London
THURSDAY 12 APRIL 2018
LBF 2018 — strong submissions
UK publishers were broadly
positive at the halfway stage
of the London Book Fair
yesterday, writes Neill
Denny.
Anthony Cheetham,
chairman of Head of Zeus,
said: “My view on book
fairs is that they are largely
unnecessary in terms of
running your business, but
every year there is a
conversation or chance
encounter that makes it all
worthwhile.” On acquiring
fiction, Cheetham said:
“The whole thing is
NYRF to be BookExpo rights fair
At a press conference on
Wednesday afternoon at the
London Book Fair it was
announced that the New
York Rights Fair (NYRF) will
become the official rights fair of
From left: Elena Pasoli (Bologna), Antonio Bruzzone (Bologna), Ed Several (Reed),
John Malinowski (CBE), Marco Momoli (Bologna), George Slowik, Jr. (Publishers
Weekly), Janet Fritsch (ACS), Georgio Contini (Bologna), Cevin Bryerman (PW)
completely insane, there is
no middle ground any more,
things are either massive or
they are tiny.”
Stephen Page, Faber ceo,
said: “I think it has been a
good fair, with the right
people here for rights and
international deals.” He
pointed to stronger
submissions in non-fiction,
driven by “new and
challenging ideas in gender
politics, technology, politics,
the state of the world”.
Gordon Wise at Curtis
Brown said the fair was
BookExpo, starting this year.
Reed Exhibitions, which owns
BookExpo, will move the
event’s rights centre to NYRF,
which will be held at the
Metropolitan Pavilion, located
VISIT PW AND BOOKBRUNCH AT STAND 6C73
“good, buzzy”, and that the
climate for submissions was
healthy. “A lot of publishers
have a better idea now of
who the reader is, partly
through better use of digital.”
This was echoed by
Suzanne Baboneau, md of
adult publishing at Simon
& Schuster, who noted the
strength of submissions
before the fair. She was
exceptionally busy: “I have
14 appointements on
Thursday!”
Canongate’s Jamie Byng
said: “People are in acquisition
a short distance away from
the Javits Center, the site of
BookExpo. All of BookExpo’s
rights-oriented exhibitors will
have the option to move to
premium space at the NYRF
or remain at the Javits.
The inaugural New York
Rights Fair will run
simultaneously with
BookExpo, set for 30 May
to 1 June in New York City.
While the NYRF will be the
centre for all rights activity,
BookExpo will continue to
house all other events and
Continues on page 3 g
mode, there is a lot of
interesting and successful
publishing going on around
the world… Print is doing
well, e has stabilised, and
there are a lot of new ways
to publish books.”
Ed Wood, editorial
director of Sphere, said:
“The qaulity of submissions
at the fair this year is higher,
and the Americans are
spending big money.”
Unless prompted, no senior
publisher expressed concerns
over Brexit or the impending
sale of Waterstones.
INSIDE:
BLOCKCHAIN
THE FIRST #1
3
RIGHTS
ROUND UP
FAIR DEALS 4
LBF PEOPLE
DAY 2 GALLERY
6
 THURSDAY 12 APRIL 2018
LBF first: the blockchain bestseller
History was made at the 2018 London Book Fair: at a Tuesday
afternoon session, Josef Marc, CEO of upstart blockchain
publisher Publica, announced that the company had just gone
live in the Google Play Store with author Sukhi Jutla’s Escape
the Cubicle: Quit The Job You Hate — in effect creating the
world’s first #1 on the “blockchain bestseller” list.
Of course, there is no blockchain bestseller list — at least not
yet. But the burgeoning technology — best known in the finance
industry for powering cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin — holds
promise for publishing, supporters say. And at a panel packed
with curious authors and publishers, the Alliance of Independent
Authors (ALLi) handed out a just-released white paper, “Authors
and the Blockchain: Towards a Creator Centered Business
Model”, and heard from a panel of experts and early adopters.
The blockchain is a public ledger system that enables people
to transfer “unique pieces of digital property”, known as
blocks, in a way that is secure, transparent, time-stamped,
decentralised and irreversible. All necessary details are coded
into the blocks, and once accepted, the blocks become an
unalterable part of the blockchain.
A digital book created in the blockchain holds the text as
well as the terms of a book’s contract — which Marc referred
to as a “smart contract”.
When a user purchases a blockchain book, the transaction is
