overall, suffered an 18.9% decrease in revenues in 2015.

So, where is the opportunity? Well, in the last years, several foreign groups have landed in Brazil. Penguin Random House now owns a 45% stake at Grupo Companhia das Letras. Last year, HarperCollins merged local Harlequin and Thomas Nelson in a new publishing group, and launched the imprint HarperCollins Brasil. This was achieved through a joint venture with Brazilian Ediouro, which owns 25% of the new company.

Spanish publisher Planeta and Portuguese LeYa are the other large foreign groups present in the Brazilian trade market. But we can expect more to come, as several Brazilian publishing houses are surely looking for buyers or merger possibilities to deal with their financial challenges.

The digital market According to the Global eBook Report 2016, 2.57% of Brazilian trade publishers’ revenues came from ebooks in 2015. In volume, 4.27% of trade copies sold were digital, and the digital market in Brazil is estimated to be about US$ 8.9 million in 2015.

By the end of last year, however, Amazon had reportedly captured a 60% market share in Brazil for ebooks published by traditional publishers, followed by Apple with 15%, Saraiva and Google with 10% each, and Kobo with 5%. In 2016, Google has been growing and is probably vying for second place with Apple, but Amazon is still the isolated leader by far.

These shares, however, do not show the true reality, since they

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Thursday 20 October 2016

ortunity do not include Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) numbers–and self-publishing, at least for Amazon, is growing in Brazil.

Of course, Amazon does not release any numbers, but Livrarias Saraiva, the largest bookseller chain in the country, does. In their 2015 report, they pointed out that the digital selfpublishing platform Publique-se grew from 4,800 to 8,800 titles in 2015, with little advertisement or effort from the bookseller.

Meanwhile, Amazon has been growing its Brazilian KDP through events for writers, and also participating in book fairs. Last September, Amazon announced a literary contest in partnership with publisher Nova Fronteira. The winner will receive US$ 6,000 and have their book published in print as well. To participate, however, writers must publish their work in the KDP platform and opt for Kindle Select, thus giving Amazon exclusivity.

Thus, if Saraiva published 330 additional titles per month last year without any promotion, how many is Amazon publishing today? Market guesstimates suggest about 1,500 titles per month, which shows the potential of the self-publishing market in Brazil. The largest global selfpublishing companies have ignored Brazil until now, so here is yet another opportunity for foreign companies.

Print on demand There is another challenge, however: the lack of POD in Brazil.

In Brazil, the concept of one-to-one printing is relatively new and very few printers take such orders, which means extremely high costs, and makes it impossible for a publisher to print just one book and sell it through the traditional book chain. A few POD-based distributors have showed up in the past few years, but so far no one has established a state-of-the-art, one-to-one POD operation, such as the ones managed by Ingram and Amazon in the US, or Books on Demand in Germany.

But the demand for such services is growing. After all, Amazon wants a print solution for its KDP self-published authors and imported books; local publishers have understood the advantages of a stockless POD operation; and foreign publishers such as Springer and distributors like Ingram have been looking for local partners to distribute their POD content for a few years now. Again, this opens huge opportunities for foreign companies that could provide content, technology or even machinery.

Of course, Barzil’s economic and political instability is always a factor to consider. However, Brazilian history shows that the country is used to its rollercoaster politics–going up and down, from being a star country with the most promising economy and democracy, to having a fragile political situation and recessive economy. The new government, however, is actively focused on bringing economic stability and growth above anything else, so this might be the perfect moment to invest in Brazil, and finally making that old cliché about crisis and opportunity a Brazilian reality.

■

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Carlo Carrenho is a Brazilian publishing consultant and the Founder of PublishNews. He is also the Ambassador in Brazil for Bookshare and a graduate from the Radcliffe Publishing Course.

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Frankfurt show daily

Thursday 20 October 2016

Come out and cosplay at Frankfurt Book Fair Wondering where all the readers have with Germany’s largest non-profit gone? It turns out they might have been organisation for animanga fans, under our noses all along, writes Jasmin Animexx e.V., created the German Kirkbride. Even though publishers Cosplay Championship (DCM: from across the world gather to discuss Deutsche Cosplaymeisterschaft). This business at Frankfurt Book Fair, many competition now sits alongside the of us forget in the frenzy, that it’s just German World Cosplay Summit (WCS) as much for the general public as it is as one of the largest cosplay contests in for trade. Last year, weekend visitors Germany, with six preliminary regional were up by 4% compared to 2014 rounds throughout the year before The finale of the 2015 Cosplay Championships and the rise looks set to continue. the finals at the Fair itself.

