My London Book Fair
Anna Webber Agent, AM Heath
The dealmaker steps into her first LBF with a new agency looking forward to bursting the UK publishing bubble – and looking back fondly at a Booker winner’s beginnings
I must have been to about 20 London Book Fairs; I missed two because I was on maternity leave. My first was memo- rable because I managed to make a complete fool of myself. I had just started at Andrew Nurnberg Associates as a foreign-rights agent, selling English-language books into France. As the most junior staff member, I was sent back to the Clerkenwell office to print out a manuscript (remem- ber those?). In the process I managed to set off the alarm to the entire building and was questioned by the police.
There are some fabulous parties, and I try to show my face, but these massive gatherings are not really my scene. I go to catch up with old friends but am useless at networking, so usually leave before they really get going. It’s lovely to be invited though, and I enjoy the gossip the next day.
What I enjoy much more are smaller get-togethers. This year we are hosting a dinner for David Szalay’s international publishers to celebrate the publication of his new novel, Flesh, which to my mind is a masterpiece, with the best final sentence of any novel I have read. We have sold it in several major territories; I hope there will be many more to come.
One particularly fond LBF memory is selling the rights to Samantha Harvey’s debut novel, The Wilderness, in 2008. We were in the process of setting up United Agents and didn’t yet have our foreign-rights department in place, so I was selling these rights myself. Seeing publishers’ responses and the offers coming in was marvellous. It was the begin- ning of an incredible journey, both for UA and Samantha. [Her Booker winner] Orbital has now sold in over 40 terri- tories, a number we could not have dreamed of back then.
This is my first LBF with AM Heath, and I really look forward to it. We are such a close-knit, dynamic and happy team; I know it’s going to be fun. I am very much looking forward to internationally presenting Ben Eastham’s debut novel The Floating World, a meditation on loss and deception steeped in atmosphere and sparkling with intelligence, which I just sold to Fitzcarraldo. I can’t wait to talk about Sarah Moss’ novel, Ripeness, which is absolutely glorious, her best to date, I think, and which Picador will publish in August. Another highlight is Ben Brooks’ The Greatest Possible Good, published by Scribner in July. Apart from a Spanish deal, we have just accepted a pre-empt from Gallimard, and I expect there will be more to come.
I love catching up with international publishers, many of whom I have known for years. We all live in a bit of a bubble, and it always feels energising and inspiring to have this bubble of UK publishing burst by speaking to editors from other countries and hearing what excites them. Sometimes our enthusiasms are aligned, sometimes not, and it can be quite freeing that there is a world beyond the latest UK craze.
I remember a time when international publishers would make pre-empts based on a partial manuscript they had read overnight in their hotel. That was exciting, but also a bit mad. It’s not so much about brokering deals at the fair anymore, it’s more about taking the temperature of what’s going on elsewhere in the world and maintaining these long-standing relationships and friendships. After all, it’s these relationships of trust and mutual respect that sustain everything we do: what better way to keep them alive than to meet up in person at a book fair once or twice a year?
AS TOLD TO Tom Tivnan 21
ELLA WEBBER
London Book Fair
In Brief
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