Feature Rights Done deals


Tom Tivnan looks at a handful of acquisitions announced at FBF over the last few years, to see how some big money and under the radar buys have panned out


Sworn Sword James Aitcheson In 2009 Preface publishing director Rosie de Courcy signed world rights to a trilogy of novels set during the Norman Conquest by 25-year-old baby-faced tyro James Aitcheson. At the time, de Courcy said of the first book, Sworn Sword: “Tis is the most exciting historical adventure I have read since Ben Kane’s Te Forgotten Legion three years ago.” What happened next: though not a runaway success, the first book signals that Preface might have a future star on its hands. Tus far in 2012, Sworn Sword has moved a meaty 25,000 copies in the UK in paperback, and this summer Aitcheson hit number two on Te Bookseller’s Heatseeker chart—a ranking of the top selling books by authors who have never made the overall BookScan Top 50.


released in the UK in August 2011. What happened next: respectfully if not rapturously reviewed, Te Cat’s Table hardly set the tills alight. It sold almost 7,000 units in hardback through Nielsen BookScan UK, and after 12 weeks of paperback sales has sold on average just over 1,000 copies a week. Random House US has had better luck, shifting more than 60,000 copies in all editions.


The Cat’s Table Michael Ondaatje Former Booker Prize-winner Ondaatje switched British publishers in 2009, moving from Bloomsbury to Jonathan Cape in a six-figure deal that reunited him with Cape deputy publishing director Robin Robertson, with whom Ondaatje had worked at Harvill Secker. Te Cat’s Table was


thebookseller.com


The Chicken Chronicles Alice Walker One can imagine the meeting: a novelist who happens to have won a Pulitzer Award, a National Book Award and has sold millions of copies worldwide announces she has written a book about raising chickens. “Sounds good,” you might say with a fixed grin, shrug your shoulders and think what the hell let’s take a punt. Maybe, just maybe, Alice Walker’s memoir cum animal husbandry book will take off. What happened next: the New Press in the US and Weidenfeld took that punt, but alas, readers did not flock to Walker’s chicken book as they did to Te Color Purple. Since 2011, the book has only sold around 5,000 units in all editions in the US through BookScan, and it has never cracked the BookScan Top 5,000 in the UK, meaning it has never once sold more than about 100 copies in one week.


Narcopolis Jeet Thayil Communion Town Sam Thompson Perhaps the smallest entry on the


rights pages in Te Bookseller Daily editions in 2010 was the announcement that Faber fiction director Lee Brackstone had acquired from David Godwin a début novel by Jeet Tayil. Although that announcement did have competition in modesty stakes with the few lines in 2011 about Fourth Estate’s Mark Richards snapping up Sam Tompson’s début Communion Town from Peter Straus at Rogers, Coleridge & White. What happened next: only hitting the Holy Grail for début literary novelists by getting Man Booker Prize nominations. Both Communion Town and Narcopolis were longlisted this year, and Narcopolis has made it onto the shortlist (the winner will be announced next week). But, Booker longlisting and shortlisting status has not as yet translated into sales. Communion Town has shifted just under 800 copies through BookScan UK since being published in July; Narcopolis a better, but by no means earth-shattering, 3,400 copies.


the former drugs baron whose memoir of life in the business, Mr Nice, has sold two million copies worldwide, with the first of the series being released around the time of the Rhys Ifans-starring film of “Mr Nice”. Patrick Walsh of Conville & Walsh sealed deals in Germany, the Netherlands and Italy during FBF 2009—a fair which Marks himself attended—after selling the trilogy to Random House UK. What happened next: in the UK, there is certainly room to grow readership for Marks’ series. Te first book, Sympathy for the Devil, sold 2,000 copies since its publication in May 2011. Te second book, Te Score, is due in April 2013.


Sympathy for the Devil Howard Marks It seemed like a perfect idea: a series of crime novels from Howard Marks,


Hammer launch Random House At FBF 2010 probably the first reaction people had to the news that Random House UK imprint Arrow was linking up with iconic British schlock horror movie studio Hammer Films for a new list, was: “What do you mean Jeanette Winterson is writing a horror book?” Yes, the idea behind Hammer is to team the horror brand with contemporary writers, many of whom—such as Winterson and Orange Prize-winner Helen Dunmore—are new to the genre. What happened next: Hammer has published 15 books thus far, and the sales are doing well out of the gate, not least in comparison to the rest of the genre which has struggled in recent years. Winterson’s Te Daylight Gate, for example, has shifted a respectable 7,000 copies through BookScan UK in its first seven weeks.


12 OCTOBER 2012 | THE BOOKSELLER DAILY AT FRANKFURT 13


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