Publishing Trends

Bookview, September 2006

September 1, 2006

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PEOPLE

The Book Industry Study Group has a new Executive Director in the person of Michael Healy, Editorial Director of Nielsen Book Services. He will be the keynote speaker at BISG’s September 8 annual meeting and may be reached at michael@bisg.org. BISG’s previous Director, Jeff Abraham, left at the beginning of the year to become President of Random House Distribution Services.

Andrea Glickson has been named Director of Publicity at Watson Guptill. She was most recently Director of Marketing at Stewart, Tabori & Chang.
Editors are on the move: Peternelle van Arsdale is moving to Putnam as an Executive Editor after seven years at Hyperion. . . . Selena James has been named Executive Editor at Kensington overseeing Dafina Books. She had been at Pocket. . . David Patterson has joined Holt as Senior Editor, reporting to Jennifer Barth. He was previously at Public Affairs.

At Penguin, Jeffrey Krames has been named Editorial Director of Portfolio, reporting to Adrian Zackheim. Krames was most recently VP Publisher of McGraw-Hill‘s trade business books division. At McGraw-Hill, Leah Spiro has joined former HC colleague Herb Schaffner (who had reported to Krames) as Senior Editor in the business group. And Ellen Mendlow joins M-H’s test prep group as Publisher, reporting to Group Publisher Philip Ruppel. She was Editorial Director for test prep books at Princeton Review.

Jill Schwartzman has moved from HarperCollins to RH Trade Paperbacks as a Senior Editor, reporting to Jane von Mehren. Meanwhile, Doubleday Broadway Executive Editor Trish Medved has left the company. And RH Children’s Books VP Marketing Daisy Kline has also left.

Amy Kaneko was named to the new position of VP, Sales and New Business Development at Weldon Owen, recently acquired by Swedish media giant Bonnier. She has spent the last seven years at Chronicle Books, most recently as Executive Director of Marketing, and as Director of Mass Market and Specialty Sales.

Carie Freimuth has joined RH’s Waterbrook Press as Director of Sales, Marketing & Planning for General Market Sales.

OUP is creating a new scholarly reference unit, based in New York, incorporating print and online publishing for the institutional market, run by Kim Robinson as Editorial Director, reference. Lenny Allen has been named Associate Director of field and inside sales. He had been in national accounts at FSG, and Kimberly Craven has been named Director of Trade and Academic Marketing. She had been at Wiley. Meanwhile, Betsy DeJesu, who had been at OUP, is moving to S&S Children’s as senior Publicist for Simon Spotlight Entertainment.

At Globe Pequot Press, Cissy Tiernan has joined the company as Director of National Accounts, succeeding Michelle Lewy who was promoted to VP, Sales earlier. Tiernan was recently Director of Sales for Yorkville Press and VP Sales & Publisher Services at Blue Sky Media Group.

John Wicker has been appointed Chief Executive Officer of Klopotek North America. Wicker had been EVP of Vista International.

Reader’s Digest has hired David Krishock as President of Books Are Fun, taking over from interim president Thomas Barry. Krishock had been President and CEO of Scholastic Book Fairs.

In publicity, Annsley Rosner has joined Crown as Director of Publicity for Harmony Books and Three Rivers Press. Rosner most recently was Associate Director of Publicity at Dutton and Gotham Books. Meanwhile, Christine Aronson has been named Director of Publicity for Crown Publishers and will continue as Director of Publicity for Shaye Areheart Books. She had been Associate Director. And at FSG, Laurel Cook has been named Assistant Director of Publicity. She had been in book retailing.
Mike Rohrig has left Scholastic and may be reached at 203.451.0187.

PROMOTIONS

RH Children’s Books VP, Executive Director, Publicity, Judith Haut has been promoted to VP, Comm-unications for the division.

At S&S Children’s, Caitlyn Dlouhy has been named Editorial Director, Atheneum Books for Young Readers. Pulse Aladdin and Pulse PAM have been merged into one imprint as of Spring 2007, Simon Pulse. As a result, Jennifer Klonsky, Executive Editor, has moved over from Aladdin to work on Simon Pulse full-time. Senior Editor, Michelle Nagler, continues with Simon Pulse.

Kate Rados has been promoted to Publicity Manager at Sterling.
Kathryn Mennone was recently promoted to Director of Strategic Partnerships at Globe Pequot. She will work with parent company Morris Communications divisions to create business synergies between the publishing division Globe Pequot Press, and the magazine, newspaper, and radio units.

Lyssa Keusch has been promoted to Executive Editor, Avon mass market
Joelle Dieu has been promoted to Subsidiary Rights Assistant Manager for both the Random House and Ballantine imprints of the RH Publishing Group.

SEPTEMBER EVENTS

PW reports that the first annual Brooklyn Literary Festival will be held on September 16 at Borough Hall in downtown Brooklyn. The festival, organized in conjunction with the Brooklyn Literary Council, Brooklyn Tourism, the Brooklyn Public Library and BAM, will feature a range of authors, including Ann Brashares, Jennifer Egan, Nicole Krauss, Jhumpa Lahiri, Philip Lopate, Rick Moody, and Colson Whitehead. Several local independent bookstores, among them McNally Robinson, Freebird Books, Spoonbill & Sugartown, and St. Petersburg Books, will be on hand to sell books. There will be more than 100 exhibitors. Call Briggs Haddon at 718 802 3717 for further information, or go to http:// visitbrooklyn.org.

September 29th is the final submission date for entries for the Eleventh Annual Books for a Better Life Awards, presented by the NYC Chapter of the National MS Society. The ceremony will take place on February 26th at the Millennium Broadway Hotel.

The 2006 National Book Festival, organized and sponsored by the Library of Congress and hosted by Laura Bush, will be held from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 30, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., between 7th and 14th streets (rain or shine). The festival is free and open to the public. www.loc.gov/ bookfest

The Sobol Award for Literature, a “national contest designed to discover gifted but unknown writers and help them get published and find enthusiastic readers” will accept submissions starting in September. The winner receives recognition, help with his or her writing career and a $100,000 cash prize. The Sobol Award Literary Agency will represent the authors of the ten finalist novels as well as selected other entries from among the top 50 submissions and will help them find the right publishing houses and “secure the best terms.” Brigitte Weeks is the Editorial Director and Laurie Rippon is the Marketing Director for the awards. For information go to www.sobolaward.com

DULY NOTED

The second annual New York Times Great Read in the Park, presented by Target, is Sunday, October 15 in Bryant Park. More than 120 nationally known authors including James Elroy, Mary Gaitskill, Oscar Hijuelos, Susan Isaacs, Malika Oufkir and Frank Rich will read and sign books and participate in various panel discussions. The Great Brunch will feature Mary Higgins Clark, Sebastian Junger, Alice McDermott, Anna Quindlen and Tavis Smiley; and The Great Tea featuring mystery writers Tess Gerritsen, Walter Mosley, Nora Roberts and newcomer Jed Rubenfeld, will be held at The Hudson Theatre in the Millennium Broadway Hotel. In addition, Target hosts a Children’s Stage with all-day, live programming. The Gently Used, Greatly Loved Book Sale will also be held, with proceeds benefiting the New York public libraries and the Fund for Public Schools. For further info: www.nytimes.com\greatreads

Goddard Riverside is soliciting donations of books or gift items for their 20th annual New York Book Fair, November 17-19. Go to Goddard.org for details.

Ten years ago, Bookreporter.com launched on AOL and this Fall Co-Fonder and President Carol Fitzgerald is celebrating The Book Report Network’s 10th anniversary and the 1.3 million unique visitors who go to its seven sites every month. It is, Fitzgerald claims, the largest non-commercial group of book websites on the web. For more information, go to www.TheBook ReportNetwork.com.

Foteini Tsigarida, who was Manager, Market Analysis and Forecasting at HarperCollins is returning to Athens to take over and relaunch a bookstore, Bookstop. She tells PT that “It will specialize in foreign language books, eclectic world literature and travel.” If you’re in the area, or want to meet at Frankfurt, email her at foteini@ earthlink.net

Rick Frishman tells PT (and presumably, the world) that Planned TV Arts ( PTA) will be celebrating its 45th Anniversary in February. With its many specialty divisions, PTA is are always looking for dedicated publicists. For more information, go to http://www.planned tvarts.com for more.

