News
HC swoops for BTB’s Falconer set B
WORDS Heloise Wood
ARBARA TAYLOR BRADFORD pictured has signed a four- book deal with HarperCol-
lins for a new historical fiction series. Lynne Drew, publishing director, fiction, and Kate Elton, executive publisher, fiction and non-fiction, secured UK and Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) from Robert Bradford. The first novel in the deal will be published in 2019. Set in Victorian London, the novels trace the rise, both professional and personal, of merchant family the Falconers, and follow their fortunes through to the Edwardian era. Bradford said: “When you have been with a publishing house for 38 years, it’s your family. That’s how I feel about HarperCollins and those I have worked with over the years. I’m thrilled to have signed a new deal, and look forward to starting the first Falconer novel.”
HarperCollins UK c.e.o. Charlie
Redmayne said: “In our 200th year, when we are celebrating the luminaries we have published and Barbara stands tall among them. That she has remained at Harp- erCollins for her entire career is hugely gratifying and is, I believe, the sign of a unique partnership and trust.”
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Drew added: “There are few authors as brilliant at storytell- ing, as passionate about character and as hard-working as Barbara: her energy, dynamism, curiosit and passion produce exceptional novels. Working with Barbara is a huge privilege—I can’t wait to get started on the conversations about the Falconer family.” With her 1979 début A Woman of Substance (Granada), Brad- ford “invented” the rags-to-riches family saga, Drew said. The author has shiſted 1.9 million units, for more than £10m, through Nielsen BookScan since records began.
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n BookMachine hires five for marketing arm
BookMachine is launching a marketing arm, BookMachine Works, and has hired five people from across the industry to staff it. The company, which has run more than 100 events to date, will offer event management and programming, digital and social media marketing, book launches, project management, website management, copywriting and copy-editing services. Joining co-founder Laura Summers
pictured at the new agency are former Hodder & Stoughton employee Bea Long; copywriter and digital marketer Nicola Slavin, who has worked on
High street led print surge, Nielsen survey reveals
Sales of print books through high street retailers in the UK grew 4% in 2016, with online sales of physi- cal books up 1%, according to Nielsen’s annual Books & Consumers survey, the firm’s UK research director Steve Bohme told delegates at the Quantum Confer- ence yesterday (13th March).
Bohme revealed that 195 million print books were bought in 2016 (a 1% rise year on year), with 160 million bought in-store (+4%). The total number of books purchased online, across formats, was level year on year, Bohme said, with Nielsen’s findings
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brands including Roald Dahl and J K Rowling’s Pottermore; Suzanne Kavanagh, a marketer with more than 20 years’ experience in the publishing industry; and Sarah Richardson, an experienced project manager and editor of children’s brands. Clients already signed up to the ser-
vice include Emerald Publishing Group, Macmillan Children’s, GL Assessment, EMC Design, Just Content and Geethik Technologies. Summers said: “By bring- ing together five successful industry professionals, we are able to leverage the right skills for each project.”
suggesting that e-book sales were down 4% in 2016. He added that multifunctional digital devices, such as smartphones and tablets, had overtaken dedicated e-readers as the most commonly used conduits for digital reading, with 48% of survey respondents using the former, and 44% the later.
UK consumers spent 6% more on books in 2016 than in 2015, with younger generations fuelling the growth, Bohme said. He added: “We’ve seen a range of bestsellers from a diverse selection of genres come to the fore—from Harry Potter and the Cursed Child to the Ladybird Books for Grown-Ups and Enid Blyton parodies, to social-media sensation Joe Wicks’ healthy cookbooks—and these key titles and series have contributed heavily towards this upward trajectory.”
Blink inks deal with James Bulger’s mother
Blink Publishing has signed a memoir by Denise Fergus, mother of murdered toddler James Bulger, at auction. Blink’s Natalie Jerome signed world rights from LBA Books’ Amanda Preston and Kym Rowlingson of Krystal Man- agement. Jerome said an offer was made within 20 minutes of receipt of I Let Him Go (written with Carly Cook), a “heartbreaking account” of Bulger’s abduction and “the nightmare that fol- lowed”. The title will be issued in hardback in January 2018.
Wisdom signs six-figure S J Parris deal
Stephanie Merritt, author of his- torical crime fiction under the pseudonym S J Parris, has signed a six-figure, two-book deal for UK and Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) with Harper- Collins crime and thriller pub- lisher Julia Wisdom. The first, While You Sleep, a “chilling psy- chological thriller with a paranor- mal twist” set on a Scottish island, will be released in March 2018.
Sweet deal struck for Harris’ Sugar Money
Faber will publish Sugar Money, Jane Harris’ third novel, in Octo- ber. Editorial director Angus Cargill bought UK and Commonwealth rights from Jonny Geller at Curtis Brown in a “major” deal. Based on a true story, Sugar Money is billed as a “heartbreaking trip into our troubled colonial past, [fol- lowing] two slave brothers sent on a mission from Martinique to Grenada to recover the 42 slaves their master claims were stolen by English invaders”.
14th March 2017
Photography: Julian Dufort
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