direct between author and reader. The reader gets the text
within an app. The text cannot be tampered with or
NYRF
f Continued from page 1
programmess that have been associated with the country’s
largest publishing conference.
The NYRF is a collaboration between BolognaFiere, which
runs the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, Publishers Weekly, and
To contact London Show Daily at the
Fair, please visit us at the Publishers
Weekly stand 6C73.
Publisher: Joseph Murray
BookBrunch Managing Director: Jo Henry
Editors: Andrew Albanese, Nicholas Clee, Neill Denny
Reporter: Ed Nawotka
Project Coordinator: Bryan Kinney
Layout and Production: Heather McIntyre
Editorial Coordinator (UK): Marian Sheil Tankard
For a FREE digital trial to Publishers Weekly go to
publishersweekly.com/freetrial
Subscribe to BookBrunch via www.bookbrunch.co.uk
or email editor@bookbrunch.co.uk
LONDON SHOW DAILY
transferred outside the contract terms coded therein. And the
author is paid immediately, with payments divvied up
according to the smart contract — for example, the contract
might call for 10% to go to the author’s publisher.
Payments are made in cryptocurrency directly to the author’s
“digital wallet”. In the case of Publica, that cryptocurrency is known
as a “pebble”. Cryptocurrency can then be traded on a coin
exchange — Jutla says a pebble currently trades for about $2.50.
At the panel, author and ALLi news editor Dan Holloway
conceded that blockchain was not quite ready for prime time, both
in terms of consumer adoption, and in terms of the technology,
which still faces questions of stability and scalability.
“It’s too early to have definitive answers when it comes to
blockchain for writers,” Holloway cautioned. “But questions
at this stage are more important.”
Still, as the ALLi white paper points out, blockchain holds
significant promise, especially for indie and self-published
authors. “The way that blockchain reconfigures digital text,
books and media, legal agreements, monetisation of content,
and payment pathways makes it a technological breakthrough
for publishing,” the ALLi white paper concludes, adding that
blockchain could potentially deliver “an author-centred
financial model for the first time in publishing history”.
Jutla said: “To be #1 on the blockchain — it’s history. What I
think it might do is wake up the publishing industry a little bit
and make them aware that blockchain is happening right now.”
Combined Book Exhibit. The three parties, along with Reed
Exhibitions, promise that the combined events will improve the
experience for book professionals working with the US publishing
market. As part of the agreement, NYRF badge holders will have
full access to the BookExpo exhibition floor, while BookExpo
badge holders with a Rights badge designation will have full access
to NYRF. Shuttle buses will travel between the two events.
George Slowik, Jr, president of Publishers Weekly, said: “PW’s
unique POV as a horizontal publication, serving the entire industry,
paired with the unique relationships that we maintain with both
Reed Exhibitions’ BookExpo and BolognaFiere, enabled us to
foster and develop a strong collaboration between the two events.”
Antonio Bruzzone, general director, BolognaFiere concurred
and noted: “This relationship was born for the common goal
of best serving the publishing industry. In our experience as
organisers of the Bologna Children’s Book Fair we have
always focused on the rights market, which is also the core
of our engagement in the creation of NYRF. ”
On behalf of Reed Exhibitions, Ed Several, senior v-p, said:
“Over the past year, BookExpo has undergone a reimagination
to offer more of the core values that attendees and exhibitors are
looking for. We have been presenting this new vision to publishers
here at the London Book Fair this week and so it is appropriate
that we can announce this exciting new partnership here as well.”
3
 LONDON SHOW DAILY
Rights round up
Anna Valentine, publisher at Trapeze (Orion), has signed a behind-the-
scenes book about the Glastonbury Festival, which celebrates its 50th
anniversary in 2020. The book, compiled by Glastonbury organisers
Michael Eavis and his daughter Emily, will include previously unseen
photos, archive material and artwork. Trapeze has world rights
directly from Glastonbury Festival, and will publish the book in
October 2019. Valentine said: “Like anyone who has ever been
