Deal reports took a discernible step back in the first quarter, after setting significant records in 2021 and then again in 2022. (Last year, the first quarter was the strongest period the whole year, with total US deal volume ending up down by 1.5 percent.) Total deals registered 4.4 percent lower than in the big Q1 2022, but “core” deals (excluding our digital deals category) declined 8 percent. Similarly, deals from the five largest trade publishers on their own also declined 8.5 percent, leading the market down, primarily due to the two biggest players. Digital deals rose sharply for the […]
Deals
Fourth Quarter Deals
Today we report on dealmaking statistics for both the fourth quarter of 2022 as well as the full year — which means that most of our focus is on the annual trends. To recap: The first quarter continued the boom from 2021, setting a new record for overall deal volume, as reported six-figure transactions softened a little to the second-best quarter in years. The second quarter hewed more closely to the sales pattern for print books, with deal volume declining 9.1 percent, but still well ahead of previous years, as reported six-figure deals held flat with 2021, still at record […]
Forthcoming: Patterson to Co-Author Unfinished Crichton Novel
James Patterson will complete an unfinished manuscript by Michael Crichton, who died in 2008, the WSJ reports. The as-yet-untitled novel was sold to Little, Brown by Shane Salerno for production company CrichtonSun and Robert Barnett for Patterson, and is about “a mega-eruption of Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano that can destroy not just the island but the entire world” due to a secret cache of chemical weapons. It’s scheduled to be published in 2024. Crichton’s widow (and chief executive of CrichtonSun) Sherri Crichton said the existing manuscript was over 100 pages. “Michael had been working on this book for years, it […]
Book Musk
Ben Mezrich‘s BREAKING TWITTER is in the works already for a planned fall 2023 release, edited by Karyn Marcus at Grand Central, the WSJ reports. Mezrich will look at “the culture clash between the right and the left, but also about what free speech means.” The publisher confirmed the release, and said it is part of their earlier multi-book deal with Mezrich that included THE ANTIOSOCIAL NETWORK and his novel THE MIDNIGHT RIDE. They say the book “will capture the incredibly public and darkly comic battle between one of the most intriguing, polarizing, and influential men of our time—Elon Musk—and […]
Frankfurt Deal Trends Show Strong Sales, with Fiction and Debuts Rising
Recently we reported strong third-quarter dealmaking trends in the US, with near-record overall deal volumes, driven by continued strength in adult fiction, and balanced by some weakness in children’s book sales. Now it’s time for our usual look at the “pre-Frankfurt” dealmaking window in particular. Like last year, the Frankfurt Book Fair falls a week later than usual, so for the second year in a row the counts include one extra day of deal reports. (Often, FBF comes five weeks after Labor Day, so the count usually covers five weeks plus one day. When FBF falls late, starting from the […]
Third Quarter Deal Trends Show Continued Strength
So far this year, we’ve seen a record first quarter in domestic dealmaking, followed by a correction in the second quarter — which still was the second-best level in five years — and across both periods there was some weakness among the biggest deals, as well as a decline in total volume of deals from the Big Five on their own. Now, the third quarter of 2022 shows a mix of factors. Total deal volume rose again, up slightly (by 1.5 percent) and close to the record level from 2020. Non-fiction deals rebounded after a sharp falloff a year ago […]