Posted in Book View • Tagged Adrian Zackheim, Alice McDermott, Amy Kaneko, Andrea Glickson, Ann Brashares, Anna Quindlen, Annsley Rosner, Atheneum, Avon, Betsy DeJesu, Blue Sky Media Group, Bonnier, Book Industry Study Group, Bookreporter.com, Books Are Fun, Bookstop, Brigitte Weeks, Brooklyn Literary Council, Brooklyn Literary Festival, Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn Tourism, Caitlyn Dlouhy, Carie Freimuth, Carol Fitzgerald, Christine Aronson, Chronicle Books, Cissy Tiernan, Colson Whitehead, Crown, Daisy Kline, David Krishock, David Patterson, Doubleday, Dutton, Eleventh Annual Books for a Better Life Awards, Ellen Mendlow, Foteini Tsigarida, Frank Rich, Freebird Books, FSG, Fund for Public Schools, Globe Pequot Press, Goddard Riverside, Gotham, Great Read in the Park, Greatly Loved Book Sale, Harmony, HarperCollins, Herb Schaffner, Holt, Hyperion, James Elroy, Jane Von Mehren, Jed Rubenfeld, Jeff Abraham, Jeffrey Krames, Jennifer Barth, Jennifer Egan, Jennifer Klonsky, Jhumpa Lahiri, Jill Schwartzman, Joelle Dieu, John Wicker, Judith Haut, Kate Rados, Kathryn Mennone, Kensington, Kim Robinson, Kimberly Craven, Klopotek, Laurel Cook, Laurie Rippon, Leah Spiro, Lenny Allen, Library of Congress, Lyssa Keusch, Malika Oufkir, Mary Gaitskill, Mary Higgins Clark, McGraw-Hill, McNally Robinson, Michael Healy, Michelle Lewy, Michelle Nagler, Mike Rohrig, Millennium Broadway Hotel, Morris Communications, National Book Festival, National MS Society, Nicole Krauss, Nielsen Book Services, Nora Roberts, Oscar Hijuelos, OUP, Penguin, Peternelle van Arsdale, Philip Lopate, Philip Ruppel, Planned TV Arts, Pocket, Princeton Review, Public Affairs, Putnam, Random House Distribution Services, Reader's Digest, Rick Frishman, Rick Moody, Scholastic Book Fairs, Sebastian Junger, Selena James, Shaye Areheart Books, Simon Spotlight Entertainment, Spoonbill & Sugartown, St. Petersburg Books, Sterling, Stewart, Stewart Tabori & Chang, Susan Isaacs, Tavis Smiley, Tess Gerritsen, The Book Report Network, The Gently Used, The Great Brunch, The Great Tea, The Hudson Theatre, The Sobol Award for Literature, Thomas Barry, Three Rivers Press, Trish Medved, Vista International, Walter Mosley, Waterbrook Press, Watson-Guptill, Weldon Owen, Wiley, Yorkville Press

A (More) Perfect Union

By PT Editors

September 1, 2006

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Publishers Brandish New Models to Support Authors: Joint-, Co-, & Assisted Self-Publishing

When Arthur Klebanoff began shopping around longtime BBDO CEO Allen Rosenshine’s book Funny Business a few years ago, nobody bit. Rather than a straight how-to-succeed-in-business type of book, Rosenshine had written an anecdotal memoir about his experiences in the ad industry. “Here was this prominent person who had written quite a good book, where the company was going to buy a pile of them, and yet I was encountering resistance from the traditional suspects,” Klebanoff said.

Sterling’s Michael Fragnito suggested that Klebanoff try Beaufort Books, a joint-venture publisher that operates under the “shared cost/shared profit” model where author and publisher split costs and profit 50/50.

In the case of Rosenshine, someone who had the means and the desire to enter into a shared-risk situation, the agreement was perfect. “If you take a book like this that wouldn’t attract a fat advance,” Klebanoff said, “even at a quality publisher it would have gotten a young editor and had no contact with marketing, PR, or any kind of senior staff. Their attention is dedicated to the major books that their money is tied up in.” At Beaufort (for a price) Rosenshine had the Publisher, the Owner, and a variety of seasoned freelance editors, marketers, and publicity people all sitting down for regular, intensely collaborative meetings.

In earlier days, authors had two alternatives: the traditional publisher or the so-called vanity publisher. Today, the commoditization of the publishing process has expanded the author/publisher relationship to form a more perfect – or at least, more perfectly tailored – union. Publishers are increasingly making it easier for authors to create their own shopping cart approach, and authors are responding by footing part (or all) of the bill.

It’s the Sales, Stupid

Eric Kampmann, CEO of Midpoint Trade Distribution and owner of Beaufort Books, is very clear that although Beaufort is author subsidized, it is in no way a vanity press. “The goal is to produce sales and revenue to be shared with the author – We’re interested in selling. Our middle, first, and last name is sales. Beaufort only works if Midpoint can sell.”

At an “assisted self-publishing” outfit like AuthorHouse, authors pay upfront fees according to the monetized services they wish to receive. “Standard Paperback” publishing runs $698, but if you want to add “ancillaries” like copyright registration ($170), copy editing ($.015/word), or a book review ($500), the tab increases. What sets Beaufort apart from an operation like AuthorHouse (or XLibris, or iUniverse) is that Beaufort books are guaranteed traditional distribution and marketing through Midpoint Trade. “If Beaufort weren’t distributed through Midpoint, the model wouldn’t make any sense,” Klebanoff said.

At CDS Books, an imprint of the Perseus Book Group since 2005 and distribution company of the same name, authors earn no advance and higher royalties, starting at 20% of retail cover price (rising to 30%) and l5% of retail cover price for trade paperback and mass market.

Unlike Beaufort, CDS doesn’t require authors to put in money upfront. The publishing arm relies not only on CDS distribution capabilities, but on the strong capabilities of the Perseus sales team.

The fully author-supported, Austin-based venture Greenleaf Book Group charges a fee (anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000 plus depending on services provided) is set apart from assisted self-publishing by its traditional distribution operation to targeted trade outlets beyond online stores like Amazon.

“We’re very rooted in distribution,” Meg La Borde EVP of Greenleaf (which began distributing small press and self-published titles in 1997) said. “The biggest hole in the publishing process is distribution. We built our distribution company first, and then around that we built a publishing program”

Since, Greenleaf makes the majority of their money from distribution, La Borde emphasized that Greenleaf is not a pay to publish program (they only accept about 3% of submissions). “You can’t just walk in with a checkbook,” she said. “We’ll lose money.”

Osteen, King, Epping?

In the ten years since Stephen King voluntarily slashed his advance for Bag of Bones from $17 million to $2 mil in order to split publisher profits 50/50 with Simon & Schuster, S&S has signed similar deals with big names like Dr. Phil and recently television evangelist Joel Osteen. These “co-ventures” as Free Press Publisher Martha Levin (who worked on the Osteen deal) calls them, are by no means standard practice, and are offered primarily to bestselling authors. “Because the authors are contractually our partners,” Levin said, “we do discuss a much broader range of topics with them including how marketing dollars are spent and how and where we invest in co-op.”

At CDS, VP Publisher Roger Cooper says that the authors that choose to be published by CDS Books feel, that for one reason or another, the audience they’ve built up over the years hasn’t been reached or targeted in an aggressive or creative way. With CDS they are looking for a publishing partnership that markedly increases their sales and profile in the marketplace. The CDS model includes contractually guaranteed marketing dollars, real time flow-through of actual proceeds, and royalties paid on a monthly basis, driven by Bookscan data reflecting actual sales in the marketplace. “That’s what CDS Books is all about,” Cooper said. “A unique kind of creative and financial collaboration that provides authors with a publishing experience that they perhaps used to have, or have always hoped they would have.”

The ideal CDS fiction authors have some kind of viable sales track record in hardcover, an established fan base, and want to participate in the aggressive level of CDS’ marketing. Cooper says that CDS has plans to publish quality commercial fiction in all fiction genres such as upcoming novels Scavenger by David Morrell, Quantico by Greg Bear and Woman in Red by Eileen Goudge. CDS will also publish “overtly commercial” nonfiction, whether it be opportunistic – such as this month’s Secrets of Mary Magdalene or The Real Estate Millionaire (TK May 2007) – or business, health, diet, self help, inspiration, etc.

CDS’ first title after being acquired by Perseus, Creepers (by Morrell, multiple NYTimes Bestselling author), was published last fall. The book took off with a 30-city author tour, and strong internet marketing. Morrell’s agent Jane Dystel said that the deals she’s done with Morrell and CDS “have worked out beautifully,” but, she said, she’s not sure if they would work with a less seasoned and successful author.

Apart from enhanced marketing and collaboration with the author, another important component of the CDS model is outsourcing (at CDS, publicity and editorial are outsourced). Beaufort outsources almost all of the work as well.

“Thoughtful outsourcing is key,” Kampmann said. “It’s a great way for a smaller publisher to work.” Klebanoff mentioned that at Beaufort, much of the publishing package is a menu that can be tailored to fit each author, and each book’s needs, permitting a client to focus money where it makes sense. “With the normal trade,” Klebanoff says, “It’s the reverse. Publishers always say, ‘It’s our job, we’ll figure it out.’”

Beaufort is currently at a stage where they are taking advantage of POD technology for paperbacks in shorter runs (between 500 and 1,000 copies). “We’ll then just keep reprinting until the book finds its market,” Kampmann said. “It’s a strategy for success over a long period of time. We’re not stuck in the model of racing to keep up, publishing a thousand books per minute.” This month, Beaufort is publishing Gordon Zacks’ book Defining Moments: Stories of Character, Courage and Leadership about (mostly Israeli) leadership, with an initial run of 12,000 and a strong advance into Barnes & Noble. (Zacks, like Rosenshine, is also repped by Klebanoff.)

At CDS the scale is much larger – Cooper is looking for books that can ship over 40,000 copies in hardcover. There are over 400,000 copies of Secrets of the Code in print, over 100,000 copies of Creepers, and CDS has shipped approximately l00,000 copies of Secrets of Mary Magdalene.
Greenleaf officially published its first book under its own imprint this spring – Trust by Charles Epping – with a first printing of 15,000 copies. Epping’s previous book A Beginner’s Guide to the World Economy was published by Random House in 2001. “I’ve had a great experience publishing my novel with Greenleaf,” Epping said. “Their attention to detail, market-savvy, and creative power is just as strong as at a major publishing house.” Epping added that Greenleaf “hit the ground running” (the book appeared on the cover of Publishers Weekly) and that they’re already planning a second printing.

