14.10.20 Free


At the Virtual Frankfurt Book Fair 2020.


thebookseller.com/news


Big publishers give mixed reviews of rights portal as many opt for Zoom meetings


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MANY PUBLISHERS HAVE SIDESTEPPED THE RIGHTS PORTAL


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any big firms have bypassed the Frankfurt Rights portal—having experienced teething problems with rights platforms at the Bologna and Beijing book fairs—though companies that did join have been cautiously positive. At the time of writing, there are 1,042 exhibi-


tors listing 391,506 titles on the platform, with 68 of the companies UK-based. Of the large trade groups, Penguin Random House and Hachete have listed titles, alongside STM and academic giants Springer Nature and Wiley. But UK agencies including Curtis Brown, PFD and Aitken Alexander told The Bookseller Daily they were not using it, and had set up meetings through existing networks. Rebecca Wearmouth, PFD’s international rights director, said: “Asking around earlier in


I think people have been stung by having problems with the Beijing and Bologna portals and wanted to keep things as simple as possible Rebecca Wearmouth, PFD


the year, we found most editors wanted to organise meetings outside the rights portal platform and so we opted to do the same, and have just been organising meetings between ourselves. I think people have been stung by having problems with the Beijing and Bologna portals and wanted to keep things as simple as possible.” Lisa Baker, who heads Aitken Alexander’s translation rights, said her team had already arranged four to five weeks’ worth of meetings by the time the portal launched, though she


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might engage with it later in the year. She said: “We judged that we were already in contact with or seeing all the publishers that we might see at the fair in normal times. So far, none of the editors I’ve spoken to have said that they have used it very much, if at all.” However, Penguin Random House group rights director Chantal Noel said it was a “perfectly good digital offering given the situation”. She added: “It offers a digital point of contact for publishers that might not have worked with us before. We thought it might provide a glimpse of what we offer, all in one place, and additionally it makes it easy for customers to contact us. However, the hundreds of publishers that value our books and lists already, they know how to contact us and we are frequently in touch with them. We have the overwhelming sense that people prefer personal contact to a portal.” Lara Cliſt, publisher at Sweet Cherry, one of a string of indies on the platform, said: “We find it is quite user-friendly. There have been some initial teething problems with making meeting requests, which was to be expected, but these issues have now been resolved.” Reporting The Bookseller News Team


Six- figure début


Doubleday beats 15 lists to Garmus’ début


Transworld division Doubleday has won the fiercest auction of this Frankfurt Book Fair season, beating 15 other publishers and paying six figures for Bonnie Garmus’ “vibrant, nostalgic” 1960s-set début. Editorial director Jane Lawson won UK and


Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada, with exclusive Europe and audio) to Garmus’ Lessons in Chemistry from Felicity Blunt at Curtis Brown. US rights went to Doubleday in a “significant” deal and translation rights have sold at pre-empt or auction in 21 territories in just over a week on submission. Doubleday will publish the novel in May 2022. Lessons in Chemistry centres around “brave-


hearted and irrepressibly logical” scientist and single mother Elizabeth Zott, who becomes the star of beloved US cooking show “Supper at Six”, inspiring housewives to change their lives. It is “a darkly witty reminder of the everyday sexism of the 1960s”. Seattle-born creative director Garmus, who


lives in London, began her novel on a Curtis Brown Creative course under tutor Charlotte Mendelson.


Wednesday

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