2016 London Book Fair - Day One - Publishers Weekly BookBrunch Show Daily

London

Tuesday 12 april 2016

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Rebuck: technology ‘cuts two ways’ In a tone-setting keynote delivered yesterday at the London Book Fair’s Quantum conference, writes Andrew Richard Albanese, Penguin Random House UK Chair Gail Rebuck told attendees that for all the “curious incidents” she had witnessed over her awardwinning publishing career– from setting hot type at the London College of Printing, to the emergence of e-readers–books remained the “DNA of our civilisation, an unbroken line of stories, ideas and knowledge which essentially completes our relationship with all of humanity and with ourselves.”

In a sweeping, 20-minute talk, Rebuck–who tomorrow will receive the LBF Lifetime Achievement Award–noted a series of seismic shifts in the book business over the last two decades, and acknowledged both the potential–and the pitfalls–of technology.

“Today our job as publishers is made easier, and infinitely more sophisticated,

by terabytes of digital research and sophisticated insight tools that enable us to segment audiences by their passions and their literary tastes, to reach readers with the individuality of an email message, to constantly refresh and repackage the way books and backlists are managed and marketed,” she said.

She also observed a “concerning decline in authors’ revenues”, however, noting that only one in 10 writers today lived on writing income alone, and that half of all self-published authors earned less than $500 a year. She cited the “complexity of the modern world” facing today’s publishers and authors: squeezed margins across the whole supply chain, the lack of diversity in ebook distribution, price deflation, and competition from other media for readers’ time.

“The technology that has made it easier than ever to tell a story and get it out to the world cuts two ways,”

Rebuck said. “It’s made it possible for a handful of authors to hit a global jackpot of unprecedented, Himalayan, proportions, while at the same time making it so much tougher for Gail Rebuck: “tougher for many authors” many authors to while at the same time never be seen or heard in the vast allowing “the uniqueness of sea of information in which the author to degrade into we now live.” the bleak functionality of a Rebuck cautioned mere ‘content provider’.” publishers against framing digital and physical as Gail Rebuck profile p24 “enemies”, insisting that “what matters is that readers are discovering and buying books, whatever the form of delivery”. She also highlighted nourry at the recent trend of YouTubers the ipC writing bestsellers, and the need to boldly pursue emerging talents.

“While we champion the rightS long-form, we should also round-up have the confidence to explore the alchemy that comes from young diverse LBF writing talent, and explore collaborating with coders BrieFCaSe and technicians,” she said,

inSide:

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Perseus Distribution clients and associates, welcome to Ingram.

ingramcontent.com

london show daily

Tuesday 12 april 2016

IPC: Hachette CEO presses Chinese publishers, blasts EU copyright proposals In his short keynote speech at the 2016 International Publishers Congress in London, Hachette CEO Arnaud Nourry opened on an optimistic note, writes Andrew Richard Albanese.

“Books have proven, again, their staying power in the face of the social, economic and technological transformations that have affected the world since books were invented 560 years ago,” he said, adding that publishers were the only media industry “to have successfully ridden the first digital wave”. But he also acknowledged “serious clouds on the horizon”, and “threats that will have to be dealt with”. First and foremost among those threats: what Nourry called the European Commission’s “senseless attack” on copyright.

“Vast exceptions to copyright law for libraries, for education, for fair use–think of the devastating consequences they would have on European publishers if they were allowed to pass,” Nourry said. “It is as if the Commission had made it a priority to weaken the only European cultural industry that has achieved worldwide leadership.”

He assailed tech industries that were “building audiences or e-retailing capacity by using our catalogues and frontlists as loss-making, free products”. And he suggested that Google was the “player the most likely to pose a clear and present danger to our industry”, because of its effort to scan library books. “If the European Commission caves in to the demands of [Google’s] proxies, what’s to stop them from defining themselves as a library and making all those books available for free on a non-profit basis?” Nourry asked. “They could claim their profit derives from advertising, not from charging browsers an access fee. And who’s to stop them if the European Commission, no less, has given them its blessing?”

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Ensaf Haidar Mohammed, flanked by Maureen Freely of English PEN and International Publishers Association (IPA) President Richard Charkin, received the Prix Voltaire on behalf of her husband, imprisoned Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, at the IPA gala dinner. Haidar Mohammed, now based in Canada, has with journalist Andrea Hoffman written about Badawi’s case in a memoir, The Voice of Freedom.

Notably, in 2009, a French court sided with publisher La Martinière, finding that Google’s scanning had violated French copyright law, and in 2012 publishers in France settled with Google. Meanwhile, in the US, Google has prevailed, and a suit filed by the Authors Guild is now on its last appeal before the US Supreme Court.

Nourry concluded that “defeating the European Commission’s plans must be the number one priority for the IPA [International Publishers Association]”, recalling that the Association was founded to enforce international copyright laws. “Copyright protection,” he stressed, “is the IPA’s core mission.”

He then turned his attention to “freedom to publish”, and questioned the IPA’s decision to admit China as a member last year, noting “some disturbing developments” in recent months.

He specifically called out IPA president Richard Charkin for his support of China’s membership.

“Richard, I hope you knew what you were doing when you supported the Publishers Association of China’s application to become members of the IPA in Frankfurt last year. It was a generous and optimistic initiative,” he said. “I just hope we’ll still be comfortable with it in the months and years to come.”

In a short Q&A period, there was a tense moment as a member of the Chinese delegation chided Nourry for his comments. Nourry responded that China’s IPA membership “was great news, because we all within the IPA share the same values, the freedom to publish and the freedom to express opinions, and I take it as a great sign that China wanted to be a member of the IPA”.

FROM THE IMF

codeMantra Updates collectionPoint Technology services provider codeMantra has announced the next generation of collectionPoint, its publishing platform.

The most recent iteration of the program, collectionPoint 4.0, will allow users to shepherd content through the entire lifecycle of publication, from creation to delivery.

“Publishers told us about the challenges and aspirations they faced driving their business forward. We listened,” codeMantra CEO and chairman Ed Marino said in a statement. “We set out to use technology, automation and process management to build a better mousetrap.”

The platform’s enhanced capabilities include a collaboration feature, the ability to distribute content and metadata, the ability to exchange data externally through application program interfaces, sales analytics and reporting, and increased audience engagement features.

“We understand from our publishers that we need to have the depth and breadth to solve a wide range of problems,” said the company’s chief technology and product officer, Sanjeev Kalyanaraman. “We also know that we need to be able to provide both flexibility and scalability.”

New collaboration features are focused around project management capabilities, and include the ability to track changes, lock documents, and produce multiple versions of content. High-speed file transfer has also been enabled.

in us 10a sit G Vi nd 7 a St

Tuesday 12 april 2016

Asia’s financial systems proved resilient to the shocks from the global financial crisis, and growth since then has been strong. This book takes stock of how systems in Asia’s advanced and emerging market economies compare with the rest of the world.

“Recommended. Graduate students, professionals.” Choice

iTalian Thriller deals Luca D’Andrea’s debut thriller LA SOSTANZA DEL MALE (THE SUBSTANCE OF EVIL), signed by MacLehose Press in the UK, now has deals in 18 territories after frantic pre-LBF dealing.The sales have been handled by Piergiorgio Nicolazzini at PNLA. Einaudi/Stile Libero publishes in Italy in June.

Futureproofs adds designers John Pettigrew, CEO and Founder of Futureproofs, demonstrated the text markup service at the Quantum conference yesterday.

Futureproofs was shortlisted for the Quantum Innovation Award.

At the London Book Fair, Futureproofs is announcing the extension of the service to designers.

Futureproofs aims to negate the drawback of on-screen proof markup–that it takes longer than working on paper.

The company says that the system combines the rigour of traditional markup with gesture-based input and the convenience of browser-based delivery. It can manage the complete workflow as a manuscript heads to press.

Among the enthusiasts for Futureproof has been Helen Seachrist of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: “Collating corrections takes a fraction of the time it does when working with hard copy or PDFs,” she said.

High and persistent inflation has presented many challenges for India and has increased the country’s domestic and external vulnerabilities. A number of factors underpin India’s high inflation.

The causes, consequences, and policies being implemented to manage Indian inflation are a few of the issues discussed in this new book.

Visit bookstore.imf.org/pw116 I N T E R N AT I O N A L

M O N E TA R Y

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Tuesday 12 april 2016

Rights round-up: the big pre-LBF deals Sam Eades at Orion’s Trapeze imprint has made a six-figure pre-empt for three thrillers by former paramedic Daniel Cole. Trapeze has UK and Commonwealth rights (exc Canada) through Sue Armstrong at Conville & Walsh, where Cole’s manuscript arrived on the slush pile. TV rights went “after fierce competition” to Sid Gentle. Cole’s debut, RAGDOLL, introduces detective Nathan Wolfe, reinstated to the Met Police after months of psychological assessment following accusations of a shocking assault. Eades said: “In just 48 hours the prospect of publishing Daniel Cole and his Nathan Wolfe series has electrified everyone at Orion, from the assistants to the MD, and from here in London to our colleagues on the other side of the world.” Cole told the Guardian: “I’ve got a nice pile of rejection letters at home. Very disheartening. But I really wanted to do it, so just kept going.”

At HarperCollins, Eric Meyers took North American rights at auction to a currently untitled book about video game development by Jason Schreier. The author is a news editor at Kotaku, a Gawker-owned website about gaming. The book (autumn 2017)was sold by Inkwell Management’s Charlie Olsen and is about, he said, “the often bumpy development cycles of high-profile games and the colourful personalities that shepherd them along the path from concept to release”.

In a joint acquisition, Kyo Maclear’s ART LOVE DEATH was acquired

by Kathy Belden at Scribner (US rights) and Martha Kanya-Forstner at Doubleday Canada (Canadian rights). Jackie Kaiser at WestWood Creative Artists handled the sale for Maclear, a picture book author (Spork and Virginia Wolf). Her new book is an adult title that documents how she became an amateur birder. “While juggling the demands of children and aging parents,” Kaiser said, Maclear “learns to look for birds in the urban landscape, exploring along the way ideas such as freedom, patience, creativity, inspiration, and the value of small things.”

The book, which is slated for January 2017, will feature photographs from Jack Breakfast and artwork from the author.

Ginee Seo at Chronicle Books has signed THEY ALL SAW A CAT and one additional book from Brenden Wenzel. With a six-figure advance, Chronicle won world rights in a hotly contested, eight-publisher auction, from Steven Malk of Writers House. They All Saw a Cat, scheduled for publication in August 2016, gives an animal-eyed perspective of an approaching feline–who can appear friendly, fierce, or fuzzy, depending on the perspective of viewer. “As soon as I saw the proposal, I felt I was looking at an instant classic,” said Seo. Wenzel, here making his debut as an author/illustrator, was the illustrator of Angela DeTerlizi’s Some Bugs.

Quercus has bought world English rights in a new novel from Costa winner Stef Penney, signing a deal with Diana Tyler at MBA Literary and Script Agents. Jane Wood, Publisher at Quercus, said: “UNDER A POLE STAR marks Stef Penney’s triumphant return to historical fiction with a soaring, epic love story.” The novel, due in November, is set in the Arctic during the late 19th century, and stars Polar explorer Flora Mackie.

Penney won the Costa Book of the Year Award for 2006 with her debut, The Tenderness of Wolves, which went on to sell in 33 territories.

Kimberley Atkins at Michael Joseph has signed EVERYTHING BUT THE TRUTH, a debut thriller by Gilly McAllister. Michael Joseph has UK and Commonwealth rights, including audio, as part of a two-book deal from Clare Wallace at the Darley Anderson Literary Agency. The novel has also sold to publishers in the Netherlands, Poland, and Russia.

