STATUS: Today I worked on finishing a contract (pre-new boilerplates) which did conclude. I really tackled emails in my inbox as well. Now I just have to tackle the slew of royalty statements we get in April.
What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? GREETINGS TO THE NEW BRUNETTE by Billy Brag
Today is a little potpourri of things.
1. Penguin Australia issued a more formal apology for Cookbook misprint. Sounds like a PR person got a hold of the situation. Grin.
2. Foreign rights co-agent did not make it to London (as you probably have already guessed). On the upside, perhaps more folks will come to BEA at the end of May. As you can imagine, reports from the LBF floor have been quiet. Great for the folks who did make it there though. Will the lack of a robust LBF deter foreign sales? Well, nothing beats conveying enthusiasm for a title in person so that’s the downside for sure. On the whole, I don’t think so. It will be hard to have the “big book of the fair” but I imagine most sales will get done via email and phone.
I don’t envy their journey home…
3. Business has resumed in Poland. We’ve been careful about waiting but today we got emails from folks in that territory so we felt comfortable resuming communication, negotiations, etc.
4. In watching Deal Lunch for the last couple of months, I’m starting to see quite a few more sales listed than I have in the past months. This is a good sign as I take it to mean that editors are starting to get back to buying.
Tags: London Book Fair
Your last point is very interesting and very comforting!
Kristin,
I’m glad to hear you say that editors are starting to buy again. 🙂 You aren’t the first agent I’ve heard that from this week. (My fingers are crossed. Maybe the economy is turning around…)
Yay for BEA 🙂 It’ll be my first time there, so I have high hopes.
Freshly ground people! HA
Totally makes me think of Twilight Zone:
“The Book! It’s a cookbook!!”
Oh, yay. Editors are buying. Perhaps my day won’t be sad and gloomy after all 🙂
Hmm, I know you have some Orbit authors. What do you think of the new digital short fiction program Orbit is launching? Scalzi talked about it quite a bit on his blog and sounded extremely skeptical about it.
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/04/15/questions-for-orbit-re-its-new-digital-short-fiction-program/
Wow, what an error! I’m going to use this in class tomorrow (I’m guest-lecturing at the University of Washington, Seattle), as we are discussing crisis communications and how best to handle them. This is an interesting example of PR do’s and don’t’s. Thanks for sharing!
Best,
Christine Fairchild