After a positive response to our pre-Frankfurt deal analysis and charts, our webmaster built a sophisticated set of tools to let us analyze all the data locked inside our Deals database, the largest collection of deal data ever compiled. So now we can offer an assessment of the deal trends of 2011, and we can put those results in the context of a five-year pattern as well. The data shows that US book deal volume increased for the second straight year in 2011, at 5,211 transactions in all, up 5.4 percent overall (after a 7.7 percent gain in 2010). Nonfiction […]
Deals
Knox Activity
Amanda Knox’s grandmother Elisabeth Huff tells the Telegraph that approaches for book representation and deals began almost immediately: “I had an insane man come to me yesterday to talk to me about book deals. What an insane idea. That is totally crazy, the girl was not even home yet, we didn’t know if she was even going to get out of there. It was after the verdict. He knocked on the door and wanted to discuss book deals and media deals.” For her part, she believes it would be “a good idea” to share some of any potential profit with […]
Deal Volume Grows Ahead of Frankfurt
With the Frankfurt Book Fair looming, we have compiled our semi-annual look at the state of dealmaking, this time bolstered by some very pretty charts. Visualizing our data should make it easier for readers to draw their own conclusions from the statistics, and it allows us to reveal more nuance to the figures as well. The first chart below looks at all US Publishers Marketplace deal reports from September. Deal volume among “comparable categories” continues to grow, up 7.5 percent over last year (when reports jumped almost 17 percent from the recession trough of 2009). But total deal volume is […]
Lonely Planet Founders Buy Canongate’s Stake in Text Publishing
Founders of Lonely Planet Maureen and Tony Wheeler have bought Canongate’s stake in Text Publishing for an undisclosed sum. Michael Heyward and Penny Hueston, who bought Text in tandem with Canongate in 2004 and created a joint venture whereby Text also published Canongate titles in Australia, will retain their share in the company and Heyward will stay on as publisher and managing director. Heyward added that Text and Canongate “will continue to work closely together to acquire books and authors.” “Our decision to sell our stake in Text was a strategic one that will enable us to focus more of our […]
Two New Buys For Amazon New York
Deal-watchers will take particular note of two reported buys for Amazon’s budding New York-based publishing unit. Liao Yiwu, who escaped from China this summer, is moving to Amazon from Harper One, for his account of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, FOR A SONG AND A HUNDRED SONGS: A Poet’s Journey Through a Chinese Prison. Gregg Housh and Barrett Brown’s ANONYMOUS, covered while on submission by the Observer, has been bought by Julia Cheiffetz for Amazon. The book is pitched as “Barbarians at the Gate” for the digital era, the story of the ordinary people who became hacker-activists and successfully brought […]
Knopf Announces New Bill Clinton Book for November
Former President Bill Clinton’s BACK TO WORK, a book on “the urgent challenges facing the United States and offering a plan to get America ‘back into the future business,'” will be published by Knopf on November 8. Knopf chairman Sonny Mehta acquired the book again, from attorney Robert Barnett at Williams & Connolly. (The $22.95 book will run 208 pages.) Clinton says in the text, “I wrote this book because I love my country and I’m concerned about our future.” And he defends the current administration’s philosophy: “There is no evidence that we can succeed in the twenty-first century with […]