It tells the the story of newly pregnant Rachel, who slowly begins to realise that her boyfriend Jack is hiding a huge secret about his past.

Helen Conford at Particular Books has bought world rights to MILLIE MAROTTA’S ANIMAL ATLAS from Karolina Sutton at Curtis Brown.

The book will be a full-colour, large format, illustrated hardback highlighting creatures that are rare or are on the brink of becoming endangered. Pavilion continues to be the publisher of Marotta’s colouring books.

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Bill Scott-Kerr and Frankie Gray at Transworld have seen off 10 rival publishers to win at auction two novels by actor and screenwriter Ruth Jones. Transworld bought UK & Commonwealth rights, including audio, from Jonny Geller at Curtis Brown. Jones’ debut, NEVER GREENER (spring 2018), is described as a witty and wise story of life’s second chances and the dangers of taking them. Scott-Kerr said: “When Jonny submitted Never Greener, Ruth’s talent which had been so evident on the small screen was writ large on the page–her humanity, her humour and her wisdom.”

Jonathan Burnham at HarperCollins US and Alexandra Pringle at Bloomsbury has signed the first two books in Plum Sykes’ OXFORD GIRLS mystery series. HC has rights through Luke Janklow, while Bloomsbury signed the deal through Rebecca Carter at Janklow & Nesbit UK, and both publishers will release the first novel in April 2017. Rebecca Folland at Janklow & Nesbit UK is handling translation rights. The first book follows Ursula Flowerbutton as she starts her first term at Oxford University in autumn 1985; when confronted with a dead body at her first tutorial she turns detective. Sykes is a contributing editor at American Vogue, and author of Bergdorf Blondes and The Debutante Divorcée.

Faber has signed THE IMPOSSIBLE FORTRESS, a debut novel by Jason Rekulak, publisher at Quirk Books. Simon & Schuster will publish in the US, and rights have been sold in six further territories. Rekulak’s agent is Doug Stewart at Sterling Lord Literistic. Set in 1987, The Impossible Fortress (spring 2017) story follows Billy and his two friends on their quest for a copy of the latest Playboy magazine.

Sidgwick & Jackson in the UK and St Martin’s US are to publish SPIDER FROM MARS: MY LIFE WITH BOWIE, an autobiography by Woody Woodmansey, drummer with the Spiders from Mars band. The agent is Matthew Hamilton at Aitken Alexander. Ingrid Connell, who signed the world English deal, said: “This is an insightful, funny, poignant memoir that lovingly evokes a seminal moment in music history.”

Arabella Pike at HarperCollins UK and David Highfill at William Morrow have signed THE GOOD MOTHERS: THE TRUE STORY OF THE WOMEN WHO TOOK ON THE MAFIA by journalist Alex Perry. HarperCollins has world English language rights from Patrick Walsh of Conville & Walsh, and will publish in 2018. Film and TV rights have gone to Tessa Ross, formerly head of C4 films. Based on original source material and exclusive access to the Italian prosecutor’s records, The Good Mothers tells the story of a group of women who were born into the Calabrian mafia and forced at the age of 13 or 14 into arranged marriages.

Tracy Carns at the Overlook Press has signed POWERS OF DARKNESS: THE LOST VERSION OF DRACULA by Dracula scholar Hans de Roos.

The Overlook Press has world English language rights from Allison Devereux at Wolf Literary Services, and will publish in North America in September 2016, with sister company Duckworth publishing in the UK. Publication marks the first appearance in English of a reworked, Icelandic version of Dracula apparently produced with Bram Stoker’s blessing.

Juliet Mabey at Oneworld has signed world English rights in THE RETURN OF THE YOUNG PRINCE by AG Roemmers, an authorised sequel to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. Oneworld bought the book from agent Veronica Cagno at Barcelona-based Schavelzon Graham Agencia Literaria for publication in the UK in September 2016.

The translation will be by former Granta editor Ollie Brock. The Return of the Young Prince will have a forward by Saint-Exupéry’s nephew and specially commissioned illustrations from illustrator Pietari Posti. It describes how the prince, now a teenager, sets off to explore the universe.

First published in 1943, The Little Prince is the fourth most translated book in the world, and has sold more than 140 million copies in 250 different languages.

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The London Book Fair Date : 12 - 14 April , 2016

Booth Number : 2C78

Address : Olympia London

london show daily

Tuesday 12 april 2016

london Book Fair Briefcase 2016 By nicholas Clee and neill denny in London and liz hartman in New York

uK

runaway daughter of an MP (Transworld UK, Cappelen Damm Norway, House of Books Netherlands, Otwarte Poland).

aiTken alexander Imperative Entertainment paid $5 million for the movie rights to David

The hanBury agenCy

Grann’s KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON: AN AMERICAN CRIME

Kate Raworth, the economist who developed the concept of “the

AND THE BIRTH OF THE FBI, about the investigation into the deaths

doughnut”, offers DOUGHNUT ECONOMICS (Random House UK,

of a number of Osage Indians (Simon & Schuster UK, Doubleday US).

Hanser Germany, Atlas Contact the Netherlands, Bertrand Portugal).

diane Banks assoCiaTes

sophie hiCks

WITHOUT A TRACE by Mary Torjusson is dark psychological suspense

Ruth Fitzmaurice’s memoir I FOUND MY TRIBE is a memoir about caring

about love, obsession and the secrets we cannot bring ourselves to share

for a husband suffering from motor neurone disease, and about the

(Headline UK, Blanlavet Germany).

author’s discovery of open ocean swimming (Chatto UK, Mondadori Italy).

Blake Friedmann

david higham

STRANGERS is the first in a new series by Paul Finch, author of the

Naomi Alderman’s new novel is THE POWER, investigating the roots of

HECK novels, and stars ambitious young Manchester cop Lucy Clayburn

power and how sometimes it takes only a spark to ignite the greatest

(Avon UK, Piper Germany, option publishers in Croatia, Czech Republic,

challenges in society (Viking UK, Little, Brown US).

Hungary, Japan, Poland and Turkey).

Janklow & nesBiT FeliCiTy Bryan

The bestselling author of Bergdorf Blondes, Plum Sykes, returns with

SAY MY NAME is the first novel by former Weidenfeld editor and author

MURDER MOST POSH, a mystery set among Oxford’s 1980s

of Love Child Allegra Huston, and is the story of a 48-year-old woman

Champagne Set (Bloomsbury UK, HarperCollins US).

who, through an affair with a much younger man, discovers her erotic freedom and with it her sense of herself (HarperCollins UK).

laura morris liTerary agenCy Biographer Sally Cline takes on the Bloomsbury Group with IN SEARCH

georgina Capel assoCiaTes

OF DORA CARRINGTON, focusing on the fascinating, sexually

Fay Weldon offers a sequel to her noted 1983 novel The Life and Loves

enigmatic, woefully undervalued painter.

of a She Devil in THE DEATH OF A SHE DEVIL, a parable about the fallout from the feminist revolution (Head of Zeus world English).

luTyens & ruBinsTein The second novel from Charles Elton, author of Mr Toppit, is THE

Conville & walsh

SONGS, exploring the world of music through the life of Isaac Herzl,

AUTOBIOPHILOSOPHY by Robert Rowland-Smith, former Fellow of

famed protest singer (Bloomsbury UK, The Other Press US).

All Souls and now a management consultant, draws on his own life to examine how we cope with fate, disasters, love and other human issues

The marsh agenCy

(4th Estate UK).

The agency has Jonathan Safran Foer’s monumental new novel HERE I AM, which it is handling in translation for Nicole Aragi and which

CurTis Brown

unfolds over three tumultuous weeks in present-day Washington (Hamish

NEVER GREENER is a debut novel by actor and screenwriter Ruth

Hamilton UK; 12 territories in all).

Jones, about the selfishness of trying to recapture what was never meant to be and the people who get hurt in the process (Transworld UK).

madeleine milBurn In THE SILENCE by Fiona Barton, a woman finds out she has been

Furniss lawTon

living a lie her entire life when her buried baby’s body is unearthed after

FIVE MINUTES OF AMAZING by Chris Graham with Wendy Holden

36 years (Transworld UK, Penguin US; 13 European territories).

tells the story of Graham’s diagnosis, at the age of just 34, of early onset dementia, and of his 16,000-mile solo cycle ride round the coastline of

sheil land

North America (Little, Brown UK).

WHISPERS THROUGH A MEGAPHONE by Rachel Elliott is a Baileys Prize-longlisted love story set in an age of social media obsession (ONE

greene & heaTon

UK, Penguin Australia, rights also sold in Germany, France and Spain).

SIRENS by Waterstones bookseller Joseph Knox is the first in a new crime series featuring young, compromised detective Aidan Waits, here

uniTed agenTs

going undercover to get close to a drug dealer and to keep an eye on a

DAYS WITHOUT END by Costa-winner Sebastian Barry is a poignant Continues on page 10 g

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The Quarto Group Come and visit us at Stand 6D105 Inspiring Educating Creating Entertaining

www.QuartoKnows.com

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f Continued from page 8

Tuesday 12 april 2016

story of two men and the lives they are dealt, and a fresh look at some of

TODAY WILL BE DIFFERENT by Maria Semple, the author of Where’d

the most fateful years in early American history (Faber UK, Viking US).

You Go, Bernadette?: it follows a day in the life of Eleanor Flood, forced to abandon her small ambitions when she wakes up to a strange new future.

ed viCTor ROMAN BY ROMAN POLANSKI by Roman Polanski is a revised

inkwell managemenT

reissue of his 1985 memoir, telling his story from his childhood in

At the top of the fiction heap for Inkwell is PROVING GROUND by

wartime Poland to film success in Hollywood in the Sixties, the murder of

Edgar award–winning author Peter Blauner (Minotaur, 2017). The

his wife by the Manson family, his later arrest and imprisonment on

agency says the book has “the grit and detail of Richard Price and the

charges alleging the rape of a minor, and his professional and personal

propulsion of Lee Child”; it’s an urban thriller about a homicide that

resurgence in France (Fayard France).

turns into a young man’s quest to avenge his father’s death. Next on Inkwell’s hit parade is THE MANDIBLES: A FAMILY, 2029–2047 by

waTson, liTTle

Lionel Shriver (Harper, June). It is set in a near-future America amid a

Jenny Blackhurst returns with her second psychological suspense novel

fiscal crisis, when three generations of Mandibles must cope with the

BEFORE I LET YOU IN, about a psychiatrist, her client, their friends and

disappearance of the fortune they were counting on.

lovers, upturning the roles of fixer and fixed with devastating consequences (Headline UK, Luebbe Germany).

uS

Janklow & nesBiT The agency is excited about THE RAINBOW COMES AND GOES: A MOTHER AND SON ON LIFE, LOVE, AND LOSS by Anderson Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt (Harper, April). In what the agency

Foundry liTerary & media

describes as “a forthright and deeply personal collection”, mother and

A hot title for Foundry is THE GIRL ON THE VELVET SWING: THE

son offer musings on family, life, death, forgiveness, fame, and

MURDER OF STANFORD WHITE by Simon Baatz (Little, Brown,

perseverance. Also on J&N’s list is Tom Wolfe’s THE KINGDOM OF

2018), a meticulously researched, novelistic account of a sensational true

SPEECH (Little, Brown, August), in which the author argues that it is

crime that took place in New York City in 1906. Another top pick is

speech, not evolution, that is responsible for humanity’s complex societies

PURSUIT OF ENDURANCE by Jennifer Pharr Davis (PRH, summer

and achievements.

