IN DEPTH A brief history
The collective spirit certainly did the business for Hawking, as the book was sold into more than 40 terri- tories. A collectivism is at the heart of the reconstituted UA rights setup, too. Its rights team had been jointly led up by Margaret Halton and Natasha Fairweather, but last year, when Fairweather leſt for Rogers, Coleridge & White and Halton headed to PEW, it was decided to form a non- hierarchical department. Not that the trio were new to the business. Willis is one
of UA’s founders, having joined Peters, Fraser & Dunlop from Puffin just a couple of months before a bunch of PFD staffers leſt to set up UA. She says: “It all went pear-shaped prety much as soon as I arrived. I had always been at publishers, and I thought: ‘My god, is this what agencies are like?’ But it was exciting to be in the thick of it.” One of Mitchell’s previous roles was at A P Wat—bought by UA in 2012—and she was lured back to UA a couple years ago, partly due to her familiarit with the A P Wat list. Le Grice came over in 2016, aſter leading rights at Ed Victor. Willis sells rights for the kids’ side (but not coeditions) and a select few adult languages, the biggest of which is Spanish. Le Grice and Mitchell divvy up the rest: Le Grice’s biggest languages include German, Italian and Chinese; Mitchell’s are French, Dutch and Portuguese. All three have worked for publishers’ in-house rights teams. When asked why they prefer agencies, they answer, almost in unison, “the authors”. Le Grice says: “You’re there from the very beginning... [UA agent] Anna Webber recently brought on two new authors, and we met them almost when she did.” Mitchell adds: “Agency rights departments have much more involvement. At a publisher, you have the publicit and marketing department above you, and they
Company Spotlight United Agents
a minor thing, but it helps being in the same room—when an email comes in with an exciting offer, we can bounce ideas off each other. And we’re not possessive or precious about individual territories; we do it all together.”
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Foreign rights sales for Ruth Hogan’s novel Te Keeper of Lost Tings
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Languages Stephen Hawking’s Brief Answers to the Big Questions has been sold into
are oſten in the acquisition meetings, and you are not.” But there is a batle going on, with conglomerate publishers increasingly pushing for world rights. Le Grice says that the big publishers are “really aggressive, really pushing” for world rights. Willis agrees, and says it is up to agencies to underscore what they can add for clients: “From a practical standpoint, I think there are more pots of money out there and we can get at them beter than publishers can. I don’t want to slag off publishers’ rights departments, as some are really good, but we’re thinking more about the long term for the client and with a different perspective. We sell into a territory with the author’s inter- est in mind, the publisher sells it with their own interest.” Markets have ups and downs, but Le Grice says the “main European territories are stable, and Italy is buying a bit more lately. China is strong, it just seems to buy a lot— even a lot of random backlist.” Unsurprisingly given its political turmoil, Willis says: “Turkey is a nightmare, really hard at the moment. Spain has been in the doldrums for a few years, but they are buying a lot of deep backlist; small advances, sure, but it is interesting that they are trying to reinvigorate older classics.”
English has become less important, and if we further isolate ourselves, this might become a greater worry
Jane Willis
Brexit is a concern, but not immediately. Willis explains: “For UA as a whole the issue is coeditions, which [children’s agent] Jodie Hodges handles. She has a massive list of picture book authors and illustrators. The difficult, if [an exit deal] doesn’t get sorted, will be geting physical copies across borders. Of course, if the economy is threatened it might hit us. But what might have a knock- on effect across Europe is a continuation of something we’ve been seeing for years: English becoming less important. European countries have been buying more rights from each other, English has become less impor- tant, and if we further isolate ourselves, this
might become a greater worry.” The people Meet United Agents’ three-strong rights team
Amy Mitchell history Brief
Mitchell previously worked at Main- stream, A P Watt, Cornerstone and DGA. Caitlin Moran (no longer a UA client) has been a career highlight: “She had no profile abroad but we mananged to hand-sell How to
Be a Woman and many female editors bought her book on a real gamble and made it a bestseller.”
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Jane Willis history Brief
A UA founder, the children’s special- ist also represents a small stable of authors. Her career started at Michael O’Mara, on Andrew Morton’s Diana: “It was my first job and we really didn’t think it would sell anywhere
but it ended up going in 26 languages. It was so fun. That’s when I knew I wanted to work in rights.”
Georgina Le Grice history Brief
Le Grice cut her teeth at The Marsh Agency, switching to Pan Macmil- lan before heading up rights at Ed Victor. Her strangest ever deal? “A book called What Every Man Thinks Apart from Sex—inside, the pages
were blank. That was sold into four territories, one of which was Mongolia. We got $200 for that.”
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