When Epping’s book came out in June, Greenleaf estimated that they would ease into publishing, putting out about 5 books a year. Three months later, they’ve revised their projection to around 25.

EVP La Borde says that today, almost every publisher, distributor and agent is looking for the authors with the biggest platforms. “We’ve built a model most attractive to authors with big platforms,” she said. (Currently, the ratio of new authors to previously published authors is loosely about 60/40.) Authors retain 100% of the publication rights, and 100% of the cover price on books that they sell directly (e.g. at a speaking event). On books that are distributed to the trade through Greenleaf, the author makes a smaller percentage (although still measurably heftier that what he or she would receive from traditional royalties).

When a submission is made to Greenleaf, it goes through an “editorial diagnosis” and is then run through a gamut of assessments (profit margin, break even point, etc.) to make an investment projection. Greenleaf then “quotes it out” to the author based on 3 different sized print runs. “It’s all done up front,” La Borde says. “And then it’s a business decision for the author. We ask them how many they can move, and we tell them how many we can move (through BN, Borders, airports, etc.).” Unlike Beaufort and CDS, Greenleaf outsources very little (some marketing, and all publicity) with most editorial, design and general production done in-house.

Happy Agents Sans Advances

As everyone at Beaufort worked to ramp up the publishing program, owner Kampmann said, “What shocked us was how many books were landing at Beaufort through agents.”

With all of the hands-on attention the non-traditional models demand, agents usually collaborate throughout the publishing process, which is time consuming and without the cushion of an advance. Klebanoff, who is currently working on his third Beaufort Book, says that, “although it can be more demanding, it’s also more gratifying.” Klebanoff gave the example that recently Beaufort rushed a number of copies of Funny Business onto an airplane for a conference Rosenshine was giving across the country. “Beaufort did it because it made sense. A big publisher might do that for Clinton’s memoir, but not for some small commercial book. Instead of fighting through 30 or 40 books a month, here you are THE book of the month.”

At Greenleaf, La Borde said that the agents they’ve worked with have been enthusiastic as well, and usually stay involved throughout the entire process (vetting cover comps, overseeing a marketing plan, etc.). “Some agents have authors that don’t like New York publishing for one reason or another,” she said. “But if they self publish, they could damage the brand, damage film rights.” She also added that even if they aren’t receiving a cut of the advance, they can still sometimes charge a consulting fee.

Susan Ginsburg, Eileen Goudge’s agent at Writer’s House, added that the amount of attention paid to the authors by publishers operating these models offsets any diminution in the amount of the advance. “As traditional publishing has changed in so many ways, there are particular books and situations that are going to be served better by more creative, more unusual, more innovative approaches,” she said.

Posted in Featured Articles • Tagged A Beginner's Guide to the World Economy, Allen Rosenshine, Amazon, Arthur Klebanoff, AuthorHouse, Bag of Bones, Barnes & Noble, BBDO, Beaufort Books, BookScan, CDS Books, Charles Epping, Courage and Leadership, Creepers, David Morrell, Defining Moments: Stories of Character, Dr. Phil, Eileen Goudge, Eric Kampmann, Free Press, Funny Business, Gordon Zacks, Greenleaf Book Group, Greg Bear, iUniverse, Jane Dystel, Joel Osteen, Martha Levin, Meg La Borde, Michael Fragnito, Midpoint Trade Distribution, Perseus Book Group, Quantico, Random House, Roger Cooper, Scavenger, Secrets of Mary Magdalene, Secrets of the Code, Simon & Schuster, Stephen King, Sterling, Susan Ginsburg, The Real Estate Millionaire, Trust, Woman in Red, Writers House, Xlibris

International Bestsellers: Joe Speedboat & Friends

By PT Editors

August 1, 2006

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Sylvia Plath, Puberty, & A Slowly Setting Midnight Sun

Combining the quirky prose of Paul Auster and the eccentricity of The World According to Garp, Dutch author Tommy Wieringa’s latest novel, Joe Speedboat (De Bezige Bij), injects the classic Bildungsroman with postmodern absurdity. The eponymous protagonist, a fourteen year-old bomb expert, airplane builder, and kinetic philosopher, moves to a small community with a bang when his family’s moving van crashes into the living room of the town’s most prominent family. Joe’s stoicism when he sees his father sprawled dead on the hood of the van inspires bitter awe in the town’s boys. Their awe turns to envy after Joe demonstrates his knack for creating explosive inventions out of ordinary objects. When the other residents discover the boy’s extraordinary talents and self-confidence, they too are stunned and soon irritated with this destruction of the natural order. The author manages to investigate the concept of destiny with a tone that critics unanimously call “delightful.” One critic goes further to say “Joe Speedboat is a book that makes you happy.” Currently number fourteen on the Dutch bestseller list, the title has sold 95,000 copies since publication in March and has been shortlisted for three literary prizes. Rights have been licensed for German (Hanser), French (Actes Sud), and Italian (Iperborea). Contact Hayo Deinum (h.deinum@debezigebij.nl) for more information.

The midnight sun is slowly setting on Iceland, but sales of Steinunn Sigurdadóttir’s novel, Fortune’s Child (Edda), show no sign of fading. The narrator, a woman who lives with her distant and aging mother, meditates on 1950s Reykjavik with a detached and cynical voice, addressing her thoughts to an estranged boyfriend who has recently come back to the city. His return recalls memories of her late childhood, when her parents, both doctors, ignored her and the children at school teased her for the German accent she acquired from a nanny. Brief chapters and often ambiguous descriptions of the past conflated with the present create an intense, emotional atmosphere. The lyrical novel is Sigurdadóttir’s eighth and has been nominated for the Icelandic Literary and Icelandic Bookseller’s Prizes. Danish (Gyldendal) and Swedish (Wahlström and Widstrand) rights have been licensed. Contact Valgerdur Benediktsdottir (vala@edda.is).

Back on the mainland, despite, or perhaps because of, the perpetual controversy surrounding Swedish media personality Linda Skugge, her latest novel, A Speech for My Sister’s Wedding remains on the bestseller list months after publication. Her curious fans, dubbed “skuggies,” have come to expect outspoken, envelope-pushing novels and articles from the writer whose previous titles include Pussymob, Little Book of Puberty, Guys Beware This is God and She’s Really Pissed Off, and This is Not a Book. In her latest, Sylvia, a frenzied mother of two small children, wants to pursue the writing career she began before motherhood, but finds her husband unwilling to slow the pace of his own acting career to help her with the children. While society accepts Karl’s sacrifice of his family for art, Sylvia is expected to sacrifice her art for her family and is overloaded not only with the task of raising difficult children who fight all day long, but with planning her sister’s wedding as well. She identifies with Sylvia Path, the poet who shares her name and who experienced the same pressure of catering to an artistic husband while she had her own art to create. Snippets of Sylvia’s stressful daily life—menu ideas, telephone calls, e-mails—keeps the cynical novel light-hearted and fast-paced. Skugge recently started blogging for one of the biggest Swedish newspapers, Expressen, causing even more hubbub than usual by charging an access fee. Norwegian rights are licensed to Damm. Contact Bengt Nordin (bengt.nordin@nordinagency.se).

In Greece, tragedy is resurrected in The Woman Who Died Twice (Metaixmio), a novel that re-imagines the fate of Heleni Papadaki, the renowned Greek stage actress who was executed in the winter of 1944 on charges of collaboration with the Germans. Taken to the woods in the middle of the night, she was stripped, lined up with other alleged Nazi sympathizers, and shot twice. The historic account of Papadaki ends there, but in The Woman Who Died Twice, the bullets only graze her neck and she’s left stunned in the snow. Her grief-stricken brother, too horrified to examine his sister’s body at the morgue, identifies another woman who is then buried in her place. Eventually the unconscious actress awakens and stumbles to a nearby farmhouse. When she hears that her famous friends have publicly denounced her on the radio, she realizes she must never reveal her true identity or she will be killed again. Fifty years later, a doctor who is entranced by her poise and her resemblance to the actress he idolized, takes her in and his premonition of her actual history leads him on a search for the truth. The author, Manos Eleftheriou, tries to make sense of his country’s recent and complex history through an examination of court records, newspapers, and other historic documents that he includes in the novel. A prolific figure in Greek culture, Eleftheriou is best known as a poet and the lyricist for over 400 songs composed by major Greek composers of the past century. His previous historic novel, In the Time of the Chrysanthemums (2004), won the 2005 State Prize for Best Novel and was that year’s bestselling Greek title. Turkish rights to The Woman Who Died Twice have been licensed to Karakutu. Contact Danai Daska (rights@metaixmio.gr) for more information.

