Over the weekend we went live with our newest update of Matcher, our AI-powered feature that searches and analyzes deals, dealmakers and related data. using natural language descriptions of your work. The new Editor Matcher will help you find editors that “match” your submissions, just as Agent Matcher helps find agents that “match” your manuscript. Editor Matcher works the same way as Agent Matcher, producing a list of the most likely editors who have acquired similar projects and follows with a second list of possible matches to investigate. But with his update, we have significantly upgraded the matching itself — […]
Deals
Second Quarter Deals: Strong Investment In Adult Books, As Picture Books and Middle Grade Sink Children’s Sales
First quarter deal reports were up modestly after a bad start to 2023, helped by an early London Book Fair and marked by record six-figure deals — particularly at the higher end — continuing a trend of increased publisher investment in bigger deals. The second quarter of 2024 failed to keep up with a stronger comp from a year ago in total deals though for a very particular reason: Adult deals were actually up slightly versus last year, but children’s experienced a dramatic drop. They fell 17 percent, to their lowest second-quarter level since 2016 (even with an April Bologna […]
The Latest Deal Category
We’ve made it official: You can now use the Fiction: Romantasy sub-category when reporting — or searching — deals at PublishersMarketplace.com.
Follett Moves to Hachette
Ken Follett is changing English-language publishers, moving to Hachette Book Group and Hachette UK — after publishing with Penguin for 45 years, and with Pan Macmillan for 35 years. Follett’s next novel, due out on an unspecified date in 2025, will be published by Grand Central in the US and Quercus in the UK. The Follett Office sold rights to Ben Sevier at Grand Central (NA) and Jon Butler at Quercus (UK/Commonwealth), in a one-book deal. Follett said in the announcement, “This is the beginning of an exciting new phase for me: new publisher, new editors, new sales force. I’m […]
Deals Rebounded In the First Quarter, Led By Strong Six-Figure Reports
Deal reports rebounded in the first quarter of 2024, likely helped by an early convening of the London Book Fair and driven by strong investment in adult books. The gains come in comparison to a lower bar from a year ago, when Harper Collins was dealing with a strike and cutbacks. This quarter’s deal volumes were nearly back to the record total from 2022, and six-figure sales hit a new high. Adult fiction sales set a new record, up 20 percent over last year. Adult nonfiction recovered meaningfully from last year’s lull, gaining 10 percent, though still well off its […]
Using AI to Search Deals and Dealmakers
We have launched an experimental use of an AI-powered search approach at PublishersMarketplace, called Matcher. Up until now, our corpus of over 200,000 deal reports has only been searchable through basic word matching and Boolean search strings—and our Dealmakers lists, while quite extensive, only cover the 100 or so sub-categories that we tag and track. Matcher is designed to help you find agents and editors that “match” your manuscript, using natural language descriptions of your work. In this initial phase, it comes in two versions: Deal Matcher lets you search through the deals database, and highlights the editors and agents involved […]