Former THR books editor Andy Lewis is writing a weekly column for start-up The Ankler that touts some forthcoming releases still available for film/TV options. Called the Optionist, he writes, “Every Friday, I’ll present un-optioned material from books, magazines, news articles, podcasts, games and graphic novels that I think deserve a look. I will attempt to go beyond hot titles on current lists from your book scouts, and pick out the hidden gems.”
Deals
2021: The Year In Deals, and the Stats Behind the Boom
Overall Stats As we documented during the year, deal activity boomed in the first two quarters of 2021: US deal reports were up about 19 percent overall, and six-figure deals rose even more. In the second half of the year, dealmaking remained steady with a strong period from 2020, with the biggest “major” deals jumping at year-end. By year end, total deals rose more in 2021 than in 2020, and six-figure deals or better were particularly strong. At the same time, translation deals came roaring back after falling in 2020. Specifically: – US deals were up 9.4 percent overall, even more than […]
Fourth Quarter Deals
Bringing one of our important new projects full cycle, here is our recap of deal statistics for the fourth quarter of 2021. As indicated in our three previous reports, US dealmaking continued to align roughly with consumer book sales, up a little bit in the fourth quarter after a softer third quarter and a robust first half of the year. Nonfiction and fiction deals both declined slightly compared to a big quarter in 2020, but remained near high points for the past five years, as children’s deals continued their uninterrupted growth — putting total deals for the quarter up 1 […]
Getting Gurnah
The NYT reiterates what we reported the day Abdulrazak Gurnah won the Nobel Prize for Literature: From his extensive backlist, only one title was active in the marketplace in print, PARADISE. On October 7, Ingram had about 300 copies available. Working with Ingram’s print-on-demand service, The New Press has been able to make more copies available quickly: NPD Bookscan shows sales to consumers of approximately 600 copies the week ending October 9, and just over 9oo copies the week ending October 16. (Update: It sold another 1,150 copies the week ending October 23.) The publisher tells the NYT they will […]
Frankfurt Deal Trends Show Good Activity, But Lag Last Year’s Records
Recently we reported on third-quarter dealmaking trends in the US, with a relatively strong performance falling a little below last year’s big quarter — just as Bookscan-monitored print sales have been strong but ebbing a little in comparison to 2020. We also flagged a falloff in debut fiction sales. Now we turn to another of our longstanding comparisons, looking at dealmaking in the shorter “pre-Frankfurt” window of the last five weeks plus two days. (Frankfurt is a week later than usual this year, so our count includes one extra, starting the Monday after Labor Day; the last longer season like […]
Third Quarter Deal Trends
Next week we will report on dealmaking in the six-week “pre-Frankfurt” window, but first we present the next installment in this year’s new look at quarterly deal trends. The first half of 2021 saw a marked surge in dealmaking, in line with record increases in consumer book sales: First quarter 2021 US deal volume was 19 percent higher than in 2020, and second quarter deal volume remained 18 percent higher than the same quarter the previous year. Those increases in deal volume tracked very closely with Bookscan print unit data, which showed sales at measured outlets up 18.4 percent in […]