2017). The author is a record-holding speed hiker, and the book grew out of an essay she wrote for the New York Times that went viral and that

TridenT media group

noted the absence of a gender gap in long-distance hiking.

A new novel from T Jefferson Parker is front and centre for Trident.

Described by the agency as a “modern day Heart of Darkness,” THE

The gernerT Company

ROOM OF WHITE FIRE (no US publisher yet) is the story of an

Leading the list at Gernert is SLEEPING GIANTS, a debut novel by a

emotionally fragile PI tasked with finding a mentally ill USAF veteran

linguist and translator in Montreal, Sylvain Neuvel (Ballantine), which

who has escaped from a mental institution. Trident is also excited about

has been sold to publishers in various countries. Gernert says the book is

DAMAGED by Lisa Scottoline (St Martin’s, August), the fourth volume in

in the tradition of World War Z and The Martian: it begins with a young

her Rosato & DiNunzio series, in which DiNunzio’s wedding plans fall

girl who, after falling into a hole in the woods, is saved by firemen who

jeopardy after she becomes emotionally embroiled in a case.

find her “sitting in the palm of a giant metal hand”. A different kind of thriller is BRIGHTON by Michael Harvey (Ecco, June), which follows

wriTers house

two friends growing up in a rapidly changing Boston who must face the

Writers House is singing the praises of HOMEWARD BOUND (Holt,

sins of their past amid a series of brutal murders.

November), the first major biography of Paul Simon; it’s by Peter Ames Carlin, who wrote a Bruce Springsteen bio that was translated into 14

sanFord J greenBurger assoCiaTes

languages. Also on the agency’s hit list is THE VIEW FROM THE

The folks at SJGA are jazzed about FOREIGN AGENT, a new thriller from

CHEAP SEATS by Neil Gaiman (Morrow, May), which gathers more

Brad Thor (Atria/Bestler, June). When a clandestine American ops team

than 60 essays from the Newbery, Carnegie, and Hugo award winner.

readies to go after ISIS’s head of social media, their safe house is attacked and counterterrorism operative Scot Harvath is caught in the crossfire. Another

The wylie agenCy

hot title from Emily Bestler, coming in August, is Georgia Clark’s THE

Riding high at Wylie is Heidi Julavits’ HOW TO RAISE A RAPIST, sold

REGULARS, in which three young women who are trying to make it in New

to Crown in a pre-empt and described as “a polemic to advance a crucial

York discover a magic potion that makes them, temporarily, gorgeous.

conversation on parenting and feminism”. A college professor surrounded by conversations about rape culture on campuses, Julavits posits that by

iCm parTners (handled By CurTis Brown)

the time the issue is raised, the intervention is too late. Another non-

ICM will be buzzing about Ann Patchett’s new book,

fiction title Wylie is touting is the debut from Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah

COMMONWEALTH (Harper, September). A sprawling drama involving

(Scibner), who writes for a number of publications including Rolling

two families is set in motion at a christening party for a detective’s daughter

Stone. In THE EXPLAINERS AND THE EXPLORERS she sets out to

when an uninvited guest from the DA’s office shows up. Another hot title is

identify how black America will define itself in the 21st century.

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Tuesday 12 april 2016

london show daily

welcome to the london Book Fair 2016 Welcome to this year’s Book Fair and to London– the creative capital of the world–in a year in which, here at LBF, we celebrate our 45th anniversary. Bringing you the very best our global book industry has to offer, this year the Fair will be more diverse, ambitious and captivating than ever before. Once again the halls of Olympia will showcase books on every subject, as more than 25,000 professionals from publishing, film, television, brand licensing, gaming and advertising all rub shoulders with each other.

From yesterday’s thought-provoking Quantum Jacks Thomas Conference to our comprehensive Insights Seminar Programme, running over the course of the next three days, we offer more than 200 events across the show floor and all around Olympia, which will be full of informative and provocative debate, and will bring together the sharpest minds from the industry and beyond.

As ever, authors will be at the heart of the Fair. This year we are marking the 400-year anniversary of the death of Shakespeare in style and launching the Shakesperience. From multi-lingual performances of some of his most-loved works, to retellings of his plays by esteemed authors Howard Jacobson, Jeanette Winterson and Tracey Chevalier (our Shakespeare Authors of the Day), we

will be hosting a raft of celebrations to honour the Bard’s influence around the world.

This year will herald our biggest and most ambitious Author of the Day programme.

Professor Nick Bostrom, Judith Kerr and Marian Keyes join our Shakespeare Authors of the Day, Jeffrey Archer and Julian Fellowes, to form a truly stellar line-up. In addition Author HQ, which has become one of the busiest areas of the Fair, will continue to offer essential practical advice to aspirational and established authors.

We are also delighted to host the 31st International Publishers Congress (9th to 12th April), in partnership with the International Publishers Association and the UK Publishers Association. The conference promises timely debate and analysis on key policy and practical issues of the day, and networking at the most senior level. Now in its third year, the LBF International Excellence Awards, run in association with the Publishers Association, is the only event that recognises achievement in global publishing. The winners will be announced on Tuesday night, where Baroness Rebuck will receive her Lifetime Achievement Award.

Thank you for coming; I hope you enjoy your time here.

■ Jacks Thomas is the Director of the London Book Fair.

Secure the rights to your next beSt Seller!

For publishing rights contact sandyb@ctpub.com www.ctpub.com n 800.284.1114

Visit us at stand 6A31

london show daily

Tuesday 12 april 2016

speaking freely–Bernstein on books and rights In the history of publishing there are few with more distinguished careers than Robert L Bernstein. Andrew Richard Albanese caught up with Bernstein to talk about his fascinating memoir–Speaking Freely: My Life in Publishing and Human Rights (out this month from New Press)–in which Bernstein shares insights on his remarkable career, including the founding of Human Rights Watch.

I remember once calling the man whom I reported to at RCA, and asking him if he had seen the New York Times Sunday Book Review– we had six fiction bestsellers and six non-fiction bestsellers that week. He replied: “I don’t take the Times on Sunday.” But we did get one enormous benefit from LW Singer that was totally unexpected: Toni Morrison was an editor there, and in the book I tell the unlikely story of how she became a Random House author.

AA: Can you talk a little about what the book Bernstein protesting in New York, business was like in Post-War America?

AA: Tell us a little about some of the people who were so important to you over your career.

RB: Simon & Schuster was friendly and fun– 1975 it was a small business on one floor of 630 Sixth Avenue. There RB: As I write in the book, Bennett Cerf was a truly unusual was lots of social life in and out of the office. It was like a club. man. He was actually a very savvy businessman, marvellous Jack Goodman, the Editor-in-chief, sort of took me under his at making authors feel that Random House was not only their wing–he got me dates, sold me his convertible cheap and took publisher, but part of their life. Donald Klopfer, Bennett’s me to book launches. It couldn’t have been better. I got to write wonderful partner, was equally important to me. Like Bennett, a few ads, and worked on publicity. I even brought in a book. he knew many of our authors and he had a genuine open door policy for the staff. Random House, in those days, was a warm, exciting and nurturing kind of place.

AA: When you started at Random House in 1956 you I was also very close to Ted Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, and were one of eight employees. Tell us a little about the believe he was a real genius, not only in his ability to both meteoric rise of Random House.

RB: Random started when Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer write and illustrate his many books, which are more popular today than when he was writing them, but also in the clever bought Modern Library, which was a line of reprints, from way he was able to write about really important ideas, like Horace Liveright in 1923. But a few years later, they wanted to the environment and the nuclear arms race, subjects publish new books, sort of at random–hence the name: Random generally not tackled in children’s literature at that time.

House. At the time, most of the main publishers in America were I also greatly admired the editorial groups. Bob Gottlieb, established, but small. There was Alfred Knopf; Viking run by with his partners Tony Schulte and Nina Bourne, moved into Harold Guinzburg and Ben Huebsch; Farrar Straus; Simon Knopf after Alfred Knopf retired and ran it brilliantly, a & Schuster; Harry Abrams the art book publisher–all were tradition Sonny Mehta has continued. Susan Petersen Kennedy Jewish, and all started in the late 1920s and 1930s. did the same at Ballantine. Editors like Jason Epstein, Bob A wave of Jewish publishers started at the same time in Loomis, Judith Jones, Toni Morrison, André Schiffrin (who England, too, with George Weidenfeld of Weidenfeld and of course went on to found the New Press), and so many Nicolson becoming perhaps the most well-known. When I others, each had their own space, but were part of a whole. started at Random in 1956 it was doing $4 million in sales.

When I became President nine years later, after the acquisitions of Knopf and Pantheon, it was doing $30 AA: Your human rights million. When I left in 1990, after 23 years as President, work, including the founding our annual sales were over $800 million. of Human Rights Watch, is remarkable. How do you see the role of publishers today AA: I was fascinated by the corporatisation of the 1970s in the human rights realm? and 1980s depicted in your book. What was good about publishing’s corporatisation, and what was not so good?

RB: Publishers, of course, are deeply involved with RB: What was good about the corporatisation of book human rights since they publishing in the 1970s and 80s? Very little, I think. Large publish so many stories of corporations like RCA and IBM were buying up publishers the abuse of human rights all in the 1960s because they thought the computer would be primarily a teaching tool–the thinking was that educational over the world. Two recent works that come to mind are publishers would provide the software for the hardware owned Malala Yousafzai’s I Am by these corporations. In fact, Random House was purchased Malala and Laura Secor’s

by RCA in 1966, not because of the wonderful lists of Random book Children of Paradise: House and Knopf authors, but because it had purchased LW Letter from the Cat in the Hat to Bernstein Singer, a small and not very distinguished educational publisher. The Struggle for the Soul of

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Tuesday 12 april 2016

london show daily

Iran. This is really important, and I believe human rights, and at the same time, a that it is being done well. haven for extremists. How do you see But another place where I believe publishers technology shaping human rights today? could be really helpful (and it is something that RB: This is a really difficult question to is being overlooked) is monitoring the use answer, and the fight that Apple is having of books, particularly textbooks that teach with the US government today certainly hate and spread misinformation. Spreading shows that. While it can be a haven for hate is pretty well described in the Geneva extremists, the internet is vital for allowing Conventions as “incitement to genocide”. One people to both broadcast human rights example that has gone on for years is Saudi violations, and to push for more open Bernstein with Muhammad Ali, 1970 Arabia’s textbook programme. They print societies and all their advantages. We have textbooks for 2nd to 12th grades and distribute them for free to to hope that extremists lose the battle of ideas.

22 Arabic-speaking countries, and these books, among other things, describe Jews as “pigs” and Christians as “apes”.

AA: You write that the real value of publishing is greater than Another example is in China, where important historical anything on a balance sheet. How do you see publishing’s future? events, such as the Tiananmen Square massacre, are purposefully RB: During my lifetime, the death of publishing has been ignored by official government publications. Just as trying to consistently predicted. The “Book of the Month Club” was protect authors in the Soviet Union led to expanding human going to conquer and narrow the marketplace; television was rights in the 1970s, combating state-sponsored hate speech going to leave people with no time to read; and, of course, the and other dangerous misuses of books in schools could be internet was going to wipe out the need for publishers at all. one way for publishers to get more involved today.

And yet, as this is written, I think publishing is flourishing, and I believe it will continue to expand, as those starving AA: The internet has been a potentially powerful tool for for knowledge will always find ways to be fed.