fortunate enough to visit Worthy Farm’s rolling green fields, I’ve
remained firmly under its spell. Glastonbury’s 50th birthday is
undoubtedly going to be one of the biggest events of the year — if not
the decade.”
Jack Fogg, HarperNonFiction publishing director, has signed a
memoir, Under Pressure: Life on a Submarine, by Waterstones non-
fiction buyer Richard Humphreys. HarperCollins has world rights
directly from the author, and will publish in spring 2019. Humphreys,
born in landlocked Wolverhampton, recalls his experiences under the
sea as a submariner: the disorientation of not quite knowing your
exact location, the claustrophobia of bunking with 140 other men,
and the effort needed to stay calm in an environment that offers no
space or natural light.
Ebury UK and Ten Speed US have signed Simple, a new cookbook by
Yotam Ottolenghi writing with Tara Wigley and Esme Howarth
(September). Lizzy Gray at Ebury signed the book through Felicity
Rubinstein at Lutyens & Rubinstein, and Aaron Wehner at Ten Speed
signed it through Kim Witherspoon at Inkwell. Gray said: “Simple is
the book Yotam’s fans have been waiting for: his trademark vibrant
flavours and inventive veg-centred dishes but brilliantly pared back.
It’s been a passion project for the Ottolenghi team, led by Tara Wigley
and Esme Howarth.”
Ralph Moller (left), ceo of Germany’s Book2Look, and
Tauno Vahter, editor-in-chief of Estonian publisher
Tanapaev, celebrate the end of the work day with drinks,
including a bottle of Estonian porter brewed to mark the
Baltic Countries Market Focus here at the fair. Estonia
has 22 titles being published in English this year as a
direct result of the Market Focus programme.
4
THURSDAY 12 APRIL 2018
Dan Franklin has signed new books by acclaimed nature writers Dave
Goulson and Mark Cocker, both from Patrick Walsh at PEW Literary
(UK and Commonwealth rights). Goulson’s The Garden Jungle (also
sold to Carl Hanser Verlag in Germany) is about the wildlife that lives
right under our noses, in our gardens and parks, between the gaps in
the pavement, and in the soil beneath our feet. He offers practical
steps that we can all take to protect these creatures, and to encourage
more of them to enter our lives. Goulson’s books include the Baillie
Gifford Prize-shortlisted A Sting in the Tail. Cocker, whose Our Place
is just out and gaining a good deal of attention, is writing Claxton II:
More Field Notes from a Small Planet, recording life in the
surroundings of his cottage in Norfolk.
Bluebird UK and Little, Brown Spark US have signed Joy at Work: The
Career-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo and Scott
Sonenshein. Carole Tonkinson at Bluebird signed UK and
Commonwealth rights, and Tracy Behar at LB signed NA rights; both
deals followed auctions. Marie Kondo was represented by Neil
Gudovitz at Gudovitz & Company Literary Agency, and Scott
Sonenshein was represented by Richard Pine at InkWell Management.
Joy at Work applies the KonMari Method of tidying to the work and
office environment. Kondo’s previous book was the number 1
bestseller The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Her books have
sold more than 8 million copies worldwide, and have been translated
into 46 languages.
White Lion launches
Quarto has unveiled at LBF the
logo and launch list for White Lion
Publishing, the new imprint bringing
together the group’s adult publishing
from Aurum, Frances Lincoln and
Quintessence.
Lead titles from White Lion include:
The Lady in the Cellar: Murder,
Scandal and Insanity in Victorian
Bloomsbury by Sinclair McKay
Baladi: Recipes from Palestine: A Culinary Journey from
the Land to the Sea by Joudie Kalla
Island Gardens: Havens of Beauty Around the British Isles
by Jackie Bennett
Dogs at Home: Beautiful Homes for Beautiful Creatures by
Marianne Cotterill; photography by James Merrell
Charleston: A Bloomsbury House & Garden by Quentin
Bell and Virginia Nicholson
Good Money: Be in the Know — Boost Your Financial
Well-being by Nathalie Spencer and Enjoy Time: Stop
Rushing — Be More Productive by Catherine Blyth — two
titles in the Build+Become series
Atlas of the Unexpected: Haphazard Discoveries, Chance
Places and Unimaginable Destinations by Travis Elborough
The Classic FM Music Box by Sam Jackson and Tim
Lihoreau
10 Years of Unpublished Letters to the Daily Telegraph
edited by Iain Hollingshead and Kate Moore
 LONDON SHOW DAILY THURSDAY 12 APRIL 2018

