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 row. As we reported last week, the FBF selling season is about 7.5 percent busier than the springtime selling season ahead of the London Book Fair. That means the FBF stretch averages 140 deals a week and the London season averages 130 deals a week […]
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 means we do already have a full sample data set of five weeks and a day for early comparison, which is our usual standard. From what we see in the current data, total pre-Frankfurt domestic deal volume looks to be just about flat again this […]
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 Les Moonves, for Ann Godoff at Penguin Press. All those book deals can drain reporting resources, and staff has not necessarily been following protocol. In early May executive editor Dean Baquet and assistant managing editor Carolyn Ryan sent a memo that “was a stern 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 eight-episode series order — backed by a “premium budget” and ambition to rival Netflix’s The Crown, in making the series in Korean, Japanese and English. Other books in development at Apple for streaming include Hilde Lysiak and Matthew Lysiak’s HILDE CRACKS THE CASE and William […]
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 this year’s five weeks of sales and announcements ahead of the fair has recorded the most debuts in the past four years. At the same time, however, reported deals for substantial amounts (major and significant deals) are far lower than at any other point: 2019 […]
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 deals market is looking modest, and in line with recent trends: – Overall pre-LBF dealmaking in the US (measured over the five weeks ahead of the fair, starting Monday, February 4) is on trajectory to be even with or slightly below last year’s level. – […]