Although her parents risked everything working for the Resistance movement in Nazi Germany, Cornelia Schmalz-Jacobsen writes in her moving memoir, Two Trees in Jerusalem (Hoffmann & Campe), that they considered their behavior normal and that of the murdereres, informers, and silent by-standers not. Together they saved thousands of Jews, reasoning that it was better for their children to have no parents at all than to have cowards as role models. Though they survived the war, Donata and Eberhard Helmrich separated. Years later their heroism united them once again, this time at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem where trees are planted in honor of people who saved Jews during the Holocaust. On a recent trip to Berlin, our own Lorraine Shanley and former International Bestsellers editor, Siobhan O’Leary, met the author and heard the story of her parents firsthand. The leadership and humanity of her parents influenced Schmalz-Jacobsen and she has held many prominent positions in the German government in addition to being actively involved in Humanity in Action. Rights to this extraordinary account are still available four years after publication. Contact Valerie Schneider (valerie.schneider@hoca.de) at Hoffmann & Campe for more details.

Posted in Featured Articles • Tagged A Speech for My Sister's Wedding, Actes Sud, Bengt Nordin, Cornelia Schmalz-Jacobsen, Danai Daska, De Bezige Bij, Edda, Fortune's Child, Guys Beware This God and She's Really Pissed Off, Gyldendal, Hanser, Hayo Deinum, Heleni Papadaki, Hoffmann and Campe, Humanity in Action, Icelandic Bookseller, Icelandic Literary, In the time of the Chrysanthemums, Iperborea, Joe Speedboat, Karakutu, Linda Skugge, Little Book of Puberty, Lorraine Shanley, Manos Eleftheriou, Metaixmio, Paul Auster, Pussymob, Siobhan O'Leary, Steinunn Sigurdadottir, Sylvia Plath, The Woman Who Died Twice, The World According to Garp, This is Not a Book, Tommy Wieringa, Two Trees in Jersusalem, Valerie Schneider, Valgerdur Benediktsdottir, Wahlstrom and Widstrand

Columbia Wunderkind Class of 2006

By PT Editors

August 1, 2006

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They’ve done it again. The Columbia Publishing Course has hatched a new group of graduates and, as usual, they’re even more accomplished than last year’s. We’ve created our annual composite biographical sketch of the ultimate graduates, taken from actual bios of the 100 students. Meet these future industry mavens at Columbia’s Career Day on July 31st at the Columbia Graduate School of Jounalism; call 212.854.1898 to RSVP, or e-mail publishing@jrn.columbia.edu or visit www.jrn.columbia.edu/publishing to post job openings. Now, hold on because you’re about to be blown away…

Currently living on an organic beef farm in Millbrook, New York, our student grew up in an L-shaped apartment in Queens with a boisterous Brazilian-Korean family where she learned to read English from translations of Hergé’s Tintin comics. Though her multi-cultural, tri-lingual household fostered an interest in other cultures, her passion for traveling was solidified when her parents home-schooled her for sixteen months while visiting all seven continents and writing the family newsletter “Around the World in 480 Days.”
This first taste of journalism inspired her to create an underground literary magazine from scratch which was later adopted as her school’s official award-winning publication. When not working long hours at the magazine, our student organized events for her high school’s first Harry Potter Club (which she co-founded), practiced traditional Polish and Irish dancing, and performed in the Tap Dance Olympics in Germany where her team won the title of World Champions two years in a row. A country girl at heart, our student spent many happy summers lassoing cattle and fly-fishing in Wyoming, earning her spending money by delivering balloon bouquets to local college students and fulfilling her humanitarian impulse by volunteering with her father at nearly every Special Olympics event in New Jersey. After graduating from high school with honors, our student, like numerous Columbia publishing classmates, walked 400 kilometers through northern Spain on the Camino de Santiago. Upon her return to the States, she put to use the huge thighs she developed on the hike, driving a bicycle taxi in downtown Austin, Texas. But she soon returned to the East Coast to attend the University of Pennsylvania from which she graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with highest departmental honors. Though our student enjoyed studying the exegesis of biblical texts, Victorian repression of animalism, and postcolonial literature with famed Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong’o, she decided to write an honors thesis on the “disappearing” pronouns thou, ni, vos, and Loro, conducting original research in English, Swedish, Spanish, and Italian. Her intellectual curiosity got the better of her and she wrote an additional honors thesis on missionaries in nineteenth-century Ceylon which earned her the school’s prestigious prize for best historical dissertation. In her spare time, she learned to operate a hyperbaric chamber, played marimba in the UPenn percussion ensemble, wrote a novella about the Women’s Army Corps during World War II, and tutored underprivileged children, raising the reading scores of 60% of them. Since graduation in May, our student has been hard at work developing the Hip-Hop Theater Festival in Brooklyn. The skills she gained turning the Chicago’s Women in the Director’s Chair festival into a financial and artistic success have helped her in this new endeavor. In addition to internships at Gawker and The Onion, our student is trying her hand at agenting, representing Michael Jackson‘s chauffeur who is, naturally, writing a memoir.

Posted in Uncategorized •

Bookview, August 2006

By PT Editors

August 1, 2006

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PEOPLE

So much for summer doldrums:
André Bernard VP Publisher of Harcourt is leaving to become a vice president at the Guggenheim Foundation, starting after Labor Day. He replaces Thomas Tanselle, who is retiring after 28 years. Harcourt’s current Editor-in-Chief and Associate Publisher, Rebecca Saletan, will take over as Publisher.

Jill Cohen, former Bulfinch Publisher, has been named SVP New Business Development at Bobbi Brown.

Owen Laster is retiring from William Morris in January, after 45 years with the ten percentery.

Former Saks executive George Jones took over as President and CEO of the Borders Group bookstore chain on July 17. Jones succeeds Greg Josefowicz who will remain as a consultant to the company. The role of Chairman will now be held by Larry Pollock, a Borders board member

Candlewick Press has hired Jonathan Ackerman as VP of sales, starting at the end of August, reporting to COO Mike McGrath. Most recently, he was National Accounts Manager of MBI Publishing.

Editorial Director of Potter Craft, Shawna Mullen, who has been commuting to work from Boston for awhile has left the company. Amy Pierpont, previously Senior Editor at Pocket and Downtown Press, will be joining Potter as a Senior Editor reporting to Doris Cooper. Tammy Blake was named Publicity Director at Broadway. She had been at Crown, where she held the same title.

Marcus Leaver, Sterling’s EVP and COO announced that Jim Benjamin has been named VP of Finance and Operations, succeeding Joe Guadango, who is retiring. Benjamin comes from Baker & Taylor. And Carlo de Vito who had been consulting with Sterling since leaving Penguin’s Chamberlain Brothers, now joins full time launching a new imprint Sterling Innovation.

Nancy Hancock has gone to Rodale as Executive Editor Health and Wellness. She had been at S&S and had previously worked at Rodale. Leslie Schneider, Director of Trade Sales is leaving Rodale to be the volunteer coordinator of the Bronx Zoo, a division of the Wildlife Conservation Society. She may be reached at Leslies28@msn.com.

Colin Robinson has joined Scribner as Senior Editor. Robinson, who stepped down as publisher of The New Press at the beginning of the year, will report to Scribner VP and Editor-in-Chief Nan Graham.

Steve Black, President and Co-Founder of Perseus Books Group’s CDS, is leaving the company. Replacing Black as VP Client Services is Sabrina Bracco, rejoining CDS from Bear Stearns. Previously, Bracco had been Director of Sales Operations at Perseus, Business Manager at PublicAffairs as well as a Perseus Sales Rep.

Kensington Books Editorial Director Karen Thomas is moving to the Hachette Book Group effective September 1. No announcement has been made about who will replace her.

Kurt Schoen, former President of American Greetings‘ Plus Mark division, will become President and COO of NACSCORP, the subsidiary of the National Association of College Stores that acts as a wholesaler to college and other stores and provides retail services, College Marketplace reported. He replaces Len Jardine who is retiring after four years in the job.

Sally Hertz is joining Ingram Publisher Services. She has been consulting recently. She will “spearhead new client acquisition for IPS reporting to Phil Ollila and working in Nashville.

John Oakes Publisher of Four Walls Eight Windows from 1995 through acquisition by Avalon in spring 2004, is leaving the company. For the past two years, he was Publisher of Thunder’s Mouth Press and co-publisher of Nation Books. He may be reached at jghoakes@gmail.com.

Ann Godoff has hired Vanessa Mobley as Senior Editor of The Penguin Press. Mobley was most recently at Holt and previously at Basic. She has published two Pulitzer winners: Samantha Power‘s A Problem from Hell (2003) and Caroline Elkins‘s Imperial Reckoning (2006). Jofie Ferrari-Adler, who left Viking earlier this spring, has gone to Grove/Atlantic as an Editor. Brendan Cahill has left Gotham, and will attend the Wharton Business School. He can be reached at: brendanjcahill@yahoo.com

Mark Levine, formerly Sales Director at Holt and St. Martin‘s and most recently Marketing Director at Beaufort Books, has founded Mark Levine Book Editorial and Marketing Services. He may be reached at 201-653-5453 or leevyne@aol.com.

Kim Hovey announced the appointment of Ali Kokman as Manga Marketing Manager for the Del Rey imprint, a new position. Kokmen worked at CPM Press, the graphic novel publishing division of Central Park Media, as Director of Book Sales. In 2007 Del Rey will be publishing 150 manga titles, according to the announcement.

Julia Woods has resigned her position as President of the McGraw-Hill Canada’s Professional division, and is going to Russell Reynolds.

Ben Schrank has been named president and publisher of Penguin’s Razorbill imprint reporting to Doug Whiteman. He was Editorial Director at Alloy.

