Following last week’s preview, we’re back with the final stats and trends on the selling season leading into the Frankfurt Book Fair (measured as five weeks plus a day through Tuesday, for consistency across the years). In line with the early view, total domestic US deal volume was flat for the fifth year in a…
Deals
The Early Frankfurt Dealmaking Preview: Steady Volumes, Fewer Big Deals
It’s one of those rare years in which the Frankfurt Book Fair, starting next Wednesday, will be convened six weeks after Labor Day instead of the usual five weeks (probably due to the late Jewish holidays). While we will share the official stats on the pre-FBF selling season a week from now, that schedule variation…
The NYT’s Book Factory, Howard Stern Opens Again, and More
“The [NY] Times has become a book-deal factory,” a journalist there tells Vanity Fair. “I don’t think the Times has ever seen this number of requests” from staff for book leave. The magazine reports that one of the most recent deals is Rachel Abrams and James B. Stewart writing about Les Moonves and CBS and…
Apple’s Soon-to-Be Revealed Streaming Service Features Many Book Adaptations
As Apple prepares to explain their long-in-the-works streaming video service at a March 25 event in Cupertino, CA, there’s more word in advance regarding one book-related project. Last August a deal was announced for a “sizable script-to-series commitment” to develop Min Jin Lee’s PACHINKO as a series. Now comes confirmation that Apple has made an…
London: So Many Debuts, So Few Big Deals
We’ve run out of polite synonyms for modest and soft, so we’ll start our final look at the dealmaking patterns leading into the London Book Fair with what jumped out as most distinctive. Debut fiction is always a closely-watched market bellwether, particularly as the mainstream fiction market appears to languish. The good news is that…
Deal Counts Are Modest Heading Into LBF, With Only Moderate Investment In Debut Fiction
With dealmakers converging on the London Book Fair next week, it’s time for us to bring our traditional dose of statistically-based reality to the frenzy of pre-Fair deals coverage. As always, this is preliminary, with two more business days of deal reports to log before we provide you fuller analysis next Tuesday. So far, the…