■

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Tuesday 12 april 2016

Changes in the children’s and ya book market Another strong performance for the UK children’s book sector in 2015 has again demonstrated the resilience of this category, and particularly in print, writes Jo Henry. Nielsen Book’s annual deepdive into children’s (and for the first time in 2015 including Young Adults aged 18-25) has shown that enjoyment of the printed format continues to be widespread among younger readers–more so than it is among older. Despite almost ubiquitous access to devices among children, reading books is one of the least common activities on smartphones and tablets for those aged 8-17.

Nielsen Book’s research, however, showed that despite the growth in children’s physical book sales the proportion of 0-17s reading has again dropped, by 1 percentage point: the proportion of children reading on a weekly basis is now 7 percentage points lower than it was in 2012. This decrease is seen among both girls and boys, but is most marked among 3-10-year olds, and has dropped fastest for boys aged 8-10. More encouragingly, however, those classified as “frequent readers” are actually spending longer reading each week.

This slight drop in reading activity last year was offset by a rise in online and digital activities, particularly use of YouTube (especially among those aged 3-10), playing computer games, and watching TV on mobile devices. This latter activity has increased by an extraordinary 13 percentage points in 2015 over 2014 as a weekly activity among 0-17 year olds.

Children’s access to the latest devices continues to increase, with eight in ten 3-10 year olds, rising to nine out of ten 11-25s, having use of a smartphone, tablet or e-reader, with around a third of 3-7 year olds and around nine in ten of those aged 14+ owning at least one of these devices themselves. The proportion of 0-17s who have ever read digitally rose again in 2015 to 1 in 3, up from 1 in 5 in 2012, but growth is slowing each year and potential interest in reading digitally remains at around 60%.

The rise in popularity of physical formats in 2015 saw growth in colouring, activity and illustrated books–all genres that still work particularly well in print.

In 2015, for the first time, Nielsen Book segmented UK consumers aged 0-25 into four groups: the “Superfans”, the “Distractibles”, the “Potentials” and the “Antis”. As their name suggests, the latter group are infrequent readers, who strongly

prefer doing other activities. They are particularly likely to be heavy users of YouTube, social media and texting, and tend to be male and aged 14-17.

The “Superfans”, on the other hand, who account for a quarter of 0-25 year olds, are keen collectors and recommenders of books, and are more likely to be female and split fairly evenly by age. The largest group are the “Potentials”, accounting for a third of 0-25 year olds. They are generally positive about books, and are particularly keen on watching adaptations, but they are only light/ occasional readers. They include both males and females, but tend to cluster in the 18-25 age group. Like the “Antis”, the “Distractibles” tend to be male, but they cluster in the under-11 age ranges. They are heavier readers, who like following and leading their friends’ reading choices, but even they tend to say they prefer the internet and being active to reading.

In the US, a similar market segmentation exercise revealed four groups that mapped relatively closely to those seen in the UK: the “Avid Readers” who account for between 19%-27% of children in the three age groups investigated (0-4, 5-8 and 9-12); the “Gamers”, accounting for between 19% and 33% in each; the “Social Omnivores”, who account for an astonishing 45% of children aged 9-12, but only 16%-20% of those aged 0-8; and the “Disengaged” segment, who account for 29% of the youngest group, but only 17% of those aged 9-12. While the “Avid Readers”–at all ages–account for the greatest proportion of books bought, the “Social Omnivores” seem to offer the potential for growth in the US market. Like the “Distractibles” in the UK, they tend to be boys and to undertake a broad range of activities, although reading is still important to them even at 9-12. These are key groups to concentrate on to ensure that they don’t turn into “Antis” or “Disengaged” as they grow to adulthood.

Nielsen Book is holding its first UK event on the children’s sector to investigate what has been driving growth, who is buying what, and how the books fit into today’s multimedia landscape.

■ Jo Henry is V-p Analytics and Insights, Nielsen Book Research.

The Nielsen Book UK Children’s Summit 2016 will be held on Thursday, 14 April from 9.30am to 12.45pm in the High Street Theatre. Booking will remain open until 9.30am 14 April; to book go to nielsen-books-uk-childrenssummit-2016-at-the-london-book-fair-tickets-21487064388.

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Tuesday 12 april 2016

author of the day

photo: Dean Checkley

Nicholas Clee caught up with Marian Keyes in the run up to the Fair.

NC: You haven’t been to a book fair before. What are you hoping to find?

MK: Books! (One of the loves of my life.)

NC: Some authors can be dismayed by fairs, because of the contrast between the Marian Keyes solitary business of writing and the huge industry that sustains it. Will this disconcert you?

MK: Not at all. I’ve been writing for a long time and I’m well aware (and grateful) that publishing is a huge industry.

NC: Your last two novels, The Mystery of Mercy Close and The Woman Who Stole My Life, have drawn on painful experiences in your life. Was writing the novels therapeutic?

(I’m interested because I was asked it about a non-fiction book I wrote, and found it a hard question to answer.)

MK: I wrote The Mystery of Mercy Close when I was “MITH” (Mad In The Head with depression) and actually it’s the only one of my novels that was therapeutic. My experience of depression was so unlike what I’d expected that it gave me great relief to give my awful distorted thoughts to my character Helen Walsh. Also I used the novel to try to explain how I was feeling to the people who loved me, who wanted to help me. And I hoped that it might help other people who were going through that hell and thought they were entirely alone.

NC: They’re some way from chick lit. Has being branded the queen of chick lit been a help or a hindrance?

MK: Being categorised as chick lit means some people will never touch me but, on a personal level, I don’t mind. (I mind on behalf of women in general, but that’s a different story.)

NC: Are you working on a novel at the moment?

MK: Yes. Called “Time Off For Bad Behaviour”, about a marriage having a mid-life crisis.

NC: Many of the essays in Making It Up as I Go Along suggest a person with a sunny attitude to life. Do you find that people are surprised that the person capable of writing with such self-aware humour can also be prey to depression?

MK: I suppose that’s the thing about depression, there’s a lot of misinformation about it. Yes, I feel the pain of life acutely, but a lot of the time I’m cheery.

NC: How do you find making public appearances at the moment?

MK: I’m loving it! Truly loving it. For a long time when I was “MITH” I could barely leave the house and I was fully convinced I’d never be able to do a public appearance ever again. Which made me very sad, because it was (and still is) the part of being a writer I love the most; it’s a huge honour to meet the people who’ve gone to the trouble of reading my books. Also the events I do tend to be great fun–very chatty, very intimate, very personal–and I get a huge amount of pleasure from them. ■

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The top 100: that’s what it’s all about On 24th June, the UK could be in, or it could be out, writes Duncan Calow. Or it could be shaking it about if Boris is right, and Dave is wrong, about the potential for yet further re-negotiation of the UK’s place in Europe.

Regardless of the Brexit Hokey Cokey, however, the rest of the EU will be looking at an ambitious plan for a “digital single market”. In particular, they will be focused on the important role of content and rights Duncan Calow owners within that. Something that, I suspect, will likely have featured very little in the referendum debate being argued over this spring.

European ambition in this area is nothing new. At the end of the 1990s the European Commission, like many other law-makers, felt the need to “do something” in response to the dramatic growth of the internet. There was a worry that the EU might miss out on the dotcom boom. So the Commission masterminded a raft of plans and proposals for the “information superhighway”. In 1999, I recall us trying to keep a legal eye on nearly 100 legislative or policy initiatives at different stages within the Brussels pipeline.

Since then, Europe has had to implement and apply all that law and regulation. Sceptics might suggest that, rather than the stuff about a date change wreaking havoc upon anything with a processor, this was the real “Millennium Bug”–it still being unclear if we averted the Y2K disaster through wise procurement or because computer salesmen had dreamt the whole thing up. Some of that legislation has since required several painful attempts at correction and improvement. If not a bug, it has certainly provoked more than a few online headaches.

“The new rules that apply to the business of content and rights are only in part being set by the legislators.”

Digital single market Enthusiasts might prefer to categorise such activity as a necessary and desirable updating for a shifting technical and commercial landscape. Few of today’s online players existed back then. Few of those that did, survive. And that is a crucial consideration for the Commission. Indeed, their worry expressed above is now better categorised as an obsession: why are none of the super platforms that dominate online media and commerce from the EU? And for proud little-Englanders, remember that the BBC website barely makes the current top 100.

The household names that do top the charts, wherever in the world a household is logging on, are from the US, China and Russia, not Germany, France or the UK (local versions of global brands aside). The view of the

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Commission is clear. Without the ability to access a single home market of digital users and consumers of sufficient size and value, European players cannot build scale and compete globally. Crucially, not enough users and consumers in the EU reach across borders within Europe to read and watch and buy online.

The Commission’s remedy is to revisit, yet again, the legal and regulatory regime.

By the end of 2015 we had a review of geo-blocking; a proposed regulation on pan-European content-portability; two draft e-commerce directives–one relevant to the sale of ebooks and the other to the sale of print books; and a promise that this was just the hors d’oeuvres to a main course of further action in 2016. Already this year, every B2C website or online marketplace trading in the EU must have implemented links to a new consumer disputes platform.

Other factors at play

Whether you buy into this having a positive, negative or neutral impact on the success of European business may be informed, to an extent, by your wider views on the EU. And anyone in the business of content and rights ought, rightly, to be cautious about proposals for more IPR reform. It goes with the (exclusive, DRM-protected?) territory. But, as many rights holders now begin to operate their own online platforms, the “them versus us” battle lines between technology and content are not quite so clearly drawn as they were.

There are also factors that transcend the law-makers’ efforts. Social media may be one of our more important modern day phenomena, or a vacuous sound-chamber for egotists and trolls (probably a bit of both), but it has given users and consumers a voice that they never had before. If they aren’t happy, you will know it. So will everyone else. Regardless of legal reforms, the ability to rely on old-school terms and conditions, press releases and “customer services” is disappearing fast. The same applies to privacy. Even to business models.

The new rules that apply to the business of content and rights–on and offline, B2B and B2C–are only in part being set by the legislators. Ultimately, the demand for greater responsiveness and flexibility is not a creature of statute, directive or regulation. That won’t change, whatever the outcome of the forthcoming UK referendum.

■ Duncan Calow is Partner at DLA Piper. He is also co-author of Drafting Agreements for the Digital Media Industry (Oxford University Press); a new and updated paperback edition was published in March.

Tuesday 12 april 2016

london show daily

Travel publishing: making waves Ten years on from its first publication, the Nielsen BookScan Travel Publishing Year Book now covers the UK, US and other global markets, and offers a forensic analysis of the travel publishing sector to give publishers a greater depth of understanding of their market, writes Steven Mesquita.

I have always based the Year Book’s figures on value, on the commercial basis that it’s the money you earn that pays the bills, not the number you sell. But comparing value with volume for the first time in the 2016 Year Book has revealed two important points about 2015: • Publishers’ books have been raising more money, but not necessarily selling more copies • Some of the increased value has been raised by lower discounting to the public–resulting in more money for the retailer, but not necessarily the publisher The headline is this. All Travel value sales–Core (maps and guides) and Non-core (travel writing, phrasebooks, etc)– grew by 6.04% in 2015 over 2014. But, by volume, the growth falls to just 1.53%. Core Travel categories grew by 0.39% in 2015 in value, but, in volume, they fell by 4.04%. Even in the “star” category of World Travel Guides, the 4.45% increase in value we are celebrating falls to an increase of 1.55% in volume.

Well, you might say: as long as publishers are receiving more money, it doesn’t matter if they are selling fewer books. In fact, it’s more efficient to sell less and receive more. But is the extra money going to the publisher? I have often highlighted how much our industry is giving away in often unnecessary discounts to the consumer through “offers” by retailers. In 2015, the industry gave away £1.6m less in Core Travel sales in discounts.

