NEWS


Dutch hit hits the UK


Frankfurt Book Fair 2021 The headlines


Thorsons gets to grips with Dutch bestseller


HarperCollins imprint Thorsons has bagged Dutch sensation Rick Pastoor’s bestselling


book on working smart. The publisher secured UK


and Commonwealth (excluding Canada) rights to GRIP: The Art of Working Smart (and Getting to What Matters Most). Adam Humphrey will be publishing in the UK and Commonwealth, and Tim Burgard in the US for HarperCollins Leadership. The deal was negotiated in the UK with Rebecca Carter and in the US with Chad Luibl, both at Janklow & Nesbit. It will be published in English next February.


SPOKE OF PRH’S S&S TAKEOVER


Dohle urges publishing to unite ‘polarised world’


RICK PASTOOR’S BOOK EMERGED FROM A BLOG WRITTEN AT A START-UP


GRIP was an overnight hit in the


Netherlands after its publication in 2019, shifting 75,000 copies in the country. Thorsons said the book is a “fresh, forgiving guide that helps you get things done and free up time for what’s important to you”. Humphrey said: “I’m convinced


[GRIP’s] universal themes will deliver a breakout success across the UK and beyond. With time at a premium, inboxes overflowing, diaries crammed, and a work/ life balance harder than ever to achieve, there’s never been a better time to take control of your life, get a grip on your productivity, and achieve your goals.” GRIP evolved out of Pastoor’s


role as head of product at start- up Blendle, when he started a newsletter and blog about lessons he learned about management and productivity. He said: “In these challenging times we can use all the help we can get, and I can’t wait to see how GRIP will help readers unlock their potential.”


02 21st October 2021


Penguin Random House worldwide chief executive Markus Dohle gave a bull- ish assessment of post-pandemic publishing in a talk at yesterday’s Frankfurt Book Fair, stressing its renewed role in helping “societ to come together and heal from what has become a really, really polar- ised world”. Dohle, who atended the event in person as a show of support to FBF, was interviewed by Porter Anderson, editor-in-chief of Publishing Perspectives. He used the moment to reiterate his view that this is the best time to be in the books business, with global spend on long-form content rising, its reachable audience increasing and distribution platforms stable


At the Messe


across both print and digital. He also talked up publishing’s wider benefit to societ. Dohle warned that there was a “crisis of truth” as social media became some people’s only source of information. By contrast, Dohle said book publishers had a respon- sibilit to help “societ regain that common understanding” of what is a fact-based truth, as well as promoting empathy through immersive reading.


With one eye on the pend- ing acquisition of Simon & Schuster, he stressed that S&S would continue to bid for books in competition with existing PRH editors and imprints, and expressed hope that the deal would enable PRH to regain some


MARKUS DOHLE


market share, having lost ground to smaller publishers, which have “outperformed” the bigger publishers over the past few years. Dohle said he couldn’t talk too much about the deal, which is still under regulatory review in the US, but he stressed that S&S would sell more books through the PRH distribution platform. He also reiterated his commitment that its publishers and editors would have entrepreneurial freedom. “Post-closing we will keep the ecosystem of S&S, their imprint legacies, their togetherness, and we will also bid against each other in an external way. So nothing will change.”


He said scale and service levels were important, but so was indi- vidual creativit. “The business is happening on an imprint level, it is actually the smallness that maters, not the size. On the crea- tive side in particular it is one book at a time, there is no scale, so you want to focus on the sub-cultures, on your imprint cultures, on the creative moment, on creating the perfect match. As a logical conse- quence, of course we compete.” He added that the industry had been fragmenting, with many smaller players entering the sector and those with good backlists benefiting from the changes in the retail ecosystem. “I’m not worried about consolidation. The industry is very vibrant... but I hope I can stop my market-share loss.” Reporting Philip Jones


Headline pre-empts Parfitt exploration


Headline has pre-empted Moscow-based Times journalist Tom Parfitt’s exploration of the Caucasus and the trauma he experienced after witnessing the Beslan school massacre. Iain MacGregor, publisher


for non-fiction, bought world rights to High Caucasus from Patrick Walsh at PEW. It will be published in summer 2023. The book begins in 2004,


MORE THAN 1,000 MILES THROUGH THE CAUCASUS


TOM PARFITT WALKED TIMES JOURNALIST


when terrorists took more than 1,000 people hostage in Beslan, killing 314—over half of whom were children. Parfitt was cover- ing the siege and, not a war correspondent, felt traumatised by “the visceral experience”.


He turned to his lifelong passion, walking, in order to find some peace. Having grown to love the Caucasus, he was keen to understand why the mountain peoples there, such as the Chechens, have had such a fraught relationship with their Russian neighbours. He ended up walking more than 1,000 miles through the region. MacGregor said: “[Parfitt’s]


work sits in the Venn Diagram of serious narrative and memoir. His page-turning style educates you, almost without realising, about this seemingly distant part of the world while you enjoy the journey itself.”


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