Debra Matsumoto joins Ten Speed as Senior Marketing and Promotions manager. She was Publicity Manager at North Atlantic Books.

PROMOTIONS

Julie Saidenberg has been named VP of Trade Sales and Marketing at Shambhala Publications. She had been Marketing Director and an Associate Publisher there.

At HarperCollins, Brian Grogan has announced the promotion of Jeff Rogart to VP, Director of Mass Retail Sales. Ronnie Gambon has been given the position of Director of Digital Asset Operations. Reporting to her will be Heather Aschinger, promoted to Senior Web Content Producer; Sarah Thai, promoted to Web Content Producer; and Les Glass, continuing his role as Digital Asset Manager. Mary Schuck has been promoted to VP, Creative Director overseeing Harper, Harper Perennial, Harper paperbacks, Ecco, Amistad, HarperAudio and Avon Trade Paperbacks. Will Staehle has been promoted to Art Director of Harper.

AUGUST EVENTS

The Audies are (almost) here: The first entry due date is August 11 for all titles published between November 1, 2005 and July 31, 2006. Information about Audiobook of the Year will be released separately in September. The Gala takes place on June 1, 2007 at the Rainbow Room.

The PMA is soliciting entries for the 2007 Benjamin Franklin Awards. Books published January 1- June 30 should be submitted by August 31; those published in the second half of the year should be submitted by December 31. The fee is $80 per title for members and $180 (which includes membership in PMA) for the first title for non members.

DULY NOTED

The New York Post delivers the ultimate story that combines food, God and The Word, in “Heavenly Bodies,” a look at recent religious diet books published by a range of presses, from The Hallelujah Diet (Destiny Image) to Clear Body, Clear Mind (Bridge Publications) and The Prayer Diet (Citadel). Best comment, from Jeff Sharlet (www. therevealer.org) at NYU‘s Center for Religion and Media: “The irony is the New Testament make it clear you can eat absolutely anything.”

DM News reports that Borders recently achieved 56% “open rates” in June for its customized Borders Rewards e-mail program. Borders Rewards is a loyalty program that drives in-store sales and provides the company with online customer data for the first time. DM notes that, because of its partnership with Amazon.com, Borders lacks access to any customer data for people buying books via borders.com, so Borders Rewards focuses on driving in-store sales and collecting customer data. The program asks customers for an e-mail address when they buy products in stores. Borders Rewards members can sign up for My Borders Weekly, a customized e-mail that lets customers select from 31 options. The e-mails’ open and click-through rates and store sales are tracked by coupon numbers.

A scholarship fund has been set up for Dan Lundy‘s children. Lundy who died last month was VP and Director of Academic Marketing at Penguin. Make checks payable to “Scholars Edge” and send to: Airinhos M. Serradas, C/O Jared and Damon Lundy College Savings Plan, Total Estate Asset Management, Inc., 185 Madison Avenue, 8th. Floor, New York, NY 10016.

Posted in Book View • Tagged A Problem from Hell, Ali Kokman, Alloy, American Greetings' Plus Mark, Amy Pierpont, Ana Godoff, Andre Bernard, Baker & Taylor, Bear Stearns, Beaufort Books, Ben Schrank, Benjamin Franklin Awards, Bobbi Brown, Borders, Brendan Cahill, Brian Grogan, Bridge Publications, Broadway, Bronx Zoo, Bulfinch, Candlewick, Carlo De Vito, Caroline Elkins, CDS, Chamberlain Brothers, Citadel, Clear Body, Clear Mind, Colin Robinson, CPM Press, Crown, Dan Lundy, Debra Matsumoto, Del Rey, Destiny Image, Doris Cooper, Doug Whiteman, Downtown Press, Four Walls Eight Windows, George Jones, Greg Josefowicz, Grove/Atlantic, Guggenheim Foundation, Hachette, Harcourt, Heather Aschinger, Holt, Imperial Reckoning, Ingram Publisher Services, Jef Rogart, Jeff Sharlet, Jill Cohen, Jim Benjamin, Joe Guadango, Jofie Ferrari-Adler, John Oakes, Jonathan Ackerman, Julia Woods, Julie Saidenberg, Karen Thomas, Kensington, Kim Hovey, Kurt Schoen, Larry Pollock, Len Jardine, Les Glass, Leslie Schneider, Marcus Leaver, Mark Levine, Mary Schuck, MBI, McGraw-Hill Canada, Mike McGrath, NACSCORP, Nan Graham, Nancy Hancock, Nation Books, National Association of College Stores, North Atlantic Books, Owen Laster, Perseus, Phil Ollila, PMA, Pocket, Potter Craft, Public Affairs, Rainbow Room, Razorbill, Rebecca Saletan, Rodale, Ronnie Gambon, S&S, Sabrina Bracco, Saks, Sally Hertz, Samantha Power, Sarah Thai, Shambhala Publications, Shawna Mullen, St. Martin's, Sterling, Steve Black, Tammy Blake, Ten Speed, The Audies, The Hallelujah Diet, The New Press, The Penguin Press, The Prayer Diet, Thomas Tanselle, Thunder's Mouth Press, Vanessa Mobley, Wharton Business School, Wildlife Conservation Society, Will Staehle, William Morris

Book Me: Publishers Launch In-House Speakers Bureaux

By PT Editors

August 1, 2006

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According to HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman, there was a “confluence of events” that caused Harper to launch its Speakers Bureau, the first in what has become (with Penguin‘s recent entrance), a must-have accessory for major publishers. “Ever since the Bantam Speakers Bureau 30 years ago, I’ve thought ‘Wouldn’t it be a wonderful adjunct to our publicity and promotional departments to have a speakers bureau?’” she said. When HC began Authors+ three years ago and was discussing internal growth strategies, the idea resurfaced through an executive team.
Coincidentally, Friedman received a letter from Gary Reznick – a veteran in the business – asking if HC would be interested in launching a bureau. Friedman said, “‘Eureka! This is it.”

Terminology and terms vary, but both publishers and literary agents are increasingly looking at coordinating and facilitating speaking engagements for their authors as a way to increase exposure, revenue, and most basically sell books.

As Sara Nelson commented in a recent PW editorial, any effort by publishers to expand audiences should be commended – but many are wondering how the endeavor will evolve.

“Unless publishers commit to staffing, they’re not going to be able to service their clients…It’s all about how much they’ll invest in it,” says George Greenfield (who was involved in the purchase of the Bantam Bureau after it was sold off in 1975) and current President of CreativeWell.

Publishers, however, are optimistic. “Ultimately for publishers to be successful in the 21st century, the more services they offer, the better off they’ll be,” Paul Bogaards, SVP Publicity at Knopf (which quietly started a speakers bureau separate from Random House earlier this year) said. “The truth is that publishers are third party to a lot of things: we don’t sell books, we don’t represent authors. It’s our job to create a community of readers, which involves finding niche markets that might present themselves through platforms like speaking. We’re just finding audiences.”

To the skeptics who cite a conflict of interest between publicity and paid engagements, as well as staffing concerns, Friedman said, “It’s all a bunch of malarkey. We’re doing this to work in concert with publicity and promotional campaigns, as well as provide authors more care and loving attention between books. Paid, not paid, we’re all working together to coordinate.”

Books and Bookings

Arlynn Greenbaum, who founded Authors Unlimited in 1991, says, “HarperCollins caused a huge hue and cry when they announced their plans last year.” After the announcement, there was a period in which speakers bureaux didn’t know if publishers would (re)claim their authors (they’re not, technically).

EVP PR at Random House, and liaison to partner agency the American Program Bureau, Carol Schneider emphasized the voluntary aspect of the relationship. “If they’re already with another lecture agency, and they’re happy, then that’s fine,” she said. “We’re just trying to give our authors an opportunity.” RH, recognizing that starting an in-house bureau would be “very labor intensive,” partnered with the APB so they wouldn’t have to take on all of the responsibilities of a full-fledged agency. “Our goal with this was not to start a new business,” Schneider said, “but to keep our authors visible.” As the APB has taken on more RH authors, un-repped authors have signed up, some have declined the invitation, and some, like Salman Rushdie, have made a switch.

Steven Barclay, President of the Barclay Agency, said that he has worked closely with nearly all of the major houses over the past 20 years, and that they’re all on a friendly basis. “We work closely with publishers to pepper author tours with venue engagements,” Barclay said. This fall, Barclay is arranging lectures for Zadie Smith, Frank Rich, Anne Lamott, Marjane Satrapi and Andrew McCall Smith all in conjunction with the release of books and in coordination with their various publishers. “It works out well since the authors can both get paid as well as work with local bookshops on their tour,” Barclay said. “And, it allows them to come into a city with larger audiences.”

The trend to book paid events around free publicity events is slowly reversing itself with publishers booking free publicity around paid engagements. CreativeWell recently partnered with Rick Frishman at Planned Television Arts to create the Writers Road Tour, a program that organizes author tours around college campuses, instead of bookstores, so that the publisher doesn’t have to foot the bill. CreativeWell also frequently hosts other events like writing workshops and clinics to increase exposure. “What’s really lacking (even from established agencies) is proactive marketing,” Greenfield said.