The value of sales based on RRP was down on 2014 by £1.5m–but by giving less discount to the consumer, receipts were up by £230K. Some key retailers used discount less in 2015, particularly away from the world of major bestsellers. So, while some of the increase in sales was due to increased retail prices and benefited both publisher and retailer, much was due to reduced discounts, which tends to benefit the retailer, but not the publisher.

The category of World Travel Guides makes up nearly half of all Core sales. It is a bellwether for the sector, and so merits some further analysis. We have already seen that 2015 was a year to celebrate for World Travel Guide publishers.

After the first increase for a decade in 2014 (but a tiny one– just 0.08%), 2015 saw a healthy gain in sales of 4.45%.

But it wasn’t all sweetness and light: • The top 10 publishers in World Travel Guides accounted for 90% of the sales • One publisher accounted for 67% of the increased sales in 2015 • Sales of five out of the top 10 publishers in the category fell • Sales of 11 out of the top 20 publishers in the category fell And the same trends are evident in the US market.

Seven years of continuous decline in the Travel Guides categories came to an end in 2015 with a small increase (1.32%)–and again, in the biggest category, World Travel Guides, five of the top publishers gained and five lost sales.

As well as BookScan data, the 2016 Year Book contains, for the second year, data from Books and Consumers, Nielsen’s qualitative data. This gives us insight into who is buying guides and in what formats.

For example, sales of travel guides in ebook format grew in 2014 Q1-3 by 65% to 6.8% of all formats sold between 2013 and 2014. In the past year, that growth has come to a halt (7.0% in 2015). Encouragingly, over the past three years, the audience for travel guides has been getting younger, with 52% of purchases made by those under 45 in 2015 Q1-3, compared with 48% in 2013 Q1-3.

So 2015 was a better year for travel publishing, but is it sustainable? There is no doubt that, over the last three years, the travel publishing market has plateaued. So far in 2016, the same patterns are emerging. World Travel Guides are continuing to put on strong growth, while UK Guides and Maps continue to struggle. But volatility has increased. The initial signs in 2016 are that this volatility will continue in both the political and economic arenas. The graphs will continue to be wavy.

■ For further information about the Travel Publishing Year Book, contact stephen.mesquita@gmail.com. This is the second part of a two-part analysis of the travel publishing market, the first part appeared in the BookBrunch LBF Preview; pick up a copy at stand 2A61 or go to BookBrunch.co.uk.

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Tuesday 12 april 2016

World rights: agents shoul

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Contact us today – Find out how Nielsen PubTrack Digital can help your publishing, sales and marketing decisions – e: salesbookresearch@nielsen.com www.nielsenbook.co.uk

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To my fellow literary agents, gathered at the Fair: let’s take this opportunity to consider why it is in the author’s interest for the Halls for one year to go quiet, and for the noise from the IRC to roar above–for the agents to take over Olympia, writes Lizzy Kremer.

Agents are under increasing pressure from the big Lizzy Kremer corporates to make world rights deals–not because those publishers are suddenly more expert or passionate than we in rights selling–but because the corporate strategy is to spread their risk, and to aggregate their profits and losses across multiple territories and activities.

Publishers are able to make such deals very attractive and there will always be times when an agent simply can’t turn down a huge amount of money on behalf of their client. But in terms of authors, outside of highly illustrated books with their high origination and printing costs, this developing tendency to sell world rights to international conglomerates is not generally in the author’s interest, and so it should be of little interest to us.

Publishers buy and sell books. Agents represent and protect authors. And so it is with rights selling. Of course, publishers’ rights executives can sell the books on their lists effectively, but their job is not to take care of the author in those deals–they work for the publishing house. Every time a publisher makes a subsidiary rights deal for an author and takes a percentage commission, a conflict of interest arises.

When the rights deal is with a publishing imprint within the same international corporation, there are then four interests to balance: the interests of the domestic publisher; the interests of their sister publisher abroad; the general corporate interest; and, then, the interests of the author.

Corporate policy tends to be for publishers’ rights teams to offer books to corporate sisters first. Rights sold internally are often sold for less than the anticipated market value, either by corporate policy, or through lack of competition from the wider marketplace.

And what happens when those corporate sisters don’t want to buy? Then the rights execs have to turn to publishers outside the group, but now the message is: “Our sister companies didn’t want these books... do you?” Not the best way to generate enthusiasm or maximise the value of the deal.

Even when it does work out, contract terms between sister publishing houses are not excellent for the author; they protect the interests of the two sister publishers involved. As increasing numbers of world rights deals are being made by US agents, and more books are being sold into the UK by US-based publishing houses as opposed to UK-based agents. UK contractual terms will be eroded and certainly never improved by these deals. Will a US publisher pressurise its UK sister to

Tuesday 12 april 2016

d hold firm offer the best high discount royalties, or will a UK publisher pressurise its US sister to escalate the ebook royalty?

Only agencies are expert in–charged with–protecting the author’s interest in their individual markets and in general, and unless agencies continue to make the majority of English-language deals, author contracts will reflect decreasing levels of protection for authors.

Although it is the author’s work that is the subject of the rights agreements made by publishers, the author is not a signatory to the contract, and their rights and interests are in effect “agented” by their publisher. We have had many instances, however, of a publisher not passing on the wishes of an author’s foreign publishers to the author because those wishes do not coincide with their own: for example, regarding the subject matter of a new book, or a publication schedule.

Each publishing territory should enjoy a direct relationship with the author, not one filtered through another publisher.

And what good is an “agent” who does not consult the author on all contractual terms, or chase the sub-licencee for publication plans, or pressurise them to spend marketing money, and to build a career for the author in each territory in the long term? The agent never stops working every angle for their author. The publisher cannot stand loyally and doggedly at every author’s side in the same way, beyond publication and into the next year or decade.

When the deal is not a subsidiary rights deal, but instead consists of one advance for world English-Language rights, with home royalties from all territories set against it, the publisher successfully spreads their risk, but the author loses the opportunity to negotiate the best terms in each territory. Although publishers sometimes offer large advances in exchange for world rights, the author’s income is disadvantaged by having only one advance against which multiple sets of royalties are aggregated: several territories will probably have to perform well before the author can benefit from her own success. Whereas, if the author’s agent has negotiated multiple advances for her author, the author has multiple opportunities to earn royalties. Lots of small pots overflow more quickly than one big pot.

And, with publishers sometimes taking approximately 25% of translation deals, once you have taken your 15% of net on top, if your client’s large advance does in fact ever earn out, your author is effectively receiving only 64% of the value of the advances and royalties in their book, as opposed to the 80% they would receive on rights deals made by their agents.

Rights-selling is the agent’s main activity; it is our area of expertise in the same way that publishers specialise in, yes, publishing, correctly labelling rights as “subsidiary” to their core business. Once your author’s publishers become her agent, their role becomes confused: at a cost to your author and, ultimately, to your business, that of the professional agent.

■ Lizzy Kremer is Vice-President of the Association of Authors’ Agents and Head of Books at David Higham Associates.

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london show daily

Tuesday 12 april 2016

Jane austen’s curtains nicholas Jones argues that the pictures are better in sound

photo: Daniel Solomons

adapting novels is that in a film it is One of the pleasures of being an audiobook necessary to specify things that are irrelevant producer is being part of, not one, but two to the story. I termed this “the Jane Austen’s creative worlds full of intelligent, articulate curtains problem”. When the Bennets people with stories to tell or information to discuss Netherfield in Pride and Prejudice, impart: authors and readers (perhaps it is they are speculating about the people who clearer in this article to call them have taken the house, never the details of “performers” to avoid confusion with the the furnishings; Marianne’s “handsome consumers of printed books). pianoforte” is, as far as I remember, the only Sometimes these two worlds come bit of joinery that rates a mention in Sense together. When Finty Williams read M R and Sensibility. The very act of providing Carey’s darkly dystopian, but enthrallingly Nicholas Jones speaking at a Byte the “furniture” of the novel (in every sense) written, Fellside earlier this year, the author the Book meeting in March. engages the reader in a way that deepens joined us in our studio. The two talked involvement and understanding, whereas about the process of converting the printed a film version demands that every little book to audio (we filmed part of their detail is specified by the maker rather than conversation, and it may be found at the audience. www.youtube.com/watch?v=awFwFLQe_A8).

Michael Morpurgo was recently interviewed Mike Carey quotes the tag line that used on Radio 4 (“Today”, 12 March 2016). Why to appear on the blog of his friend and did he think that the film of War Horse has fellow author Liz de Jager: “Anyone who been only moderately successful, whereas says they have only one life to live must not the stage version is a phenomenon now seen know how to read a book.” Reading is an by more than three million people around immersive experience, says Mike, and he the world? Having the horse being a puppet sees Finty’s job creating the audio version as on stage, he said, not wholly realistic, painting the picture for the listener, taking prompts the audience to engage with the his words as a starting point. Finty replies: process of telling the story, whereas the definitive reality of “You’ve done all the hard work; my job is colouring in.” the film leaves no room for the viewer to personalise the Finty comments on how strong his images are–little details draw the reader into the world of the novel, whereas story to his or her own experience. The stage version, he concluded, “leaves the audience room to imagine”. a straight catalogue of events would be far less engaging.

Mike Carey replies that he learned the power of such detail when he was a writer of the scripts for comics and graphic Expanding the imagination novels, and reckons that this played a large part in helping The artist Delacroix, quoted in a podcast we recorded him develop the powerfully visual prose style that appeals recently for the London Review of Books, wrote in his so strongly to readers of his breakthrough bestselling book diaries that: “A picture is nothing but a bridge between the The Girl with All the Gifts. I am interested to note that the soul of the artist and that of the spectator.” That is similarly visual Neil Gaiman, whose books we have also analogous to the connection between author and audio recorded, also worked on graphic novels early in his career. performer, and then performer and listener.

At first Mike wrote very explicitly, specifying every detail, That doyen of audible images, Terry Wogan, was in our but he soon discovered that the artist he was working with studio several times. “Television contracts the imagination,” could create a coherent whole from quite sparse details, so he once remarked; “radio expands it.” Groucho Marx had a he could write his scripts almost in shorthand. take on it too, some 30 years earlier: “I find television very educational. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”

Creating a whole world Or you could listen to an audiobook. UK consumers The same applies to readers and listeners. Listening to an are increasingly doing so, with a 29.3% increase from audiobook is not a passive process. It is all the better for 2014 to 2015 according to Publishers Association the demands it makes on the listener, who is in a position figures. Reading a book or watching a film wholly analogous to the artist working with Carey or Gaiman, occupies you and locks you to one place. Audiobooks having to create a whole world from a script that free both the body and the imagination. concentrates on essentials.

■ Earlier in my publishing career I worked at Thames Nicholas Jones is the Founder of the audiobook production company Television, where I noticed that one of the challenges of Strathmore Publishing.

“Listening to an audiobook is not a passive process. It is all the better for the demands it makes on the listener.”

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Tuesday 12 april 2016

london show daily

putting translators in the driving seat This is my 11th London Book Fair, writes Erica Jarnes. Back in 2006, I was an Editorial Assistant at Bloomsbury, and my job was to “man the stand”, which mostly meant fielding enquiries from would-be-published writers. Unsolicited submissions were a big concern for Bloomsbury, as I expect they were for most established publishing houses. This was in the years before self- (and digital) publishing took off in earnest and, in general, writers were not very skilled at selling their own work–that’s where agents and Erica Jarnes foreign rights managers came in. So I have to admit that the sight of an “un-agented” writer usually provoked a sinking feeling on the stand. The sight of an “un-agented” translator clutching a manuscript would have provoked a similar feeling, but it would have been very rare indeed.