People at London Book Fair — day 2

London Book Fair director Jacks Thomas at the opening of the Club at Joanna Trollope (right), London Book Fair Author of the Day, was in
the Ivy. She was dressed, she said, “as an ISBN”. conversation with Mary Anne Sieghart at the PEN Literary Salon.

Members of the Young Publishers’ Academy launched the intitiative at the

Fair yesterday. Modelled on the successful Young Journalists’ Academy,
the scheme aims to provide 16 to 19-year-old state school students with
work experience in publishers. Nielsen’s Steve Bohme talked book trends at a packed Author AQ.

IBBY UK and Inclusive Minds organised a packed seminar celebrating

the British books that were nominated for the 2017 IBBY International
list of outstanding books for children with disabilities. (Standing left to
right) authors Peter Kalu and Sarah Crossan, Heather Lacey (Inclusive
Minds ambassador), Alex Strick (Inclusive Minds), Nikki Marsh (IBBY
UK); (seated) ambassadors Emily Davison and Megan Quibell.
At agent Barbara Zitwer’s table are 4th Estate’s Anna Kelly (left), who
signed from her The Plotters by Un-su Kim, and Ailah Ahmed of Little,
Brown, publisher of The Good Son by You-jeong Jeong.

6
 THURSDAY 12 APRIL 2018

Vis 7G1
IMF
Author of the Day

it S 0a
ta
nd
Nicholas Clee caught up

Publications
with Jacqueline Wilson,
today’s Author of the Day,
in the run up to the Fair.
Dame Jacqueline Wilson,
to give her her full title,
has written more than 100
novels, which include the
Tracy Beaker series and “Full of both
the Hetty Feather theoretical and
historical novels. practical insights,
Jacqueline Wilson it is sure to become
NC: Have you been to the the reference book
London Book Fair/any book fair before?
for students and
JW: I’ve been to the London Book Fair once before and implementers of
modern central
loved the experience. It was great to see so many chums
banking.”
from the book world there and find out about all the
exciting new work soon to be published. —Mohamed El-Erian,
Chief Economic
NC: What are you hoping to find? Advisor of Alliance
and former CEO of
JW: I wanted to feel part of the big book industry — and PIMCO
it worked.
$30. 2018. Paperback
NC: Some authors can be dismayed by fairs, because of ISBN 978-1-48432-594-0.
the contrast between the solitary business of writing and
the huge industry that sustains it. Will this disconcert “A fascinating
you? assessment
JW: I’m quite a sociable person; I think the solitary of the next
business of writing is rather over-rated! frontier—digital
everything, applied
NC: You have been Children’s Laureate, which is such a to government
demanding role that one might expect it to put people off finances.”
book promotion for life. How do you deal with the many —Simon Johnson,
demands on your time? Professor, MIT
JW: I liked my two years as Children’s Laureate and I Sloan School of
don’t mind a bit being asked to do anything to promote Management
the book industry. I’m trying to cut back a little, but I still $25. 2017. Paperback
find myself agreeing to do all kinds of things. ISBN 978-1-48431-522-4

NC: What do you think enables you, after more than

100 books, to keep your contemporary stories fresh and
appealing?
JW: I try desperately hard to keep my stories fresh and
appealing! I chat to children and young people when I do
Bookstore.imf.org/PW418c
signing sessions and try to keep up to date. However, it’s a
delight to write historical books some of the time — I
don’t have to worry about girls in the 1880s using the
current social media.

NC: Are you optimistic about children’s reading?

JW: I’m very optimistic about children’s reading. There’s
such a wide variety of children’s books available now, INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND
something to suit every kind of child, from short funny
books to long complex tomes. ■

