11.10.18 Free


At the Frankfurt Book Fair 2018.


Hall 6.0, Stand C104


Publishers must defend democracy in ‘increasingly polarised’ world, Sargent says


JOHN SARGENT RIGHT WITH HIS INTERVIEWER, RÜDIGER WISCHENBART


ohn Sargent stressed the importance of defending freedom of speech—even if it means standing up to the leader of the free world—at the Frankfurt Book Fair yesterday. In his speech at the C.e.o. Talk event


J


yesterday, the head of Macmillan’s global trade publishing division detailed his reaction to Donald Trump’s lawyers’ cease and desist memo, which atempted to halt the publica- tion of journalist Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury. Sargent acknowledged that his first thought aſter receiving Trump’s memo about the White House exposé was: “We are going to sell a shitload of books.” He added: “The first thing I thought when it came in was commercial instinct… but then it quickly struck me that this was actually an extremely serious mater. If you think about what happens in the world when a dictatorship comes in, or a democracy fails, the very first


thing that happens is the government suppressing the press on anything that is negative to the government. I asked myself if I was overreacting to that, and I concluded I wasn’t.”


Freedom of speech is the very foundation of democracy. In today’s world, particularly in the US, it is increasingly polarised


John Sargent, Macmillan


Discussing the email he wrote to Macmillan staff in early January, which outlined his decision, Sargent said: “I wrote the memo to staff [reiterating the importance of publishing the book] because I think freedom of speech is the very foundation of democracy. In today’s world, particularly in the US, it is increasingly polarised. There is less emphasis on freedom of speech, as people become concerned that their point of view should be yelled as loud as possible and only their point of view [heard]. “The function that we serve is not [just] the


Horace Bent Guest of Honour focus Freedom to exhibit? INSIDE


Global bestseller charts My FBF: Lucy Luck Day Planner Mudlark takes flight FBF news


Six- figure début


commercial function but also the function to help the democracy. It was unacceptable to us, and it should be unacceptable to everyone in America, no mater which way they vote.” When asked about competing with new media for readers’ leisure time, he said he was not concerned about books being replaced by TV, film or other technologies. He said: “Funnily enough, if you look at book sales, you see that the books with 200 pages or more sell. It is difficult to develop characters over 25 pages… I don’t worry about the creative energy of the population not being interested in books.” He also described how companies such as Netflix were increasingly looking at content from books, adding: “They are anxiously in our offices, looking for that new book which could become a television series.” However, on the gender pay gap figures revealed earlier this year, which appeared to show that women were paid more, on average, than men at Pan Macmillan UK, he urged caution. “I think we do a great job at Pan Macmillan. I would caution looking at those numbers… They should be looked at with some intelligent thought behind them.”


Reporting Heloise Wood


The Good Agency inks first big-money deal


Jane Lawson at Transworld won UK and Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) to a “soaring” début, after triumphing in a six- publisher auction with a significant six-figure bid. Lawson bought


Book of Echoes, plus one untitled novel, by Rosanna Amaka from Niki Chang at The Good Literary Agency. Book of Echoes is


narrated by a dead female slave in search of her lost children, and roams “across time and place, from the sugar plantations


of the turn of the 19th century, to Brixton and Nigeria in the 1980s”. Amaka hails from


Brixton and is of Nigerian and Jamaican heritage. She has worked as an engineer and is currently training to be a physics teacher. It is the first major


deal struck by The Good Literary Agency, which was launched earlier this year by author Nikesh Shukla and agent Julia Kingsford to represent British writers from backgrounds that are under-represented in book publishing.


Thursday


Photography: Chris Baker


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44