Fast-forward a decade and the picture is rather different.

Writers are developing the skills and industry savvy to pitch their books directly to publishers as well as to retailers, event programmers, media outlets and readers. Books in translation are gaining traction in the UK (the proportion of published books that are translations has risen by a whole per cent, which sounds small, but represents a big shift). And publishers seem more keen to take a risk on international writers, thanks to high-profile literary prizes and new marketing hooks (e.g. “the Brazilian Ferrante/Murakami”) which build on past successes.

But how do UK editors hear about the best foreign books to acquire in English? Editors I have spoken to say that their main obstacle is the obvious one: the language barrier. They often cannot read potential acquisitions in their original languages (except sometimes French and Spanish), and they don’t have access to reliable reports and high-quality samples, or enough insight into literary contexts outside the UK or Europe. They tell me that they would love to hear more about great books in Indonesian or Urdu, or even Arabic, but they don’t have a way in that they can trust.

I think that translators have the potential to play a very important role at the acquisition stage. They know other languages, they have contextual knowledge about literature in those languages, and they have an understanding of the Anglophone reading world. They can also produce high-quality samples and reports, which are hugely valuable–but, often, translators, like writers back in 2006, don’t necessarily have the skills to champion or recommend books to publishers.

At English PEN we help UK publishers to discover, and publish, the most exciting books from around the world. We want to put literary translators in the driving seat as champions of international writers and their books, both before and after publication, in an age where writers (including translators) need to be more active “off the page” than ever before. We’ve boiled this all down into an initiative called PEN Presents, which every six months will showcase a list of six contemporary titles not yet acquired by a UK publisher. Each list of six will come from a specific region or language, so publishers will know they are looking at English PEN’s selection of the most exciting and viable

books from, for instance, East and South-east Asia; or sub-Saharan Africa; or even the best undiscovered (in English) YA books.

The scheme will be open exclusively to translators, who will make the case for their chosen book and produce a high-quality sample and report. Each round will be whittled down by a panel of expert judges, who will consider not only literary merit, but the bigger publishing picture. Each round will end in a celebratory event featuring the translatorchampions, which will allow publishers to meet them and hopefully build new relationships.

A pilot for the scheme, featuring books from all over Europe, is running at the moment in partnership with the European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC), the Czech Centre and Free Word as part of European Literature Night 2016. The six winning titles will be announced tomorrow morning, when all relevant materials for publishers (including the stand numbers of the relevant foreign rights managers) will be published on English PEN’s website. For those of you based in London, please also come to our celebratory event on 9th June at the Free Word Centre. ■ Erica Jarnes is the Writers in Translation Programme Manager at English PEN.

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Tuesday 12 april 2016

paying up: us legal cases A decade’s worth of closely-watched legal cases is finally coming to an end for US publishers. andrew richard albanese looks at what remains Cambridge University Press vs. Patton After this case was reversed and sent back to a lower court in late 2014, the publishing community still awaits a new decision in what Tom Allen, the President of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), has called a “test case” for fair use in the digital age.

Incredibly, the case marks its eighth anniversary this week.

It began in 2008, when three academic publishers sued administrators at Georgia State University for systematically encouraging faculty to use digitised course readings as a no-cost alternative to traditionally licensed course readings. In 2012, Judge Orinda Evans ruled that GSU’s digitised excerpts were protected by fair use. But an appeals court sent the case back to her, with instructions to re-balance her fair-use analysis.

A new decision is expected soon, but the case could still be years from resolution. Barring a settlement, it is reasonable to expect an appeal of Evans’ new decision, for example, as well as further action over any proposed injunctive relief.

After millions of dollars in legal fees and heightened tensions between publishers and their customers–the academic institutions they support–the big question may be whether the final decision in this case will even matter, as the academic market continues to move toward a licensed access regime, and the open access movement continues.

Gitman vs. Pearson Education Inc First filed in October of 2014 by two plaintiff authors (Lawrence J Gitman and Michael D Joehnk), the suit alleges that Pearson systematically short-changes textbook authors on the royalties they are owed. Pearson has sought to have the class action claims tossed–and last autumn, a New Yorkbased judge, George B Daniels, did dismiss two claims against Pearson, and also severed parent companies Pearson PLC and Pearson Inc. from the case. But Daniels left Pearson Education to battle the two remaining claims alone.

Pearson attorneys argue that the company acted within the bounds of its contracts with the plaintiffs, and that given “material differences” between the contracts of thousands of Pearson authors, certifying a class-wide complaint would be impossible. But even if that proves true, the action could still shine a bright light on the publisher’s practices. For example, in filings, the authors claim that an audit showed one of their textbooks rose 140% in price from 2000 to 2011 (from $108 a copy to $260), yet their royalties over the same period remained “virtually stagnant”.

United States vs. Apple It’s over. In March, the US Supreme Court declined to hear Apple’s appeal, letting stand Judge Denise Cote’s 2013 verdict holding Apple liable for its role in a conspiracy with five major

22

publishers to fix ebook prices. The Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the appeal means that Apple will now have to refund $400 million to consumers under the settlement the company reached last year with state and class action plaintiffs.

The question now is: how much of Apple’s money will find its way to publishers’ bottom lines? Unlike the 2012 publisher settlements, which required refunds be spent on books (print or digital), Apple refunds can be spent on “any product or service” offered by the retailer.

The Google book scanning litigation The wait continues. The US Supreme Court this month was set to decide on 1st April whether to take the Authors Guild appeal in Authors Guild vs. Google–the high-profile legal battle over Google’s programme to digitise out-ofprint library books. But that didn’t happen. The high court is now supposed to decide on 15th April. After more than a decade of legal manoeuvring, we will likely know next week whether the case will continue, or finally end.

James et al vs. Penguin Group It’s over. In August of last year, the remaining cases against self-publishing service provider Author Solutions were dropped, after a federal judge held that a group of plaintiff authors failed to produce evidence to back up fraud claims.

But while Author Solutions dodged a legal bullet, its big challenge will be in the court of public opinion. Can the company address the complaints of its customers and overcome the negative publicity from the suit? Whatever happens, it’s no longer Penguin Random House’s problem; in December, the publisher unloaded Author Solutions to the Najafi Companies, a private investment firm.

HarperCollins vs. Open Road Sure, this case has been over for some time, but it now has an interesting postscript. In March 2014, Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald held that Open Road had infringed Harper’s copyright with its ebook edition of Jean Craighead George’s Julie of the Wolves, based on some vague language in Harper’s original 1971 contract. At the time PW pointed out that while ostensibly a copyright matter, the case was fundamentally about ebook royalties–in court filings, it was revealed that HarperCollins had initially offered to do an ebook edition, but had refused to budge from its standard 25% net royalty, which George had deemed unfair. In January, HarperCollins announced it would finally publish its ebook edition of George’s book–although, neither the publisher nor the author would disclose the royalty rate–or, whether it was worth the lost time and the more than $1.5 million Harper said it cost in legal fees.

■

Tuesday 12 april 2016

london show daily

Too much of a good thing Open Access has transformed academic publishing in some subject areas, but the rapid growth in the availability of content makes it increasingly difficult for researchers to find the research they need, writes Byron Russell. An undiscoverable paper is a paper without impact, so how are we going to solve it?

Open Access (OA) has been nurtured in part on the economic crises of the last decade, and on the emergence of web-based tools that make digital publishing and archiving easier.

Byron Russell Demand from authors–especially in the sciences–to publish in OA mode has been rising steadily over the past five years, and an estimated 43% of academic content published in the UK is now Open Access.

According to Research Consulting, two thirds of the world’s journals now offer an OA option, though most of the publishers in the study, in what increasingly looks like a rather last-ditch effort to glean some actual revenue from publication, follow a hybrid rather than fully OA model. This means that researchers now have loads of free academic content to download, share and even adapt.

From the researchers’ point of view, at least, a good thing… right?

Well, not always. So much research goes uncited and unread, and the proportion is increasing as more content is published. The history of scientific endeavour is littered with experimentation that was spectacularly right, but lay undiscovered for decades. As historian Helge Kragh asserts: “The scientist who knows how to market a new discovery is of no less importance than the discoverer.” And today’s writers and researchers are faced with an unparalleled crisis of discovery.

Open Access generates no direct revenue post-publication, and there is no incentive for publishers to market new OA content.

So discovery relies not on proactive promotion, but on Google Scholar and peer or engine referral (such as the innovative TrendMD). Searching and indexing is further complicated by the variety of OA licensing arrangements–no fewer than six core licence types, each with five versions, the most common being CC-BY (Creative Commons). Different modes of access (Gold, Green or self-archiving, and delayed, moving-wall Open Access–where content is available only to paying subscribers for a set period) further complicate matters.

We then have hybrid (mixed subscribed and Open Access content) and “flipped” journals (journals converting from subscription to Open Access), so what is charged for one month may be open the next. OA policies among publishers and institutions are–where they exist at all–very wide-ranging, though organisations such as Jisc (a not-for-profit organisation offering digital services to the UK higher and further education, and skills sectors) are trying to propose a degree of standardisation.

There is also no cross-indexing of OA content, which is deposited in a variety of silos such as the DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals); OAPEN (the Library contains freely accessible academic books, mainly in the humanities and social sciences); and institutional repositories, which

may not even be open to researchers from other institutions, let alone the public.

So how to resolve the discovery crisis? OA content has seen average growth of 11% year-onyear since 2012, and its a worry for institutional librarians, as holdings and collection acquisition become increasingly less relevant. But it might be that their importance will eventually lie in guiding researchers down the best discovery pathways.

Another possibility is to turn scholarly authors into marketeers. Kudos is an innovative tool that enables them to promote and monitor their research via social media. Another exciting option is transparent collaboration–a drawing-together of all the dispersed OA content silos into one place, but publishers have to get their heads around the fact that jealously guarding IP from “competition” or piracy in OA is largely redundant; it is all up for grabs.

Content discovery is an issue for every stakeholder in scholarly publishing, and it’s a challenge that lies very much at the core of what the future holds for us all.

■ Byron Russell is the Head of ingentaconnect at Publishing Technology. He will be chairing “What is a Publisher Now? Yes, it’s Open: But Where on Earth is it” on Wednesday, 13th April at 11.30am, at the Faculty.

The Dance of the Moon Pari Spolter

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.

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Tuesday 12 april 2016

Gail rebuck: making things work nicholas Clee profiles the winner of the LBF Lifetime Achievement Award 2016 The London Book Fair has not avoided the obvious in giving its Lifetime Achievement Award to Gail Rebuck. As head of Random House, she was the dominant and most recognised figure in UK publishing for more than 20 years, achieving a consistent level of success in an industry where such success is notoriously difficult to sustain. She has been a champion of literacy projects through her work for Quick Reads and the National Literacy Trust, and she has been at the Gail Rebuck forefront of industry promotions such as World Book Day and Books Are My Bag. She is Baroness Rebuck of Bloomsbury, and has a DBE and CBE. And she has pursued this career–when there remains a shortage of women in top jobs, this is not an incidental point–while raising a family.

There were many who did not foresee such achievements when in 1991 the CEO of Random House, Alberto Vitale– having fired Rebuck’s boss Anthony Cheetham at a breakfast meeting the morning after RH author Ben Okri had won the Booker Prize–appointed her to lead the company in the UK. Did she, sceptics wondered, have the literary credentials to run a group with imprints including Cape and Secker? (A reputation gained in her previous job, as a publisher largely of lifestyle titles, has been surprisingly resilient; Julian Barnes perhaps unwittingly reinforced it in his thank-yous after winning the 2011 Man Booker Prize, crediting Rebuck “for writing the cheques”.)