One of the biggest draws for the public is the finale of the In 2015, a whopping 5,000 enthusiasts graced the Congress German Cosplay Championships, which takes place on the Center’s designated Cosplay Corner, brightening and delighting Sunday of the Fair and this year celebrates its 10th anniversary. the Fair with their get ups. “At the Book Fair the Cosplayers are A mix of the words “costume” and “play”, cosplay is a hobby mainly in the Congress Center, but they also wander around the where fans dress up as a favourite fictional character. Originally exhibition halls where they behave like all the other visitors,” starting in America under the name “costuming”, cosplay really says Peter Diemer, who is in charge of the Fair’s cosplay events. took off in Japan’s manga and anime scene during the late 1990s, and has since become a global phenomenon. In Germany, Getting creative cosplay is particularly popular, holding a place at book fairs such Though the quality of costumes varies hugely across the scene as Leipzig and Frankfurt in a way that it doesn’t in the UK. as a whole, cosplayers can spend an enormous amount of time Cosplay has been a feature at Frankfurt since 2002, and grew and money getting their outfit just right. Some cosplayers go in popularity so fast that in the late 2000s the Fair, in partnership in for detailed, accurate depictions of their characters, while others get more out of putting a unique spin on their outfit, and it’s not unusual for characters to be gender flipped.

While participants can buy costumes, cosplayers often pride themselves on creating their own, and this is particularly the case at Frankfurt. Unlike the WCS, which allows store-bought costumes, DCM requires costumes to be homemade. The rules are strict and applicants have to Pari Spolter submit photographic evidence of the making process to enter, whether that involves sewing, soldering or glue guns.

The Dance of the Moon

True fans

http://parispolter.com/the-dance-of-themoon/ Available at Amazon.com, Baker and Taylor, IngramSpark See review by Dr. Thomas E. Phipps, Jr. in PHYSICS ESSAYS, Volume 28 Number 2 June 2015 page 290.

What binds all cosplayers is their love of characters and stories. Cosplay engages fandoms across genres–and it’s a craze that’s evolved all on its own. “Cosplay is a phenomenon of youth culture around the world,” says Diemer. “It has spread worldwide without any special promotion and it’s the fan’s very own culture here at the Fair, all created by the cosplayers. No industry in Germany or in Europe in the last 10 years has had a vested interest in promoting Cosplay, it just was born from the fans’ own love for Manga and costumes.”

The cosplayers who come to the Fair are massive book enthusiasts, and it’s no mistake that the DCM finale coincides with the one day of the Fair that publishers are allowed to sell books. Diemer says that while cosplayers are obviously mainly interested in Japanese Manga publishing companies, they also love German comic publishers. There’s no doubt that it provides a unique moment to interact with readers and fans when they’re at their most enthusiastic. Genre publishers, it’s time to get your costumes on!

■ The German Cosplay Championship finale will be held in the Harmonie Hall of the Congress Center at 2pm on Sunday 23 October 2016.

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A netful of red herrings Crime fiction from countries such as Denmark, Norway and Sweden have made their mark in the US market, writes Lenny Picker. Could crime novels from Flanders and the Netherlands, this year’s Frankfurt Guest of Honour, be next?

It is entirely possible, as a slew of Dutch works in the genre are making some noise in the American market. And for American readers, who use fictional bloodshed as a gateway into another society and culture, increased access to what is unique about Flanders and the Netherlands via their native writers will be as welcome as a red herring on their plate.

Ironically, the historically bestknown Dutch crime novels in America, Robert van Gulik’s Judge Dee whodunits (some of which were recently reprinted by the University of Chicago Press), were written in English, and were set long ago and far away from his native land, in seventh-century China. But the obscurity of Dutch mysteries may soon become a thing of the past.

In April, Tor introduced American readers to Thomas Olde Heuevelt, whose horrific thriller Hex has been optioned for TV by Warner Brothers. And last month, Crown published Herman Koch’s Dear Mr. M, the Dutch author’s third novel translated into English. The title character is a celebrated writer, best-known for penning a suspense novel himself based upon a real-life disappearance. PW’s review observed that Koch “keeps the reader pleasantly off balance”, and that: “His sardonic sense of humour and dark perspective on human failings give the novel a greater, more satisfying depth than the usual thriller.”

In October, Morrow will release the paperback edition of Marion Pauw’s Girl in the Dark. Heuevelt, Koch and Pauw will soon have company–the independent publisher World Editions is planning to introduce two of the best Dutch genre writers to American audiences in 2017: Charles den Tex and Bram Dehouck.