Publishers emphasized that their publicity departments are working closely with the in-house bureaux, to coordinate sponsors and book events. Regardless of new paid placement opportunities, Jamie Brickhouse, longtime publicist recently appointed to head Harper’s Speakers Bureau, confirmed that paid bookings will never take precedence over bookstore appearances for an author tour. He said that although in many cases HCSB gets bookstores to sell books at paid events, they would never set up paid events in bookstores. The new “HarperCollins Speakers Bureau Affiliate Program” encourages HC’s retail and wholesale partners to help them find paid speaking engagements for HC authors. “For those speaking engagements that booksellers have helped us set up, we reward them with 5% of the booking fee received, in the form of credit to the bookseller’s account,” Brickhouse said.

Similarly at Knopf, Bogaards said that the emphasis is on setting up book sales at events. “We’re making our retail partners part of the equation. It’s a win for everyone.” For larger events, bookings translate into major books sales. Last year, for example, the freshman class at the University of Alabama at Birmingham was assigned Anne Fadiman‘s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down as required reading. When Fadiman came to speak at the beginning of the year, FSG sold over 4,000 copies.
For the most part, bookings are highly individualized depending on both the speaker and the event with the average commission ranging between 10-35% of the speaker’s fee. (Fees can range anywhere from $1000 for less known authors to $100,000 for someone like Bill Clinton). Agencies tend to co-broker deals often, working outside of their own list of speakers to fulfill client requests.

In addition to publishers and established bureaux, some literary agents also function as lecture agencies for their authors. Susan Bergholz has been booking her own writers, such as Julia Alvarez and Sandra Cisneros, since she founded her agency 25 years ago, as has Anthony Arnove’s Roam Agency (Howard Zinn, Arundhati Roy, Noam Chomsky). Other agencies, like Folio Literary Management, are actively seeking staff to head internal speakers bureaux.

In the end, authors must decide which entity could best represent them. “I know that going with publishers is the absolute wrong decision for some authors,” Greenfield said. “But the sell to the author is that they can do everything under one roof. Frankly, there is no advantage to work within a house although it’s being pitched that way.”

As Marketing Guru, Author, and frequent lecturer Seth Godin (represented by Greater Talent Network) put it, “Speakers are bought, not sold. If people can find me by typing ‘Seth Godin’ into Google, why would I give [a publisher] a piece of my fee? Publishers must demonstrate that they are able to make the sale, and I think that as an author, I would be very wary of that.”

Posted in Featured Articles • Tagged American Program Bureau, Andrew McCall Smith, Anne Fadiman, Anne Lamott, Anthony Arnove, Arlynn Greenbaum, Arundhati Roy, authors, Authors Unlimited, Bantam Speakers Bureau, Barclay Agency, Carol Schneider, Creative Well, CreativeWell, Folio Literary Management, Frank Rich, FSG, Gary Reznick, George Greenfield, Greater Talent Network, HarperCollins, Howard Zinn, Jamie Brickhouse, Jane Friedman, Julia Alvarez, Knopf, Marjane Satrapi, Noam Chomsky, Paul Bogaards, Penguin, Planned Television Arts, Random House, Rick Frishman, Roam Agency, Salman Rushdie, Sandra Cisneros, Sara Nelson, Seth Godin, Speakers Bureau, Steven Barclay, Susan Bergholz, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, University of Alabama, Writers Road Tour, Zadie Smith

Plan B for Schedule A: Just How Big is the EU English-Language Market?

By PT Editors

July 1, 2006

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In the wake of the now infamous BEA US/UK Turf Wars panel, a flurry of debate about control of English-language rights in the European Union has risen on both sides of the Atlantic: British publishing is crumbling and must be defended. The Brits are inciting a land grab. US editions are free-riding off of UK publicity. Europe is one market and can only be protected by being exclusive. A move toward exclusivity is atavistic and an attack on cultural diversity. Resist this Protectionism! Stop American Cultural Imperialism!

Brian De Fiore, VP of the Literary Division at AAR and panel moderator, said that the AAR organized the panel out of desperation since agents were increasingly reporting an inability to close deals for new authors in the US and the UK. With the UK demanding exclusive EU rights (for all 25 countries), and the US demanding open-market sales (while chipping away at the former British empire) agents were finding themselves caught in the middle and publishers were walking away from the negotiating table.

Until now, Americans have taken only a moderate interest in sales of their books in non-English speaking countries. The UK business model, on the other hand, has been built around its extended commonwealth and is more reliant than ever on export sales to float the tenuous UK home market.

As the outspoken Karl Heinz Petzler, Managing Director and Owner of Lisma Ltd. – a distributor of US and UK English-language titles within Portugal – and the organizer of an Open Letter urging publishers to resist closing the EU market said, “[UK Publishers] say that by closing off the market they would increase sales. They wouldn’t. They would increase prices. They have a messed up home market, and now they must bring down their prices in order to compete. They’re trying to solve homemade problems in other countries.”

On the other hand, UK Agent and President of the UK AAA, Clare Alexander was recently quoted in the Bookseller as saying that since the mid-80’s, 80% of contracts for UK authors have given the UK exclusive EU rights – a figure US publishers and agents find excessive.

So why all the fuss? Is the English-language market really burgeoning, or are the Turf Wars just a matter of principle? Are US-UK publishing relations deteriorating over a few hundred copies of The Brooklyn Follies?

Currently theoretical, the Turf Wars are potentially anything but. A stalemate threatens, huge conglomerates must develop their own internal consensus about their position (at least three of the majors have declined to speak to PT), and the outcome may depend on where the power of ownership resides.

The Famous 100 Copies Debate

All relevant factors point to a growing global English-language market. Cyrus Kheradi, VP & Group Sales Director International at S&S says, “The export market for US and UK publishers is growing as English continues to grow as the lingua franca of international trade, the internet and various global media.” Indeed, the number of ESL speakers in Europe alone (which excludes all English speaking expatriates living in the EU) tops 136 million – 30% of the current total EU population, and a whopping 46% of the entire US population.

Gail Hochman, President of the AAR, says it’s naïve to think that the increase in English-language speakers will lead to a bustling export market. “If people speak English, they’ll do their business in English, but they’re not going to sit down and read War and Peace in English. They may speak, but I don’t think that necessarily means they will read.” As a whole, she says, in terms of book sales – especially trade book sales – “The numbers are small, no question about it.”

On paper, the numbers aren’t just small, they’re bleak. According to the US Dept. of Commerce (which provides the most accurate export sales, according to publishing stats- master Al Greco), there has been a decline in both units and sales of all book exports since around 2000 in essentially every European country except Spain.

UK exports, on the other hand, have been on the rise. Even without the decline, when US and UK export revenues are run parallel, the disparity is astounding. In 2004, numbers (from Commerce and the UK DTI Statistics Directorate respectively) show that the US exported $8.168 million worth of books (including academic, reference, trade and maps) to France, while the UK recorded $118.562 million during the same period. Germany shows a similar difference ($27.174 million to $176.823 million), as does Sweden ($4.477 million to $66.234 million), Belgium ($6.619 million to $45.828 million), and the Netherlands ($15.877 million to $122.085 million). Even in Spain, where exports have been on the rise, the US exported $4.5 million worth of books in 2004 to the UK’s $92.6 million.

Greco attributes the low numbers as well as the decline to several factors, from currency conversion issues to international opprobrium over American cultural imperialism. (Others surmise that with all that has changed since 2004 – the EU-15 increasing to EU-25, coupled with the low dollar – numbers should now be trending up.)

Greco also emphasizes that US export figures – especially for books – are notoriously faulty, while UK numbers are known to be much more accurate, causing them to look more divergent than they actually are. “Most publishers don’t indicate the actual value of their shipments, instead they list unit manufacturing costs for insurance purposes,” he said.

Another possible explanation for the soft numbers is the ambiguous nature of international internet sales that could or could not be reported as export sales depending on the shipping location. The growth of multi-national chains confuse things further. Rick Vanzura at Borders International says that as a general rule, orders are placed independently by geography since rights vary by country. As a general rule, PT found that most booksellers claim to honor publishers’ territorial agreements.

Off-shore printing can also complicate export figures – especially in juvenile and illustrated co-editions. A US children’s book printed in Singapore, for example, can have its EU orders shipped directly from the printer. “Sales fall through the cracks,” Greco said.

S&S’s Kheradi does not agree with the claim that UK export sales to Europe are significantly higher than US publisher sales. “At S&S we have enjoyed double-digit percentage net export sales growth annually over the last five years and we have always regarded Europe as a key export market; a region where we have had a major presence for over 40 years.”

Leakage & Growing Pains

Chitra Bopardikar, VP International Sales at PGW, says that, “growth is especially apparent in regions like Eastern Europe where we are seeing an expansion of book retailers.”

[Note: Bertelsmann’s Direct Group just announced their purchase of 48-store Portuguese book chain Bertrand Livreiros.]

Jan Andersen of the Politikens Bookshop in Denmark (and one of the signers of the Open Letter) says that he has seen solid increases of 5 to 10 % of English-language titles every year for the last 25 years.

Geoff Cowen of Windsorbooks, a UK international distributor for many US imprints, acknowledges that they have seen a substantial growth in sales in Eastern Europe, with the best sales coming from “the old bits of Yugoslavia, Slovenia, Serbia” where their rep unearths new customers all of the time. Despite the boom market, however, he says that the customers still take a long time to pay, if they pay at all. “I can’t see sales of our sort of stuff ‘going through the roof.'”