Then there were those such as the embittered former Pantheon publisher, the late André Schiffrin (another victim of Vitale’s), who questioned whether the conglomerate model would ever work in book publishing. A third prediction was that Rebuck would be forced, as the heads of numerous large companies had been, to “rationalise”, closing many of the numerous imprints that Random House had absorbed.

Imprint city Critics have pointed to celebrity titles by the likes of Katie Price and argued that they are a sign of the degradation of Random House’s heritage. Rebuck has seen their Katie Price and raised JM Coetzee, Anne Tyler, Toni Morrison, Philip Roth… The list is formidable. Random House–now of course it is Penguin Random House, of which Rebuck is Chair–has been consistently profitable. Yes, Harvill and Secker merged, and some lists closed, but there remain dozens within the stable.

How has she done it? Rebuck gave an insight into her working methods in a recent interview in the London Evening Standard. Soon into her tenure, she said, she had been faced with a meltdown at RH’s Tiptree distribution

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centre. After various consultants had failed to fix the problem, “I realised that I had to go and take charge myself.” She would get up at 4am each morning to be in Colchester for the start of the Tiptree shift, learning about the distributor’s systems before coming up with a solution that had been beyond the experts. “I learned that even when something’s completely out of your sphere, if you concentrate, using the right expertise, you can make things work,” she reflected.

It is fair to say that this was not a version of events that she was willing to broadcast at the time. The Bookseller incurred her considerable displeasure–an unnerving force to experience–for reporting retailers’ anger at lost, delayed or misdirected Tiptree orders. Various interviewers have noted the froideur with which Rebuck has greeted questions she considers disobliging. I recall with a shiver the phone conversation I had with her after I, as Bookseller Editor, had published a letter protesting about the treatment of a publisher Random House had dismissed; and I also recall my gratitude to her when, a few weeks later, she sent me an email on another subject that indicated she considered the matter closed. She does not bear grudges.

Highest standards The point is that failure is not an option. No one who has ever worked with Gail Rebuck would report the experience as other than challenging–but should you expect to get an easy ride from the CEO of Random House? If you were working on a project in which Rebuck decided to take particular interest, you had to make sure that it was being carried out to the highest possible standards. Only in one respect would she make your life easier: she would insist that meetings never drag on. Rebuck managed her time rigorously, ensuring most days that she was able to leave the office at 6.30pm in order to be with her family–even if sometimes she would go out again later.

Rarely for someone who has achieved such eminence, she does not have a big ego. For 25 years, she has been the publisher with the highest profile in the UK, but she has tended to portray herself as an enabler on behalf of others. Her words on receiving the LBF Award were typical: “It has been a privilege to work with many of the most talented publishing teams in the industry and there can be no job in the world to match the excitement of being one of the first to read a great author’s new work, discover a new voice or be stimulated by a new idea.

Curiosity and a love of books drive everyone in this industry. It is all about the authors.”

■ Gail Rebuck will be presented with the London Book Fair Lifetime Achievement Award this evening.

Tuesday 12 april 2016

london show daily

Making books accessible for all Driven by a desire to help thousands of blinded ex-soldiers from the First World War, the National Institute for the Blind (now the RNIB) embarked on a programme, called the Talking Book Service, to provide pleasure and education to visuallyimpaired people by recording book content on gramophone records, writes Richard Orme.

Eighty years later, through the same programme, books are now available on CD, memory stick and as digital downloads.

Recording books in professional studios can, Richard Orme however, take anywhere between two and nine months, so the audio version is often available later than the print.

However, publishers have become more committed to resolving the challenges faced by visually-impaired and print-disabled people, and more audio titles are now available on the day of general release–HarperCollins is the first publisher in the UK to commit to delivering every new title in audio format to the RNIB on the day of its print release.

Novels recorded by the author, a celebrity, or professional narrator bring pleasure to thousands, but not all written content is suitable for audio format. For example, for a reader with sight loss, educational and reference titles are preferred in digital text, which can be enlarged and displayed in colours to suit their visual needs.

Furthermore, digital text can be read out by a computer voice, or shown on a braille display connected to a computer or smartphone. Similarly, academic and complex professional content, which often includes subsections, footnotes, tables, figures and non-text content, can pose a conversion challenge.

Accessibility to this type of content can make all the difference to someone’s education or job prospects. Therefore the need for accessibility to span all content is imperative, and requires technical guidance and agreement.

In order to bring more clarity to the issue, the DAISY Consortium is spearheading an international initiative to standardise technical guidance for accessible content. This initiative will help not only publishers, but also the developers of reading systems and applications. With standardisation, content will increasingly be “born accessible”, avoiding the need for separate, expensive conversion on a case-by-case basis.

Book accessibility in poor or developing countries forms a second challenge: libraries are not stocked with accessible titles and resources are scarce. The Marrakesh Treaty, adopted in 2013, is part of the body of international copyright treaties administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The Treaty sets out mandatory limitations and exceptions to copyright rules for the benefit of the blind, visually-impaired and otherwise print-disabled. One of the benefits of the Treaty is to provide a framework for exchanging accessible titles between authorised organisations in different countries, reducing duplication of effort and, crucially, providing the opportunity for people with print disabilities in the world’s least developed countries to receive accessible books. It is estimated that more than 90% of the world’s blind people live in developing countries.

The Marrakesh Treaty has been signed by more than 60 countries, and ratified by 15. There is optimism that at least five more countries will ratify by the end of 2016, which will bring the Treaty into force. This will begin to remedy the scarcity of books; however, much more needs to be done to take advantage of new frameworks and laws.

The Accessible Books Consortium (ABC) is a multi-stakeholder partnership between WIPO, organisations that serve visually-impaired people, and organisations representing publishers and authors. The ABC helps countries prepare for new opportunities that the Treaty will bring, as well as developing mechanisms to facilitate the exchange of titles across national borders.

Arising from the legacy of the First World War is a hopeful future. Specialist services like the RNIB Talking Book Service will continue to thrive and innovate. Meanwhile, more newlypublished books will be provided as digital titles, using techniques that mean they are usable by readers with diverse print disability needs in both developed and developing nations.

■ Richard Orme is a board member of the Accessible Books Consortium.

The winners of the ABC’s 2016 “Accessibility Awards: Publisher and Initiative” will be announced at LBF International Excellence Awards tonight.

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Tuesday 12 april 2016

holding the mirror up to life One publisher making its London Book Fair debut, Mirror Books, might be a new entrant to the world of book publishing, but it has a long history of bringing incredible and engaging true life stories to the page, writes Fergus McKenna.

Firstly, and appropriately, the headlines. Mirror Books is a new book publishing imprint from the newspaper publisher Trinity Mirror. The company publishes more than 150 newspapers around the UK, including national and regional papers.

Mirror Books’ first title, Anni Dewani: A Phyllis Whitsell Father’s Story (by Vinod Hindocha) was released in February 2015 and international rights were quickly picked up.

Now, one year later and its latest book (only its third), Finding Tipperary Mary (by Phyllis Whitsell), has enjoyed chart success at home, is already an international bestseller and is set to be turned into a motion picture in the near future. Not a bad start for a publishing team, which is having to “learn as we go”.

A Father’s Story didn’t happen by accident, but I wouldn’t claim it was entirely planned either. As a newspaper publisher we cover news, sport and showbiz stories every day, and we are always looking for ways to take those same stories and to develop them in new and–for us–sometimes unusual ways.

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Vinod Hindocha (father of Anni Dewani) came to the Daily Mirror with his personal account of an incredibly emotional and difficult story that he wanted to get across to people, but it went far beyond what the relatively short space a newspaper feature would allow. For us it needed a different medium that allowed space to do the story justice. The obvious answer was to publish a book, and Mirror Books was born.

Mirror Books quickly followed up with another true crime title The Perfect Crime (from celebrated Mirror feature writer Tom Parry), before February this year saw the release of Finding Tipperary Mary, a first person account of Phyllis Whitsell’s search for the mother who left her in a Catholic orphanage in Birmingham. The extraordinary story of Phyllis and her search for, and discovery of, her birth mother was originally picked up by one of Trinity Mirror’s regional weekly titles, the Uxbridge Gazette, but quickly gained the attention of Birmingham’s Sunday Mercury, and then the Daily Mirror and Daily Express.

Phyllis’ story is in many ways the perfect example of what Mirror Books is all about. Every day as a newspaper publisher we print the stories of real people who by choice, accident or some other design live through extraordinary events or circumstances.

As a news organisation we see and report on these stories first. But by becoming a book publisher as well we are in a very fortunate, and privileged, position whereby we are able to take the same stories and explore them in much more depth and detail.

Another undeniable advantage of Mirror Books’ approach is that being part of a major media company provides great promotional opportunities, something that has already paid dividends as Mirror Books is now in final talks to turn Phyllis’ story into a film. The UK edition has reached the Amazon Top 40 list and the Canadian version (My Secret Mother, HarperCollins) is at number one in the country’s non-fiction bestsellers chart.

Jo Sollis, Executive Editor for Mirror Books, refuses to get carried away though. “For us, the story in Finding Tipperary Mary is a perfect example of some of the subject matter that Mirror Books is targeting, touching on topical issues such as adoption, alcoholism, abuse, dementia and forgiveness, and exploring how such subjects can impact and affect our daily lives.”

“In truth we’re only just finding our feet as a publisher,” continues Sollis, “which perhaps might sound strange for a company that has been printing the news since the early 19th century. But book publishing opens up a whole new world of opportunities and challenges for us, and our philosophy is to learn and to publish organically. As we find, or people bring us, the right stories that we feel we can do justice to, we’ll publish them and do everything we can to make them successful. Our ambition is simply to produce popular non-fiction titles that our readers will love, but right now we’re not about publishing huge volumes of book titles; our approach is very much quality over quantity.” ■ Fergus McKenna is Head of Syndication & Licensing at Trinity Mirror plc. Mirror Books is at Stand 2C41.

Tuesday 12 april 2016

london show daily

Catching up with the Trailblazers In February this year, the winners of the inaugural Trailblazer Awards for 20-something publishing stars were announced, writes Jasmin Kirkbride. Run by the Society of Young Publishers (SYP) in partnership with the London Book Fair, and with BookBrunch as the media Clio Cornish Bryony Woods George Burgess Nick Coveney Ella Kahn sponsor, the awards aim to remains fundamentally the same: an honest and trusting highlight publishing professionals in their twenties who have relationship between author and editor, with a shared drive to made an outstanding contribution to the industry. We caught up make a book as good as it can be. But given the market’s with the five winners to find out what they have been up to since. evolution, my feeling is that, as an editor, commitment, Ella Kahn and Bryony Woods (Diamond Kahn and Woods passion and daring are more important than ever before.”