7
 LONDON SHOW DAILY
Time for audio to go OTT
Nicholas Jones suggests that new technologies may need new business models
In the late 1980s I was working for a technical
publisher producing directories and
bibliographies. When CD-ROMs came along,
we rightly saw them as a great opportunity to
digitise our data, although it was not a cheap
undertaking: a CD burning device cost more
than £3,000 (£7,100 now), and each blank disc
was £10. Because the value of the data was such
that our customers would pay a price that was
economically sensible to us as creators, the
result was a win for both parties. Some general
publishers thought that this was a technological Nicholas Jones
bandwagon they should jump on, but failed to
see that what worked for business customers would not
translate into the home, where people wanted something less
structured, more informal, and more user-friendly and casually
browsable. They followed their existing business model for
books, failing to see that this different technology required a
different business model. They lost a lot of money.
Then came ebooks. User-friendliness, or indeed accuracy, were
not givens. I have titles that have endnotes that you cannot return
from, and as recently as last year I purchased an ebook of a Booker
prizewinner with several literals on every screenful; it has clearly
been scanned and not subjected to any human rigour. Arnaud
Nourry, CEO of Hachette, recently remarked: “The ebook is a
stupid product.” This headline-grabber is somewhat misleading:
the full interview1 is a nuanced confirmation of my point, that
different business models are required for different technologies.
Interactive “journeys”
When the iPad was invented, companies spent huge sums of
money creating (presumably forgetting the analogy with
CD-ROMs) interactive “journeys” with structures that, whilst
possibly clear in the minds of the programmers, were not at all
apparent to the end user. Once the novelty had worn off, users
often found it more appealing to get information from printed
books or the internet, although some few publishers like Nosy
Crow have made a success of stand-alone apps by doing things
that books cannot do and bringing real innovation to publishing.
Kodak invented the first practical digital camera in 1975, but its
board failed to foresee that the millions of dollars of revenue from
film would not continue forever. In 1990 — yes, 15 years later —
they were amongst the first to produce relatively cheap digital
cameras that effortlessly transferred the results to computer,
correctly identifying a market where people wanted to attach
pictures to then burgeoning emails. What they failed to anticipate
was the speed with which digital cameras in that low-end market
would become low-margin commodities. It was too late for them.
In the audiobook world, Amazon, through its Audible
subsidiary, is by far the major distributor of audio downloads
to the UK market. It is increasingly becoming a producer as
well as retailer, and in so doing is making a significant amount
8
THURSDAY 12 APRIL 2018
of content exclusive. Agents are sometimes
tempted by large advances to split audio from
other book rights, but whilst this might seem
financially attractive in the short term, the
long-term consequence will be that significant
titles will be available from only one outlet —
the equivalent of a potential bestseller being
available in WHSmith but not Waterstones.
Competitive market
There is consensus amongst the audiobook
arms of publishers that competition would be
welcome in the market; the audio group of the
Publishers Association was recently quoted saying that the UK
needs “a diverse and robust market for audio, with as many
companies producing and selling audiobooks as possible”. Yet
Bonnier’s BookBeat service, one of the few serious potential
competitors to Audible, has announced a pullback of its plans
in the UK, since it is unable to obtain enough content to justify
promotional expenditure on its new service.2 The problem is
that it is a subscription service which provides unlimited
streaming. Most UK publishers seem unwilling to embrace this
business model, thinking that it will damage the revenue
stream, although I have seen figures that show that given the
way listeners consume audio, at about 18 hours per month, the
earning from a revenue share scheme can actually be very
similar to the revenue from outright sale of titles.
Consumers nowadays expect to be able to sample and taste
content, and leap around from one title to another; this
expectation will only grow as the millennial generation matures
into the majority of book or audiobook buyers. Typical use of
Netflix or Amazon Prime (or Hulu in the US) is either grazing
or binge watching, both of which are models for which the
consumer expects to pay a subscription, not a per-item amount.
The television industry refers to services like these as OTT
services: over-the-top. They mean that a streaming content provider
is selling programmes directly to the consumer over the internet,
bypassing cable services or broadcasters that have traditionally
acted as a controller or distributor of such content. In the UK
audiobook market, Audible is moving towards being in the
position of a broadcaster, controlling the material which is available
to its subscribers. Its domination is being reinforced by its suppliers’
unwillingness to see that alternative business models are necessary
to encourage competition. Audiobooks need to be streamed.
That is what consumers expect. It’s time audio went OTT. ■
1
https://scroll.in/article/868871
2
https://www.thebookseller.com/news/bookbeat-pauses-broader-marketing-it-
struggles-convince-publishers-offer-content-751981 (may be behind paywall)
Nicholas Jones founded Strathmore Publishing, an audio and printed
book production house, in 1995 and has since produced more than 1,000
titles. He has watched with fascination as the audiobook market moves
from niche to mainstream.
 THURSDAY 12 APRIL 2018