Rene Prins, Head Buyer and Sales Manager at Holland’s Van Ditmar Distribution says that although the English language market isn’t experiencing significant growth in the countries he distributes into (Belgium and the Netherlands), he agrees that Eastern Europe is developing and Germany is a market that has “certainly grown.” One big factor in Germany’s growth, according to Prins, is that German wholesalers (such as Libri and Petersen) have started exporting US and UK editions to France, Switzerland and other European countries.

On the distribution front, German competition not only makes it harder for the UK to distribute into the EU (Cowen says that in older markets like Germany, France and Holland customers constantly search for the cheapest supplier) but it also adds fuel to the UK argument that US export editions could make their way into the UK.

The evidence of this leakage has yet to materialize for either US or UK export editions (a sticking point for many), and although it legally could happen, most doubt that it actually will. According to Prins, no European wholesaler would risk exporting the US editions into the UK for fear of affecting their business relationships.

Lisma’s Petzler agrees. “No one can forbid me to sell a product into another EU territory once it’s entered the EU,” he said. “I’m not [re-exporting] because I have a certain respect for my colleagues, and because it would be a very complicated matter doing business internationally.” Petzler emphasized that the UK chose to sign free circulation treaties with the EC (European Commission), and that although the leakage argument might be a valid concern, they should not answer with protectionism: they should find a way to compete. “Living in a globalized world, we cannot create islands of protectionism.”

On the UK side, representatives like Faber’s Stephen Page have made the argument that Europe is one market and it can only be protected by being exclusive.

Kheradi however equated the EC free circulation treaties to NAFTA saying that some of the arguments being made by UK publishers about protecting the EU could be made about protecting the US market from UK editions leaking in from Canada.

Two Editions, One Language, Multiple Tastes

The Bookseller recently announced that Tesco‘s book sales rocketed 52% to more than 20 million units in 2005-2006 (carrying anywhere from 40 to 3,000 titles depending on the size of the store). With outposts in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia (as well as EU candidate-country Turkey), the supermarket chain is just one of the growing number which has recognized Eastern Europe’s growth potential.

An article in Business Hungary this spring reported that after quadrupling since 1997, nationwide multi-language book sales have nearly stagnated as specialized sellers face rising competition from Hungarian bookstore chains and online outlets. Tony Lang, the owner of Budapest’s Bestsellers bookshop was quoted as saying that in 1992 70% of his customers were expats, while today that ratio has reversed – 70% of his customers are Hungarian English-speakers, and 30% are foreigners. In a trend seen across the EU, almost all of Hungary’s largest bookstores chains (Libri, Lira es Lant, and Alexandra) now have foreign-language sections.

The breakdown of US to UK editions in each store varies, and is most easily measured by distributor. At Van Ditmar, according to Prins, a steady 40% of the books they distribute are US editions. At Lisma Ltd., 80% are US. Prins says Van Ditmar’s UK weighted split is dictated by customer taste, while Petzler claims that Lisma skews American because US publishers offer a wider variety of small press publishers like Lisma distributee Soft Skull Press.

Kheradi said, “It is important to note that European booksellers are not used to being told which edition to buy, and their clientele clearly has grown with the supply of two editions which has worked for many decades…the EU is a vast collection of individual countries with local tastes, economies and specific cultural nuances that are not being erased by joining the EU for which I believe no single English language edition can fully satisfy.”

Bopardikar agreed and was forceful about the advantages of foreign retailers carrying both US and UK editions saying that it is “absolutely” beneficial for parallel editions to be sold simultaneously. “Overall, more copies are sold. India is a good example – no one edition covers every consumer need in such a vast market, and by opening up supply to both the UK and US editions, a title is likely to sell significantly more copies over time.”

Harkin Chatlani, CEO of India Books Distribution, confirmed, “Our experience has been that when two editions are available side by side, the sale of that title increases by at least 40% to 50%.”

While Prins couldn’t say how much Van Ditmar would lose if the UK won exclusive rights to the EU, Petzler knew exactly how much business he would lose – everything. And he doesn’t think that the loss would proportionally benefit British publishers. Lisma recently sold 500 hardback US English-language editions of Paul Auster‘s The Brooklyn Follies (Holt) to stores in Portugal. “I doubt that the UK would have sold 500 copies had the Americans not been here,” he said. “Even if they had, for the author, it wouldn’t change anything. It’s only the British publishers who are benefiting.” Furthermore, Petzler emphasized the importance of being able to choose to read an author in the original edition – something that wouldn’t be possible (except through online purchasing) if the UK won exclusive rights.

DeFiore offers a possible solution: that both sides of the Atlantic agree to monetize rights for each EU country thus solving many export royalty discrepancies while being fair to the author.

All squabbling aside, Clare Alexander echoed Petzler’s sentiment that the focus should stay on the authors. “UK agents will continue to put the interests of their clients first,” she said.

Posted in Featured Articles • Tagged AAA, AAR, Al Greco, Alexandra, BEA, Bertelsmann's Direct Group, Bertrand Livreiros, Bestsellers Bookshop, Borders International, Brian De Fiore, Chitra Bopardikar, Clare Alexander, Cyrus Kheradi, European Commission, Faber, Gail Hochman, Geoff Cowen, Harkin Chatlani, Holt, India Books Distribution, Jan Andersen, Karl Heinz Petzler, Libri, Lira es Lant, Lisma Ltd., NAFTA, Paul Auster, Petersen, PGW, Politikens Bookshop, Rene Prins, Rick Vanzura, S&S, Soft Skull Press, Stephen Page, Tesco, The Brooklyn Follies, Tony Lang, UK DTI Statistics Directorate, US Dept. of Commerce, Van Ditmar Distribution, Windsorbooks

Novello Festival Press: A Library Sponsored Literary Publisher

By PT Editors

July 1, 2006

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In 1999, Amy Rogers and two fellow Charlotte, North Carolina writers felt their city needed a publishing house to capitalize on the region’s literary talent. Charlotte already had a reputation for its commitment to the literary arts – in 1989, the progressive Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County helped start the Novello Festival of Reading, a national- caliber literary event that has featured such prestigious authors as Pat Conroy, Toni Morrison, and Tom Wolfe. Like many libraries, the library also budgeted for occasional publications. “The light bulb went off,” Rogers said. “Our library was already functioning as a de facto publisher.”
Rogers now serves as Executive Editor for Novello Festival Press – the country’s only library-sponsored literary publisher. “The ideal is to make the library a launch pad for the community’s literary wealth,” Rogers said. “A library does not have to just be a place where you store your literary legacy. A library can foster, seek out, and enhance that legacy.”

Since being founded in 2000, Novello has published 20 titles at a pace of 3-4 per year. They offer advances, typically around $1,000. Generally hardback, Novello’s first print-runs run between 2,500-3,500 copies. The titles have strong ties to the Carolinas, where Rogers has worked hard to build a regional following.

Novello’s titles have received national attention in the NY Times, Vanity Fair, Kirkus and Publishers Weekly, and three have sold paperback rights. Ron Rash’s Appalachian novel One Foot in Eden was rejected by larger publishers for lacking national appeal. Novello picked it up however and it became their #1 bestseller selling 6,500 hardback copies. Outstanding reviews led Picador to buy the paperback rights.

Novello’s share of their standard 50/50 paperback rights split and other income goes to the library’s general fund. Rogers emphasized that the press does not use funds earmarked for library programs or materials. Their approximate $100,000 budget comes from grants and discretionary monies – in good years, gross income has topped $70,000. The library management feels the program is well worth the expense. “After all, we have put thousands of books into readers’ hands,” said Rogers. “We break deserving authors. We offer countless readings and free public programs on writing and getting published. And we help establish our region’s reputation as a growing presence on the national literary landscape.”

Other institutions have approached Rogers about starting similar ventures. She is open to being contacted and offers her experience. “Something like this takes a long time to germinate,” she said. “You have to have somebody willing to do the leg work of getting things established. You have to have the literary work there. You have to have the pipeline to an umbrella organization that can give you your rudimentary infrastructure. Then you have to have the willingness to see where it takes you.”

Posted in Featured Articles • Tagged Amy Rogers, Novello Festival of Reading, One Foot in Eden, Pat Conroy, Picador, Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg Country, Ron Rash, Tom Wolfe, Toni Morrison

Kanoodling with the Client

By PT Editors

July 1, 2006

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As music blared and purposeful guys equipped with Bluetooth earbuds navigated the gigantic booths at The Licensing Show (see below) in the Javits Center, a quieter but no less determined crowd was crammed into seminars next door, at Direct Marketing Days New York. Okay, so “Predictive Modeling & Customer Segmentation” may not have the pizzazz of Nicky Hilton touting her designs for Tweety, but if you wanted to get savvy about SEO and SEM, (Search Engine Optimization and Marketing), DMD was the place to be.

Though it’s taken time for direct marketers to recognize that they are now the go-to guys for web marketing and transactions, the result was a show that allowed attendees to soak up useful strategies and tactics that can be applied to any business intent on serving and tracking its customers online – and off. Panels brought together search engines like Yahoo, ad networks like Kanoodle, and publishers like Taunton Press to discuss how marketers could find customers, sell and upsell them, and then keep them loyal.
Kanoodle.com offers a particularly interesting adwords search alternative to Yahoo and Google because its search is based on third-party databases like MSNBC, USA Today and The Wall Street Journal. An advertiser can bid on words in dayparts (see WSJ June 23), across subject, zip code, demographic or other categories, for ads based on contextual or behavioral topics. The mind positively boggles at the opportunities to tout DK‘s city guides or even the latest ripped-from-the-headlines thriller.