Mysterious beginnings Experts differ as to what should be considered the first Dutch crime novel.

Charles den Tex suggests 1889’s The Black Box Murder, by Maarten Maartens, which, like Van Gulik’s work, was originally written in English.

But Maartens’ book, like the work of many of the earliest mystery writers in Flanders and the Netherlands, largely imitated foreign authors–for example, Jacob van Schievichaven, under the

Thursday 20 October 2016

“American readers... use fictional bloodshed as a gateway into another society and culture.”

pseudonym of Ivans, modelled his stories on those of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Rene Appel, whose third novel, The Third Person, won the Golden Noose in 1990 (the prize for the best Dutch crime novel), considers the pioneer book to be P Tesselhoff, Jr’s The Detective’s Success.

Published in 1900, Appel concisely observes, it keeps to the traditional parameters of crime fiction: “a corpse, a detective, a few suspects and finally the solution”.

Beginning in 1963, Appie Baantjer–an Amsterdam police officer–wrote 70 novels featuring Inspector DeCock. Baantjer was immensely popular. “Baantjer often published two books a year, and many people in the Netherlands bought only two books a year,” Appel says. “Both of them by Baantjer.” Despite that local appeal, however, efforts to bring the series to a wider audience floundered.

But, in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, American audiences were introduced to Adjutant-Detective Henk Grijpstra and DetectiveSergeant Rinus de Gier, two eccentric plain-clothes members of the Amsterdam Municipal Police’s Murder Brigade, who appeared in 14 novels by Janwillem van de Wetering, including 1978’s The Blond Baboon, as well as in short stories in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Van de Wetering’s work was inspired both by Van Gulik’s Judge Dee novels, which he read after spending some time in a monastery, as well as his own service as a reserve constable in Amsterdam–works that are still available from Soho Crime.

Tomas Ross, the alias of Willem Hogendoorn, who still awaits English translation, broke onto the Dutch scene in the 1980s, with the first of more than 30 books that made use of cause célèbres, such as the assassination of rightwing politician Pim Fortuyn; and a corruption scandal involving Prince Berhard (the late husband of Queen Juliana), KLM and Lockheed. Ross’ shift towards realism, and away from the puzzle mystery, helped to burnish the image of the genre in a country, like so many others, where writing thrillers or crime-themed stories was looked down upon by some of the intelligentsia.

Bitter Lemon Press brought Dutch mega bestseller Saskia Noort to American audiences with 2007’s The Dinner Club and 2009’s Back to the Coast, and also Continues on page 38 g

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f Continued from page 37 published the leading Flemish author of crime fiction, Jef Geeraerts.

Geeraerts garnered a cult following in Flanders and the Netherlands, with fiction based on his decades working as a colonial administrator in the Belgian Congo. He was equally successful with crime fiction, however, and was the first-ever recipient of the Golden Noose award.

“The Dutch... are fiercely individualistic and remarkably no-nonsense...

All those traits are to be found in Dutch crime fiction.”

On the rise Today, every subgenre is represented by gifted authors, and the current publishing scene is a far cry from the 1960s, when sales were dominated by Anglo-American authors. Sander Verheijen, Chief Editor of Hebban.nl, the Dutch analogue to the website Goodreads, estimates that between 300 and 400 new Dutch crime novels are now being published annually, with 20-30 new authors debuting a year.

Charles den Tex’s Bellicher corporate thriller trilogy features a management consultant as its lead, and plots revolving around developing technologies, and current threats, such as identity theft, and the use of bots and botnets to defraud companies and conceal large-scale drug trafficking. Appel is known for his novels of subtle psychological suspense, reminiscent of the best works of Patricia Highsmith and Ruth Rendell.

Given the growing number of gifted Dutch authors producing crime stories, it’s no surprise that Akashic Books’ Susannah Lawrence reports that her publishing house is in the initial stages of adding Amsterdam Noir to its acclaimed series of regional short stories.

But the question remains: what makes Dutch crime fiction Dutch? While there are obvious universal themes in any books that deal with the dark side of humanity, den Tex believes that as a whole, Dutch crime fiction is “less sombre” than say, Scandinavian crime fiction. And he points to the irony that while his country is highly regulated, the Dutch are “notoriously bad” at abiding by the law. “They are fiercely individualistic and remarkably no-nonsense,” he says.

All those traits are to be found in Dutch crime fiction.

■

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