Literary Agency): Kahn and Woods won a joint award for their Nick Coveney (Kings Road Publishing & Blink Publishing work at Diamond Kahn and Woods Literary Agency, which of Bonnier Publishing Group): As Head of Digital and Social they launched in 2012. “I’ve always had very broad and Media at Kings Road Publishing and Blink Publishing, eclectic reading taste, and as an agent I have the freedom to Coveney has a unique view into the digital world. “We’re work with authors and books that I feel truly passionate definitely going to see things change again in the ebook market about,” says Woods, explaining why she loves her work. “For soon,” he says. “I don’t think ebooks sales maturing means me, it’s the chance to work in close collaboration with authors, we’ve seen ‘the end’. Mobile and cloud-based and to be involved with them in every step of reading seems to be growing at a much slower the publishing process, rather than just one rate in the UK than in other markets, possibly particular stage of it,” adds Kahn. “I also love because e-ink devices have dominated the the combination of creativity and business consumer consciousness. I think there will be savvy needed–it’s a very varied role.” a second or third-wave with ebook sales spiking, but when it’ll Since the awards, both Kahn and Woods have been busy, come and exactly what it will look like is hard to predict.” signing new authors and brokering several deals that are still Next to the Trailblazers, his proudest publishing moments under wraps. Their children’s and YA authors have continued have been creating apps at Blink Publishing, and he’s their success, with the Carnegie-longlisted Panther by David optimistic about the industry engaging with new technology: Owen being shortlisted for the Sheffield Children’s Book “Publishers often got a bad rep for not embracing digital Award, and Nicole Burstein featuring at the “Rising Stars of enough during the early stages of the ‘revolution’–which has Young Adult Fiction” panel at the Oxford Literary Festival. always been at odds with my experience in the industry.”

“It’s easier than ever for authors to bypass agents and George Burgess (Gojimo): As a Co-founder of the Edtech publishers by self-publishing,” they both agree, discussing the Founders Exchange, and Founder and CEO of the UK’s most changes currently facing the industry. “We do think agents popular exam preparation app company, Gojimo, Burgess has have had to become more vocal about promoting themselves raised more than $3 million in venture capital for his business. At and the value we add to the process, and more creative and the age of just 17, when he was unable to find an A Level revision flexible in the services we provide to ensure we stay relevant.” app that suited his needs, he decided to build one himself. Fast Yet, despite these issues, they remain positive. “There will forward to 2015, when one in five A Level students in the always be demand for books and authors–and for agents who UK was using Gojimo to revise for exams. can negotiate the best deals in a fast-changing market and “It’s an honour to have been named a Trailblazer. I think it’s protect those authors’ rights and interests.” a testament to the innovative work we’re doing at Gojimo,” Clio Cornish (Harlequin): Cornish works as an editor at Burgess commented. “Since winning the Trailblazer award we’ve Harlequin. “Being named as a 2016 Trailblazer really was a been working hard to prep for the exam season. This included genuine honour and career highlight. Plus, given the the development of our new product, Gojimo Tutor, which goes extraordinary calibre of the other nominees, a huge surprise– live this month, as well as improving our existing revision app. It I’d been thrilled to be nominated, but hadn’t imagined for a is now being updated every three weeks and we’re already seeing moment that I’d win,” she says, before hinting at exciting new a quarter of a million users revising with it each month, and that Harlequin titles to keep an eye out for at the Fair. number will only continue to increase through June.”

Like Woods and Kahn, she is concerned that publishing ■ remains relevant. “Authors have an ever-increasing number of If you would like to nominate candidates for the 2017 Trailblazer Awards, routes to market on offer–which means that, as publishers, we please pick up a form from the Trailblazer stand, 2A61 Level 1; or at need to offer the best service possible. Editing itself, I think, www.bookbrunch.co.uk or www.londonbookfair.co.uk.

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Tuesday 12 april 2016

Brazil pushes back the future In Brazil: A Land of the Future, Austrian writer Stefan Zweig in the early 1940s wrote that: “Brazil is the land of the future; and it will always be.” This saying couldn’t be closer to the truth than today, writes Carlo Carrenho.

For several years, until 2013, the Brazilian economy enjoyed a period of growth. Brazil, the eternal country of the future, seemed to have found its fruitful present. The Brazilian book market, Carlo Carrenho however, never reflected this general economic growth. While Brazilian GNP grew 40.25% from 2005 to 2014, the book industry grew only 5.79%, ending 2014 with a $2 billion market according to SNEL, the Brazilian national union of publishers. Still, the publishing industry benefited from Brazil being under the spotlight. Any company with a global strategy had Brazil on their radar. The future, it seemed, was poised to arrive.

But then came 2014. The Brazilian GNP grew only 0.1% that year. And in 2015, a commodities crisis, mismanagement of public finances and scandal drove a decline in GNP, and a spike in inflation. This affected not only consumer book purchases, but also the Brazilian government’s purchases of books. Programmes were cancelled, purchases delayed and payments postponed– the government traditionally accounted for 25% of publishers’ revenues; it was a significant blow.

According to Nielsen Bookscan, which covers about 65% of the Brazilian retail market, 2015 showed nominal growth for publishers, about 3.43%–a drop of 6.54% in real terms after considering inflation. SNEL has not yet released its annual survey for 2015, but an educated guess would be a decline of between 12% and 14% in the year for the whole book industry.

Anecdotally, agents are reporting a drop in advance figures for Brazilian rights–which was expected. After all, the local currency in Brazil, the Real, lost 31.7% of its value against the Dollar in 2015. So what is in store for publishing in Brazil? Here are a few things to watch for.

More consolidation Despite the country’s economic crisis, the Brazilian market has been busy. In 2015, Companhia das Letras, in which Penguin Random House owns a 45% stake, consolidated Objetiva, a former Santillana imprint, into its operations, making it arguably the largest trade publisher in the country. Last August, HarperCollins launched HarperCollins Brasil under a joint-venture agreement with local Ediouro, following the template it used in establishing Thomas Nelson Brasil. HarperCollins owns 75% of Harpercollins Brasil and 85% of Thomas Nelson Brasil. In educational publishing, Tarpon Investimentos, a private equity fund, acquired control of

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Abril Educação in 2015. Later in the year, it acquired Saraiva’s publishing division and merged the two largest Brazilian publishing groups into a new company called Somos.

In higher education, Grupo Gen acquired Elsevier’s law division and the Atlas publishing house, consolidating its leadership in the market.

Amazon Amazon started selling print books in Brazil in August 2014, but the company’s market has grown only modestly, if consistently. Amazon is responsible for somewhere between 2% and 5% of the largest publishers’ sales. The opening of the Amazon store for print books, however, has revived the discussion of a fixed-price law for books–an idea supported by most booksellers and publishers in Brazil. But paradoxically, the average book discount for Brazilian retailers has dropped from 21.20% in 2014 to 18.75% in 2015, showing that Amazon is far from being a discounting anaconda in Brazil thus far.

Foreign imports According to Bookscan, about 5.4% of booksellers’ sales in Brazil came from foreign books last year. Around 80% of those books are in English, equally split between UK and US editions. If we extrapolate these numbers, we can estimate the market value of foreign-language titles sold in the Brazilian retail market at around $32 million annually.

Digital Brazilian digital market growth slowed down in 2015.

According to the 2016 Global E-Book Report, digital accounted for 4.27% of trade and higher education copies sold, and roughly 2.57% of publishers’ revenues, not including self-publishing or revenues from library-only platforms. The report estimates a market value of about $8.89 million.

Among the ebook retailers, Amazon is at the top with a market share estimated to be 60%, followed by Apple with 15%. Saraiva and Google are fighting for the third position, followed by Kobo. The catalogue of available Brazilian ebooks in ePub format is around 70,000 titles; of which about 20,000 are self-published.

Although 2016 will likely be a tough year, with an overwhelming economic and political crisis, Brazil’s potential remains. And those companies brave enough to set up there before and during the current crisis will be the ones to benefit most when the future, at last, arrives in Brazil.

■ Carlo Carrenho is a Brazilian journalist and publishing consultant. In 2001, he founded PublishNews, a daily electronic newsletter that covers the Brazilian publishing market.

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on the print-to-digital continuum Thanks to advances in all aspects of digital publishing, a variety of business models and strategies has evolved, but how they are being adopted depends on the publisher’s specialisation, writes Michael N Ross. Trade publishers approach the production and marketing of digital content differently from educational publishers. Based on market demand, digital outputs can be as simple as ebook versions of print publications, or they might be enhanced with videos or animations. Textbook publishers sometimes Michael N Ross bypass printed revisions of their books altogether and release new editions only as ebooks.

Educational publishers who still have a strong demand for their print publications might provide PDF versions of the books on discs, which can be downloaded and accessed on various devices. Others are selling collections of ebooks on a subscription basis. Publishers are testing their market’s appetite for digital versions of books as well as responding to the demand for content on various platforms and devices.

Few trade publishers today release their titles only in print formats, and for a good reason. Since at least as early as 2011, ebooks have been outselling print on Amazon.

Some companies may favour either print or digital outputs, but for the most part, publishers are on a continuum that includes both.

A publisher’s decision to choose either a print or digital format is based on economic models that are still in flux, and because both are sometimes exploited at the same time, internal resources are diverted to satisfy multiple format requirements. Similarly, marketing print and ebooks together presents its own challenges, especially in aligning consumer expectations with the price of different versions of the same title. Most consumers assume that ebooks, simply because they do not use ink on paper, cost less than their physical counterparts to manufacture and distribute, and therefore should be priced lower than their print equivalents. Consumers still have the perception that a digital product does not have the same value as a physical book, even though there are significant costs unique to digital products–including conversions to various e-reader formats, storage and licensing fees, and metadata development. However, consumers do not consider these factors when making purchasing decisions; they tend not to value the results of these investments in a digital product in the same way that they appreciate the aesthetics of a printed book.

Another challenge for any publisher is the current sales volume of ebooks. The revenue generated from many categories of ebook titles (with the exception of bestsellers) is not yet substantial enough to deliver the necessary return on investment to cover all costs; therefore, many publishers depend on print sales to subsidise a portion of the

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development and conversion of their digital content. As a result, ebook development almost always follows the print product, and for the short term is not likely to be a standalone activity.

Still, ebook sales are rising year-on-year.

The most economically promising aspect of ebook publishing is the elimination of many of the variable costs associated with book manufacturing. The number of ebooks purchased and downloaded has little impact on the publisher’s cost structure; the total cost to the publisher is the same regardless of the number of copies that are downloaded. On the other hand, the variable costs attached to the printing process are impossible to avoid, which make printed books much more expensive than ebooks on a per-unit basis. For example, for every physical book manufactured, approximately onethird of the costs go toward the purchase of paper stock alone. The publisher incurs this cost on every single copy produced. Even though ebooks require their own investments, most of these are one-time costs.

A publisher’s position on the print-to-digital continuum is likely to change over time. In the future, an increasing share of a publisher’s revenue will come from digital publishing. Some publishers might be able to remain dependent on print longer than others. But the trends are clear: as is the case with newspapers, magazines and multivolume reference works, market preference for digital versions of all types of publications is increasing, and this phenomenon, along with the lower variable costs associated with ebooks, will influence publishers to ride the digital market wave more aggressively.

An upward growth trend in ebook purchases does not necessarily mean that it is time to abandon a print strategy.

Publishers have to determine which factors are affecting this trend and decide where the greater opportunities lie.

Without negatively impacting their ongoing business, publishers may have to make adjustments in their publishing plans in order to move further along the printto-digital continuum. Pursuing both formats can be accomplished without compromising a viable legacy business. But if data clearly shows that the publisher’s print business is declining over time, or if going to press and managing inventory is just too expensive, implementing a digital strategy may be essential for future growth.

■ Michael N Ross is the Senior Vice President and Education GM at Britannica Digital Learning, a division of Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. This article is adapted from his recent book, Dealing with Disruption: Lessons from the Publishing Industry (Routledge, March 2016).

He will be speaking at “What Works? Successful Education Policies, Resources & Technologies”, which takes place today at the Olympia Conference Centre from 9am-5pm. “What Works?” is organised by the International Publishers Association and LBF, and held in association with the Publishers Association.

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