Pub Rants

Category: foreign rights

Big In Russia Actually

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: Almost finished with all my Book Expo follow up stuff.

What’s playing on the iPod right now? WHEN IT’S OVER by Loverboy
(Bring on the red leather hot pants!)

I’m almost embarrassed to admit I have Loverboy on my iPod. Almost. They are still actually quite a lot of fun to work out to.

I’m not sure why but Russian publishers are buying a lot of projects as of late—and in all types of genres—but they are. Recently I’ve sold two debut fantasy and romance authors in that territory. They love historicals and I just sold a client’s recent book and her entire back list to a Russian publisher. They’ve also bought a young adult urban fantasy in that territory (but traditionally I haven’t sold a lot of YA there).

The hardest country to place right now is the UK. I recently did a deal for my middle grade project in that country but I think it was helped by the fact that the England is also the setting for the novel.

The UK has been notoriously tough for the past 2 years. If a manuscript doesn’t have international appeal (read: if it’s too American), they won’t touch it. They’ve become very tough for Historicals as well (which have traditionally worked well over there but the market has grown tighter in the last couple of years).

But here’s a first. Just recently I sold a YA project in Finland. Finnish! How fun and exciting is that? I also sold a YA in Turkey! Not two countries that immediately pop to mind when selling young adult titles but there you have it. I’ve also recently sold a new romance author in France as well as another young adult title there. Those are some firsts in the French language. Romance in general does tend to sell well in Denmark and Germany, but the latter has cut back as of late on its buys. Publishing has been hit hard in that country and I’ve noticed that offered advances are lower than they have been in the past.

I really love seeing the cover art and getting the foreign copies of books sold. If you go to our website, we actually post a lot of the foreign editions of our books. I must admit that Sara and I haven’t updated it recently but we’ll get around to it when we are a bit less swamped.

So from my limited perspective, that’s what is currently selling abroad as of late.

Book Expo

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: Getting to this blog entry late tonight. It’s Friday night and Kristin is not out and about on the town. I’m actually working… I want to finish things up before I leave for LA on Tuesday.

What’s playing on the iPod right now? I PUT A SPELL ON YOU by Bryan Ferry

BEA. BEA. You keep hearing the acronym but what is BEA? It stands for Book Expo America. It happens every spring and it’s basically the publishing industry’s way of launching the fall list with a big bang.

The fair itself is really geared more towards booksellers and librarians who come out in droves to get free ARCs [advanced reading copies] of all the big books for the fall. Each publisher hosts a “booth,” which can be half the length of the convention floor so some booths are big. In their booths, they spotlight authors, titles, have posters up and free ARCs. Lots of attendees come with suitcases so as to ship books back.

By the way, a couple of years ago they banned anything on wheels from the convention floor. However, you can have a “storage” space on the lower floor to store your books and UPS has ground shipping there and available for easy delivery.

Big authors host talks, breakfasts, big signings, etc. There are industry panels for education on publishing-related topics. I’m looking forward to hearing Jeff Bezos talk on Friday afternoon. (For those of you who don’t know, he is the current CEO of Amazon.com.)

So what is there for an agent to do? Lots actually. Last year I had 5 authors spotlighted at BEA so I made sure everything went smoothly for them. This year I don’t have any (talk about feast or famine…) so my time will be spent attending some panels, checking in with a few editors who will be at the booths, and my main focus is on Hollywood co-agents who handle book-to-film type deals on the behalf of literary agents.

I’m touching base with the folks I already work with (on a variety of projects) and then I’m meeting some new co-agents for the first time whom I might enjoy working with on future projects. BEA is all about the networking.

There is also the Rights Center. Literary Agents will often take a table in the rights center in order to hold meetings with editors there as well as with reps from foreign publishers for foreign rights etc. Last year I met with a lot of Audio publishers just to get to know those editors a bit better.

So that’s where I’m headed on Tuesday and I look forward to reporting from the floor. If I remember (knock on wood), I’ll take the camera (although I can use my trusty iPhone) and share pics etc. Expect blog entries to come late as my day is packed with meetings so there won’t be time to blog until the late evening.

Have a wonderful and safe Memorial Day Weekend.

I’m out!

Not Always At Once But Sometimes At Last

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: I’ve got contracts on my mind.

What’s playing on the iPod right now? ME AND MRS. JONES by Billy Paul

As y’all know, I’ve been working on contracts and quite a few foreign rights sales as of late. I’m particular fond of some of the recent deals because they were several years in the making.

See, we submitted the project back when we did the US sale but alas, didn’t have any takers. The US sale had been a strong one so we were quite flummoxed. We received quite a few rejections that the project felt “too American” for the foreign audience.

In a sense, I get that.

But now the deals are happening, so what has changed? Several things actually. The global market climate for that genre. The strength of the US sales can be a tipping point factor. General excitement created by readers with the US copy (or of an English-language copy that was imported into a particular country). There can be a number of reasons.

The door is never closed. It’s a good reminder that even if a foreign sale doesn’t happen at once, it can certainly happen at last (and the money, and the love, can be better the second time around). This happens in Hollywood as well.

Just last year I sold a project to Hollywood that I had been shopping for three years. I hadn’t given up hope but things did look a bit unpromising. Then a surprise summer hit made this type of project suddenly hot again and voila, interest, and then a sale.

Doing Foreign Rights Deals

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: Contracts and more contracts. I have four total that I’m working on. A fifth one just came in and I just started negotiating a new deal for a current client. Busy.

What’s playing on the iPod right now? DON’T GET AROUND MUCH ANYMORE by Natalie Cole

Last year the agency did 29 foreign rights deals on behalf of our clients and I have to say that the sales remain unabated into 2008. We are doing several a week for various clients. All great news.

But I had an interesting thing happen last week. I turned down a foreign offer for one of my clients (and obviously with the client’s permission) because I didn’t think the offer was on par with where it should be in comparison to other foreign offers and the client’s current sales etc.

This is a first for me. Because so many of my clients are (or were) debut authors (as my agency is only five years old), most often we are thrilled to get foreign interest at all. And yes, we always negotiate up the foreign advances etc. but you only have so much leverage when the client hasn’t got a sales track record.

But obviously the agency has reached a new level—especially for established clients with success. Yet another threshold we are crossing as we finish up year five and head into year six of our existence.