On an even more granular level, a group of experts from companies with names like TrueLocal and SiteLogic critiqued websites of audience members, including enterprises like Manhattan Fruitier. Neophytes were told that a “content rich page” in Google-speak should be about 250 words. Hyperlinked images should be accompanied by text, as only text registers with search engines. Yahoo’s http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/, where users can view the most popular pages from any site, and find pages that link to that site, seemed everyone’s favorite.

Contrasting with the broad-ranging advice being doled out in the well-attended conference rooms was the DMD exhibition hall, where retro envelope companies sat cheek by jowl with mailers and premium manufacturers. So eager were the exhibitors for visitors that one could have equipped an office with the pens, staplers, memo pads and mints they were urging passersby to grab.

The entire show – apparently drab, but packing a wallop of useful information and endless contacts – contrasted neatly with the larger, glitzier Licensing extravaganza, which had big, bold booths and little in the way of attendee education beyond “Licensing University.” Here attendees could find out about “The Ins and Outs of Celebrity Licensing,” and “Opportunities in Food Licensing.” Okay, so maybe music and wandering plush characters suggested a more festive gathering, but can you really beat “Techniques to Predict – and Stop – Customer Churn”?

Posted in Featured Articles • Tagged Direct Marketing Days New York, DK, Kanoodle, Manhattan Fruitier, SiteLogic, Taunton Press, The Licensing Show, TrueLocal, Yahoo!

Summer Books Sail: Burly Killers, Peppermints, & Wannabe Nuns

By PT Editors

July 1, 2006

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In its first two weeks in print, He Who Blinks is Afraid of Death (Aschehoug) sold 4,000 copies in Denmark, a huge number for a debut novel. An autobiographical narrative set in the 1960s, the novel tracks the odd life of a young boy whose German mother is schizophrenic. His Danish father, an insurance agent, expresses his own formidable neuroses by insuring anything and everything that could possibly be insured. His parents’ bizarre behavior isolates the child from the already stifling social life of their provincial town, but through pure zest and ingenuity, the boy creates a world of fantasies, finding his way out of his claustrophobic misery. While the story is compelling, the man behind it is perhaps even more so. Knud Romer Jørgensen writes copy for several major ad agencies in Denmark and he’s also studied comparative literary history, but the international public might recognize him as one of the subversive characters in Lars von Trier‘s cult classic The Idiots (1998). Stupidity, mental deficiency, and quirky miscellany permeate his other work as central issues, though judging from his popularity, not as attributes. His previous publications include an anthology about stupidity (Rhodos 1999), a guide to the public lavatories in Copenhagan (Yamanouchi 2000), and numerous cultural studies on subjects as diverse as peppermints, revivalist preachers, and autoerotic suicide. All rights are still available for the bestselling novel. Contact Charlotte Joergensen (charlotte.joergensen@aschehoug.dk).

While an isolated little boy wanders through Denmark in Jørgensen’s novel, an isolated troop of burly killers takes Brazil by storm in Elite Police (Objetiva), a fictionalized account of the day-to-day lives of the BOPE, or the Special Operations Police Battalion. With seven weeks on the bestseller list and nearly 24,000 copies sold, the book is a blockbuster about to become a blockbuster in another medium with Bob and Harvey Weinstein who acquired distribution rights for an eponymous film based loosely on the book. Exposing for the first time the grueling pace lived by urban guerrilla police officers whose mottos are “When in doubt, kill,” and “Don’t retreat, but don’t die either,” the Jarhead-esque novel opens as a brutal police commander whips his troop into submission on a 100-kilometer ride through the desert. Hallucinating and near death, the officers are finally given two minutes to eat as much food as they can from a dusty canvas thrown on the ground. The demoralizing training continues until one of the characters becomes involved in a plot orchestrated by both public safety officers and drug traffickers. Elite Police was written by anthropologist Luiz Eduardo Soares and two top police officers with law degrees, André Batista and Rodrigo Pimentel. Pimentel is also working on the script. Contact Julia Michaels (jmichaels@objetiva.com.br) for information on rights, which are all available.

Taking France by storm in a less aggressive, more mystical manner is Press the Star Key (Grasset), the latest title by bestselling author Benoîte Groult. An allegorical novel that at times reads like an essay, Press the Star Key is narrated by Moïra, the astute embodiment of Destiny, who involves herself in the lives of a discontented married woman, Marion, and her mother, Alice, a former journalist and major player in the foundation of the women’s movement. Moïra helps Marion experience equality in a relationship by pushing her into the arms of a wild Irishman with whom she has an unexpected affair. With Alice, a woman who faces old age with fierce determination, Moïra eases her last years by giving her an out: when she’s finished with the world, Alice need only “press the star key” and Destiny will come for her. One critic calls Groult “a rebel with a sense of humor, a common sense fantasist who speaks of ‘the struggle’ without bitterness or mincing her words.” Still one of the top five books on the French bestseller list two months after publication, this “ferociously comical and moving” novel has sold more than 200,000 copies. English rights are available while rights have already been licensed to Holland (Arena, in a six-figure deal), Italy (Longanesi), Germany (Bloomsbury Berlin), Norway (Arneberg Oivind), and China (Sanhui Culture). Contact Heidi Warneke (hwarneke@grasset.fr).

Destiny is not as benevolent to the protagonist of Birgitta and Katarina (Bonnier) whose tragic story comes from the life of Birgitta Bigersdotter, a member of the Swedish court in the 14th century. As a child, Birgitta feels called to become a nun, a vocation her mother encourages. However, after her mother’s untimely death, Birgitta’s father marries her off at the age of 13. Her eldest sister is likewise betrayed and Birgitta spends her life grief-stricken and powerless. The real life Birgitta makes a pilgrimage to Rome where she lives in poverty, tries unsuccessfully to found a religious order, records almost 700 visions, and is later canonized by the Pope. Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril‘s novel focuses on her relationship with her daughter, Katarina, who struggles to reach her bitter mother with love and is rebuffed. Bringing dark and icy 14th century Sweden into the 21st is a daunting task, but critics say the author “makes the Middle Ages arise anew with freshness and a sense of presence” and “is a fantastic storyteller.” Rights have been licensed to Denmark (Gyldendal), Holland (Prometheus), and Finland (Johnny Kniga Wsoy). For information, contact Susanne Widén (susanne.widen@bonniergroupagency.se).

In Poland, the literary mood is decidedly contemporary. The country brims with young writers and Proszynski is taking advantage of the talent with a new series called “The Literature of the New Generation” whose tagline is “New times, new writers, new prose.” Lubko Deresz, a very young (born 1984) writer from the Ukraine opened the series with Cult in April 2005. Since then, Proszynski has published Deresz’s follow-up along with four other titles. One of the voices belongs to Adam Kaczanowski, the author of three books of poetry including one about Batman. His debut novel, Without an End, “faces reality without fear.” A sort of tableau vivant of modern Poland, the novel observes with a detached tone the lives of a young model in a difficult marriage, a woman who is renovating her home, two high ranking managers vying for vacation time, and a ten year-old who is determined to become the richest man on Earth. With humor as well as desperation, the characters struggle to change their lives with limited resources. More information about Proszynski’s series and other new Polish titles can be found at www.bookinstitute.pl. All rights are available to Without an End. For details, contact for Monika Szuchta (monikaszuchta@proszynski.pl).

Posted in Featured Articles • Tagged Adam Kaczanowski, Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril, Andre Batista, Arena, Arneberg Oivind, Aschehoug, Batman, Benoite Groult, Birgitta and Katarina, Birgitta Bigersdotter, Bloomsbury Berlin, Bob and Harvey Weinstein, Bonnier, Charlotte Joergensen, Elite Police, Grasset, Gyldendal, He Who Blinks is Afraid of Death, Heidi Warneke, Jarhead, Johnny Kniga Wsoy, Julia Michaels, Knud Romer Jorgensen, Lars von Trier, Longanesi, Lubko Deresz, Luiz Eduardo Soares, Monika Szuchta, Objetiva, Press the Star Key, Prometheus, Proszynski, Rhodos, Rodrigo Pimentel, Sanhui Culture, Susanne Widen, The Idiots, Without an End, Yamanouchi

Bookview, September 2006

PEOPLE

PROMOTIONS

SEPTEMBER EVENTS

DULY NOTED

A (More) Perfect Union

It’s the Sales, Stupid

Happy Agents Sans Advances

International Bestsellers: Joe Speedboat & Friends

Columbia Wunderkind Class of 2006

Bookview, August 2006

PEOPLE

PROMOTIONS

AUGUST EVENTS

DULY NOTED

Book Me: Publishers Launch In-House Speakers Bureaux

Plan B for Schedule A: Just How Big is the EU English-Language Market?

The Famous 100 Copies Debate

Leakage & Growing Pains

Novello Festival Press: A Library Sponsored Literary Publisher

Kanoodling with the Client

Summer Books Sail: Burly Killers, Peppermints, & Wannabe Nuns

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