NEWS


Frankfurt Book Fair 2023 The headlines


Australia Top five


Allen Lane signs ‘generation-defining’ pornography account after 14-way tussle


Fourth Estate falls for Jones’ ‘thrilling’ début novel Sleep


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ournalist Honor Jones’ “thrilling” début of childhood events which continue to haunt in later life has


been snapped up by Fourth Estate, and sold in four other markets. Publishing director Kishani


Widyaratna acquired UK and Commonwealth English-language rights, excluding Canada, to Sleep from Anna Webber of United Agents on behalf of Bill Clegg at the Clegg Agency. North American rights were acquired by Sarah McGrath at Riverhead Books, while the book has sold to Ullstein in Germany, Libros del Asteroide in Spain and Rizzoli in Italy, all in pre-empts. Auctions are under way in further territories. The novel, set for a 2025 release,


follows Margaret, who passes drowsy afternoons in the well-groomed greenery of New Jersey suburbia, where she delights in Saturday pancakes and porch sleepovers. But a series of “life-altering trespasses” breaks the idyll. Years later, Margaret is negotiating co-parenting, work and a fledgling relationship, yet the events of her childhood privately haunt her. Jones is a senior editor at the


Atlantic and formerly worked as a senior staff editor at the New York Times’ opinion desk. She said she “wanted to write a book about the things that happen to us that we don’t understand, things that happen in the moments between childhood and adulthood, between sleeping and waking, between action and consequence.” Widyaratna said: “I fell head


over heels for Sleep from the first moment I encountered Honor Jones’ sublime writing.”


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An heir and a Spare


Former British colo- nies seemed awfully keen to get the dirt on the royal family, with Prince Harry’s Spare scoring the Australian runner- up spot, as well as New Zealand—and topping the Irish chart. However, Nagi Maehashi’s RecipeTin Eats: Dinner beat Spare to the top, shifting 171,237 copies, as Pip Williams’ The Bookbinder of Jerico, the follow-up to The Dictionary of Lost


Words, hit third place.


Sian Bayley @sleigh_bayley


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llen Lane has triumphed in an auction against 13 other publishers in


the batle to publish Financial Times reporter Patricia Nilsson’s “generation-defining” and “morally complicated” look at the evolution of pornography and its impact on societ today. Penguin Press publisher Chloe Currens acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to Guilt Pleasure in a deal orchestrated by Mathew Marland at RCW. The book looks at the development of pornography “from second-wave feminism to OnlyFans”. It promises to tell the story “not just of a changing industry but of how that industry


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Sourcebooks snares world English print rights to McFadden titles


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is changing us all. Guilt Pleasure will be a touchstone for anyone who wants to understand the new world of pornography and its implications for work and for feminism; for freedom of speech; for our social lives, our romantic relationships and our innermost desires”.


Currens said: “Patricia is a writer of remarkable agilit and


Patricia is a writer of remarkable agility and flair... This is set to be a generation- defining book and I am delighted Allen Lane will be publishing it Chloe Current, Penguin Press


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Data Source Nielsen BookScan, year to date


ourcebooks has acquired world English print rights to several new frontlist and


previously self-published backlist titles by bestselling thriller author Freida McFadden, who was previ- ously published by digital-first list Bookouture. Editor Jenna Jankowski acquired


the rights from Christina Hogrebe at the Jane Rotrosen Agency. The new titles include the third book in the bestselling Housemaid series, The Housemaid is Watching, for Sourcebooks’ mystery thriller imprint Poisoned Pen Press. It is slated for print release in June 2024. Bookouture holds e-book and audio rights to the title. Among her new frontlist titles


will be The Coworker and The Locked Door, which will publish


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