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Text sells North American rights to ‘The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted’

Thursday, 8 March 2018   Books+Publishing
@booksandpublishing

Text Publishing has sold North American rights to Robert Hillman’s novel The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted to Putnam and Penguin Canada ‘for a significant sum’. Hillman’s book, which follows the lives of a sheep farmer and a Hungarian Holocaust survivor in a small Victorian town in the 1960s, has also sold to A W Bruna in the Netherlands, Suma Internacional in Spain and Tchelet in Israel. Text rights and export coordinator Khadija Caffoor said the book, which was one of the publisher’s lead titles at last year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, ‘sits in that sweet spot where literary and mainstream readers find common ground’. The book will be released in Australia and New Zealand in April, and in North America in the US Spring of 2019.

The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart (HarperCollins), by debut author Holly Ringland (pictured), has sold into 19 territories. Ringland’s coming-of-age story about a young girl, Alice, who has a deep connection to the Australian landscape and the language of native Australian flowers has sold to House of Anansi in Canada, Luitingh-Sijthoff in the Netherlands, Garzanti in Italy, Editions Fayard in France, Salamandra in Spain and Latin America, Porto Editora in Portugal and Marginesy in Poland. Rights have also sold into Catalonia, Israel, Turkey, Japan, Serbia, Russia, Slovakia, Hungary and Croatia. HarperCollins Australia acquired Australian and New Zealand rights to the book—then titled ‘The Centre is Red’—in December 2016 in a five-way auction negotiated by Benython Oldfield at Zeitgeist Media Group. Oldfield told Think Australian that the Zeitgeist Brussels office acted quickly after the five-way auction to ensure that early manuscripts were sent to ‘trusted European editors’, resulting in a six-figure offer from Random House Germany’s Limes imprint, with UK rights following in a pre-empt to Pan Macmillan Mantle in January 2017. Oldfield credited the international sales to the ‘multilingual Zeitgeist Brussels office’ and its director, Sharon Galant, who sells direct in France and the UK and ‘manages an army of sub-agents’. The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart will be published in Australia and New Zealand on 19 March.

Scribe Publications has acquired North American and ANZ rights in Why I Am a Hindu by Shashi Tharoor. The book has become an instant bestseller upon its recent publication in India, and Scribe will rush-release it in June in Australia and in the first half of 2019 in North America. ‘We acquired North American rights from the author’s agents, and ANZ rights from the author’s UK publisher,’ said Scribe publisher Henry Rosenbloom. ‘We were able to do this because we’d acquired the same rights in the author’s previous book, Inglorious Empire (which we’re publishing in North America in May). Rosenbloom said Tharoor is ‘extremely well known in his own country, is a prominent politician and author, and is a very good writer, and the subject he’s dealing with is important and fascinating’. Since its expansion into the North American market in 2017, Scribe now publishes or distributes around 40 titles per year in the market, including Australian titles such as Dark Emu by award-winning author Bruce Pascoe (Magabala Books, see award winners, below) and Talking to My Country by Stan Grant (HarperCollins Australia), neither of which were published by Scribe in Australia. Rosenbloom said he expected to ‘do more of this as time goes by’.

Australian genre publisher Twelfth Planet Press has acquired Stephanie Gunn’s novella Icefall, with which it will launch a novella series. Icefall is a ‘gripping story of extreme sports in outer space’, which Twelfth Planet Press acquired via a previous open submission period. Publisher Alisa Krasnostein told Think Australian she will decide how many novellas to release in the series per year based on what’s submitted. ‘At this stage I’m very open and am really looking for work that hits my brief. We’re interested in hearing from marginalised writers more generally,’ said Krasnostein. ‘We are also looking for fun, light crime novellas that fit within our Deadlines imprint.’ Gunn’s Icefall will be released later in 2018.

Australian author Kirsty Manning’s historical-fiction novel, The Jade Lily (Allen & Unwin), has sold in the US at auction to William Morrow in a two-book deal. The deal was negotiated by by Stacy Testa at Writers House, on behalf of Clare Forster at Curtis Brown Australia. Manning’s book is set in Shanghai during World War II, when the city opened its doors to thousands of Jewish refugees trying to escape Europe, and in the present day, when a young Australian woman travels to China to unravel her family’s history. Translation rights have sold to Droemer Knaurin Germany, and De Fontein in the Netherlands. William Morrow also acquired North American rights to Manning’s The Cheapside Jewels, which is based on the true story of one of the world’s most significant collections of jewellery. Allen & Unwin will publish both books in Australia and New Zealand, with The Jade Lily to be released in May.

Other recent rights sales and acquisitions of adult titles include:

Fiction

  • Penguin Random House Australia has licensed French-language rights to All Day at the Movies (Fiona Kidman); German-language and Czech rights to The Chocolate Tin (Fiona McIntosh); and German-language rights to True Blue and Drifter’s Song (both Sasha Wasley).
  • Text Publishing has acquired world English-language rights to Polish thriller Fog (Kaja Malanowska) via the Barbara J Zitwer agency.
  • Fremantle Press has sold Italian rights to The Hope Fault (Tracy Farr) to Parallelo45 Edizioni.
  • Lyn Tranter at Australian Literary Management has sold world rights to Hare’s Fur (Trevor Shearston) to Scribe Publications.
  • Altair Australia has acquired rights to Coals and Ash (Lyn McConchie) to be published mid to late 2018.

Nonfiction

Film rights

Audio

Photo credit: Giulia Zonza.

 

Category: Think Australian rights