Feature New FBF exhibitors
Velocity left features on Te Plot Lounge’s hot fiction list, Silvia Meucci with Gunter Grass above, Phil Dauncey top right of Really Decent Books and Henrik Nilsson right of his eponymous literary agency.
more cost effective is also an interest for us. All that and a few glasses of German beer would be nice.”
The Plot Lounge Melbourne, Australia
“Tere’s still no substitute for meeting people face to face” Te Plot Lounge is an Australian subsidiary rights agency that launched in July of this year. It specialises in licensing international publishing rights in a range of territories for a variety of Australian literary agencies, including the Mary Cunnane Agency, Selwa Anthony Management, Jenny Darling and Associates and brand management company, Xou Creative. Te agency is owned and managed by Airlie Lawson, a long-term rights professional who, before establishing the agency, worked with companies including HarperCollins, in both Sydney and London, and Hachette. Hot fiction books on the Plot
Lounge’s list include Jennifer Payner’s Te Mary Bennett Variation, an interpretation of Pride and Prejudice from the point of view of Mary, the third and “plain” sister, who ends up in New South Wales. Translation rights are currently available in all territories and Amazon will be publishing it globally in English in 2013. Lawson is also selling Velocity by Steve Worland, an action-thriller début, which features “a hijacked Space Shuttle and an astronaut who’s lost his mojo”. Translation, North American and UK rights are currently available and
Penguin has just published it in Australia under the Michael Joseph imprint. Lawson says: “Tere was really no
question about attending Frankfurt. I used to attend when I was on the publishing rather than agenting side of the fence, and always found it extremely valuable. While a trip to the fair from Australia is expensive, I think it’s essential if you’ve got a list with overseas potential and you’re serious about selling rights. As sophisticated as electronic communication is now, there’s still no substitute for meeting people face to face and if you’re half a world away from most of your customers, FBF is the most efficient way to do this. Although it’s not just about pitching projects and doing deals, for me the fair also gives me a chance to learn about new trends, establish new relationships and of course renew old ones.”
Silvia Meucci Literary Agency Milan, Italy
“If you are an agent, you should attend FBF” Tis year will be both the 25th and first time Silvia Meucci attends the Frankfurt Book Fair. Working in publishing in Europe for many years, as an editor at Feltrinelli (Italy) and later as editorial director at Ediciones Siruela (Spain), Meucci swapped sides and opened the doors to her eponymous agency in January, after working as a freelance agent for a year at the Berla & Griffini Rights Agency. Meucci says: “Te agency has
22 THE BOOKSELLER DAILY AT FRANKFURT | 10 OCTOBER 2012
long-term objectives—to offer Italian publishers a comprehensive contacts network to the Spanish market and vice versa and to discover fresh new Italian voices and promote them both domestically and internationally. “At this year’s fair I will present my
new project and all my new authors. Tere are not too many, but I love them all. I think that if you are an agent you should attend FBF, it’s the most important and best organised fair. Te London Book Fair is very important too, but it’s really too expensive.”
Really Decent Books Bath, UK
“Te international market is absolutely key” Set up in April, Really Decent Books is an independent specialist children’s publisher. It has published two books already and will take 25–30 new titles out to Frankfurt. Founder and publisher Phil Dauncey has worked previously in the sales and production departments of various children’s publishers, including Priddy and Ladybird. Dauncey says: “Tis is the first
time I will go out to the fair as a publisher, so it is also the first time I’m doing it myself on a shoestring; so we’re going as a concession stand on the IPG (UK Independent Publishers Guild) stand. When I worked at publishing houses, I always thought ‘do I really need to go [to FBF]?’ But this year I can’t wait, I can really see the benefit it is going to have for our company.
“We’re a small business so the
international market is absolutely key, if we can crack into that rights market it can help us immensely. We’ve got 40 meetings set up and if I have a good three days out there and we see a 5% pick up, that’s 2013 sorted in terms of budgets. I’ve got a good gamut of publishers coming to see us, so I’m feeling really buoyant.”
Nilsson Literary Agency Malmö, Sweden
“It’s perhaps the most important week of the entire year” Based in Malmö in southern Sweden, Henrik B Nilsson’s eponymous literary agency represents Scandinavian authors, predominately fiction writers, worldwide. Nilsson founded his own press, Bokförlaget Minotaur, in the late Nineties, which is now owned by the Bonnier Group. He is also an author: Te False Friend was published by Norstedts in 2009 and was nominated for the Swedish Début Prize and shortlisted for the Prix Femina Étranger (a French literary prize for foreign novels). Nilsson says: “As a literary agent FBF is a must. It’s perhaps the most important week of the entire year. I have been several times as a publisher before, but this is my first time as an agent and I’m looking forward to it. I’m hoping to make many new and important acquaintances for the future as well as hopefully meeting many familiar faces too. Most of all, I’m hoping to spread the word about the agency’s wonderful authors and titles.”
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