New voices attracting interest at Frankfurt

Australian publishers who attended this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair have reported interest across a broad range of titles, from literary debuts to ‘women’s commercial fiction’ to political memoirs. Interestingly, the rights team from Allen & Unwin noted that ‘all publishers had some slots for new voices’. Those publishers might be interested in some of the promising Australian debuts highlighted in this month’s ‘rights sales and acquisitions’ and ‘award-winners’ sections.

Our annual survey of Australian rights managers and literary agents also reveals a healthy market for rights sales, with the majority of rights managers and literary agents reporting an increase in income from overseas rights deals in the past year, with the strongest sales coming from the US, UK, Germany and China.

There’s no doubt that there is currently a lot of international buzz around Australian books, from Hollywood’s love affair with Liane Moriarty’s backlist to Jane Harper’s Gold Dagger-winning crime novel The Dry to Jessica Townsend’s highly feted children’s fantasy Nevermoor. Publishers Weekly recently published a story on ‘Australia: The Big Not-So-New Thing’ here.

Andrea Hanke
Editor
Think Australian
andrea.hanke@thorpe.com.au

Category: Think Australian editorial