After a string of record dealmaking years, the market is looking more fractured after the first quarter, highly dependent upon which market segment you are measuring. Adult fiction continues to drive the marketplace. Once again, our deal reports show a record number of major deals at the high end, and total six-figure deals were up slightly. Total fiction deals look up as well, but the comparisons are a little hard to make this year, since as of the beginning of 2026, deals by mature digital publishers are now categorized in our general pool rather than in the digital publisher category. […]
Deals
Ari Emanuel Sells Memoir
According to Page Six, CEO of Endeavor as well as the parent company of the UFC and WWE Ari Emanuel has sold his memoir, which was written with J.R. Moehringer (Spare). Rumors that he’d been shopping a book have been circulating since December. WME represented the deal, which is likely in the seven figures, since Moehringer “doesn’t sharpen his pencil for less than $1 million.”
2025: The Year In Deals
A strong fourth quarter for domestic deals (+4.4 percent overall), driven by an 18 percent increase in fiction deals, lifted the year’s results to another new record total for PM deal reports. Publisher investment grew even more, setting new records overall and new records for major and significant deals. In particular: – US deals overall were up 1.9 percent, a new record total. – Adult Fiction gained again, for the seventh straight year, up 9.3 percent (on top of 2024’s gain of 10 percent). Nonfiction sales ebbed, down 1.6 percent. – Children’s deals finally broke their three-year decline, finishing flat for the year. […]
Garmus Moves to Scribner
Following the international success of her 2022 debut bestseller Lessons In Chemistry, Bonnie Garmus’s second novel is moving from Doubleday to Scribner, PL has confirmed. PECK & PECK “follows an intrepid recent college graduate in pursuit of the impossible dream: meaningful employment and a living wage in the one thing no one takes seriously–poetry.” Marysue Rucci and Nan Graham at Scribner, along with Nicole Winstanley at Scribner Canada, acquired North American rights, sold by Jennifer Joel at CAA, on behalf of Felicity Blunt at Curtis Brown UK. German rights have gone again to Felicitas von Lovenberg and Thomas Tebbe at […]
Easier Deal Reporting
The next time you fill out our deal report forms, you will notice that we have implemented a helpful auto-complete feature for all of the “dealmaker” entities — editors, imprints, agents, and agencies — to help you match your entry to the over 30,000 canonical name forms as we already track them. That will help avoid spelling errors, typos and a whole range of name variations for companies that deviate from our style sheets — which in turns helps us post your deals more quickly, and with greater accuracy and consistency! Please let the system do its work — which […]
Fiction Still Leads In Pre-Frankfurt Deal Period
As we noted earlier in the month, third-quarter dealmaking in the US remained fairly strong even as the consumer marketplace wobbled, with total deal reports gaining slightly, despite a modest pullback from record spending a year ago. In the more concentrated five-week-plus pre-Frankfurt dealmaking, we see similar trends, with publisher spending a little stronger than during the third quarter, though still backing down just a bit from last year’s FBF period. As has been the case for some time, adult fiction continues to lead the market — particularly among publishers’ largest investments — while adult nonfiction and children’s books continue […]