Selling strong: Australian publishers’ rights highlights
Books+Publishing asked a range of Australian publishers to share their recent rights successes ahead of this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair. This article first appeared in Think Australian.
Allen & Unwin
Kate Morton is one of Australia’s biggest rights success stories. Her previous books have sold into 36 territories, and her forthcoming novel The Lake House, about the disappearance of a child in Cornwall in the 1930s, has already sold into 14 territories.
Rights and international sales associate Sarah Brooks also reports that China ‘has been a booming market for our nonfiction with four recent rights sales, including translation deals for The Reporter and the Warlords by Craig Collie, The Economics of Just About Everything by Andrew Leigh and Six Capitals by Jane Gleeson-White’. The publisher has also closed the 20th rights deal for Cleo, the ‘moving memoir by Helen Brown about the loss of her young son and the cat who helped her grieving family’.
Black Inc.
Alice Pung’s YA novel Laurinda, which explores class and culture against the backdrop of a private girls’ school, has been sold to Knopf in the US and to Bolinda for world audiobook rights, reports CEO Sophy Williams. Other rights successes include Eva Slonim’s holocaust memoir Gazing at the Stars, which has sold in Czech, Slovak and Japanese translation, and John Hirst’s The Shortest History of Europe, which has sold into 10 territories, most recently in Spain.
Exisle
Exisle Publishing had ‘quite a few walk-ons’ at the Frankfurt Book Fair last year ‘of which five resulted in rights deals’, says rights director Benny Thomas. The publisher’s recent rights highlights include Digestive Health Solutions (Ben Brown), Live and Laugh with Dementia (Lee-Fay Low) and What Makes You Happy (Fiona Robards), as well as its backlist titles The Happiness Trap (Russ Harris), Coolmind (David Keefe) and Raising Stress Proof Kids (Shelley Davidow).
Fremantle Press
Fremantle Press was thrilled to see Whisky Charlie Foxtrot by Annabel Smith published in the US and picked for the Target Book Club, going on to sell over 12,000 print and 8000 ebook copies. Smith’s novel about identical twins explores brotherly love and rivalry.
Another highlight, says media and promotions manager Claire Miller, was ‘finding a kindred publishing house in Aardvark Bureau this year’. An imprint of Gallic Books with an interest in ‘quirky, left-of-centre fiction’, Aardvark Bureau has purchased US, UK and European English-language rights to The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt by Tracy Farr and The Weaver Fish by T.A.G. Hungerford winner Robert Edeson.
Hachette
When a publisher from Atria/Simon & Schuster visited Australia in May for the Australia Council’s Visiting International Publishers program, she took away a proof copy of Stephanie Bishop’s debut novel The Other Side of the World. ‘She read it on the plane on the way home and as soon as she got back into the office made a six-figure pre-empt for the US and Canadian rights,’ says publishing director Fiona Hazard, who adds that British rights were licensed earlier in the year and that ‘there is a lot of interest from elsewhere’.
Another rights highlight has been ‘a heated multi-player auction’ for the North American rights to the children’s edition of Robert Hoge’s memoir Ugly, pitched as ‘a real life version of the bestselling novel Wonder’. ‘We’re now receiving a lot of translation interest,’ says Hazard.
HarperCollins
HarperCollins’ cookbooks are in hot demand in the Dutch market, reports rights and contracts administrator Andrew Hazer, with five new titles in its ‘Delicious’ cookbook series selling into this market in 2015. Its children’s picture books have also sold well in the Korean market, including Ruby Red Shoes and Ruby Red Shoes Goes to Paris by Kate Knapp and All My Kisses by Kerry Brown and Jedda Robaard.
MidnightSun
Small press MidnightSun Publishing signed its first three international rights deals this year, with rights to Amanda Hickie’s thriller An Ordinary Epidemic sold to Little, Brown in the US in a ‘six-figure arrangement that includes book and audiobook rights’. The publisher also sold Spanish and simplified Chinese rights to its first picture book One Step at a Time by Jane Jolly and Sally Heinrich. The book, which was crowdfunded, tells the story of ‘a boy, a baby elephant and a landmine’.
NewSouth
NewSouth Publishing has been thrilled with the success of John Pickrell’s Flying Dinosaurs in the North American market. ‘We sold North American rights to Columbia University Press and sales have exceeded expectations—but then, who doesn’t love dinosaurs?’ says editor Emily Stewart. Pickrell’s book explores ‘how dinosaurs developed flight and became the birds in
our backyards’.
One of the big successes for Penguin Random House has been The Youngs: The Brothers Who Built AC/DC by Jesse Fink, with rights sold in North America, the UK, Germany, Italy, Brazil, Argentina, India, Czech Republic, Serbia, Denmark and India. According to rights manager Nerrilee Weir, The Youngs is ‘less a biography, more a critical appreciation’ of the Australian rock band.
The ‘Ranger’s Apprentice’ series by John Flanagan continues to find readers around the world, with more than eight million copies sold. Rights have been sold in 29 territories, including, in the past 12 months, China, Macedonia and Vietnam. Flanagan is a particular favourite in the Netherlands, which has held a Ranger’s Apprentice Day—or De Grijze Jager Dag—for the past five years.
Spinifex has had ‘an extraordinary year for translations’,
reports publisher Susan Hawthorne. The publisher has sold Arabic and French translation rights to Hawthorne’s Bibliodiversity: A Manifesto for Independent Publishing in a number of countries, including Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Switzerland and Benin. The book has also recently been published in Canada. Italian and Turkish translation rights have been sold for Haifa Fragments, a novel by Palestinian author khulud khamis, which has been published recently in the UK. Hawthorne notes that last year’s rights sales ‘have mostly come from new markets’.
In recent years Text has republished four of Elizabeth Harrower’s novels in its ‘Text Classics’ series, as well as Harrower’s long-lost novel In Certain Circles, and in the past 12 months the publisher has sold translation rights to Harrower’s novels in seven territories.
Text has also found success with debut author Ilka Tampke’s novel Skin, which rights coordinator Alice Cottrell describes as ‘a mesmerising novel set in Iron-Age Britain on the cusp of Roman invasion’. Rights have been sold in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, the UK and the US, with several publishers also acquiring rights to the as-yet-untitled sequel.
Meanwhile, Text continues to sell rights in Graeme Simsion’s worldwide bestseller The Rosie Project and its sequel. Rights to The Rosie Project have now sold in 42 territories and rights to The Rosie Effect in 24 territories.
Category: Features Think Aus magazine