RedDoor at LBF
Nicholas Clee caught up with Clare Christian, whose
RedDoor offers authors an alternative, collaborative, route
to the book market, in the run-up to the Fair. Content services and
NC: RedDoor has a larger presence at LBF this year. What
lies behind this decision?
technology solutions
CC: 2018 is an important year for us. We’ve taken time to
analyse what we felt we were doing well and what not so well,
and have set digital marketing and foreign rights as our
priorities. In January Julia Pidduck and Flora McMichael
joined us, bringing huge experience in these areas respectively. HTML5
LBF is a key fair for us, and we wanted to reflect our ambitious
XML
plans for 2018 with a larger stand.
NC: Explain how RedDoor works, and what is unique
about its model.
CC: RedDoor evolved out of my frustration at the necessarily
risk-averse nature of our industry. It’s no secret that the book EPUB
market is tough, and, given the huge investments made by
traditional publishers across lists of books that may or may
not sell, it should also be no surprise that being risk-averse is a
survival strategy. But this means that many great books by
talented authors are not quite making it onto traditional NIMAS
publishers’ lists. It’s always been the case that some great PDF
AI & NLP
books don’t quite make it, but never more so than now.
I wanted to create a middle way for authors who would
probably have been picked up not so long ago and to publish
them as a traditional house would, while acknowledging the
WCAG
risks inherent in breaking out new authors. There is a lot of
resistance in the industry to authors paying to publish their
work, but I feel this is a hasty, broad-brush response based on
an unrealistic assessment of where the industry stands today.
By asking authors to back their own book we reduce our
risk, but it’s vitally important that we make sound
commercial decisions when commissioning. Of course we
don’t always get it right, but by being transparent and
realistic with our authors from the very beginning we feel
Cenveo Publisher Suite just got Smarter.
that we are giving ourselves the best possible start.
NC: What are your highlights for 2018?
CC: We have an incredibly strong and commercial
programme for 2018 and it’s hard to single individual books
Smart Suite v2.0
out. However Tubing and The Man on the Middle Floor are
incredibly powerful debuts and have been selected for major
high street promotions; we’re receiving TV and film interest
for our dystopian sport satire, IVON; and a personal
highlight for me is that four of our existing authors have
come back to us for their next books. When I started Learn more
Stand 3E08
RedDoor I imagined it would be a professional and credible
platform to break out new authors in order for them to
move up into the traditional industry. While this has
happened in some cases, we are finding more and more that
our authors enjoy the supportive and collaborative approach
we offer and ask us to consider their next books. For me this
is a wonderful development in the RedDoor model and
hopefully evidence that we are doing something right. ■

No rt h A m e ri c a / E uro p e / A s i a / w w w . c e n ve o p ublisher ser v ices.co m

 LONDON SHOW DAILY
Keeping us all on our toes — getting our authors
The thing I love about book fairs is that I am
obliged to talk about my books and authors
for a week to everyone I see, all the time,
writes Lucy Luck. I may lose my voice and at
points my ability to construct a sentence, but
the reason I still find this job fascinating after
so many years is that there are always new
books and new stories about books, and
there’s the possibility of a new favourite book
just around the corner. In the real world I find
small talk difficult and can’t remember the
names of my nephews or which of my friends’ Lucy Luck
partners is called David, but I can talk about
books and the stories surrounding books until the early
hours and beyond. I have never — yet — got bored.
I love publishing because it doesn’t play to formulae and
something always happens that no-one could predict. It
keeps us all on our toes. I can’t think of a time when there
haven’t been challenges in publishing or when the industry
hasn’t adapted to meet them, but at this moment my
particular worry is that the market is being led by the success
of a smaller number of titles, and that we are looking at a
polarised publishing climate that makes risk-taking more
Accelerating Global
Access to Knowledge
with Digital Transformation Solutions
Visit us at the London Book Fair
Booth #7C16
copyright.com/London
#CCCLondon
THURSDAY 12 APRIL 2018
difficult than it should be, particularly for
literary fiction. There is a feeling of feast or
famine, both on submission and publication,
but is this a problem?
For a book to work commercially it needs
support from booksellers, prize judges,
critical commentators and word of mouth, all
hopefully leading to bestseller lists. Success in
these areas also leads to discoverability in
international markets, a key contribution to
an author’s ability to keep writing. I believe
it is essential to the health of publishing that
as many voices are discovered and
celebrated as possible, and that new discoveries are made
every year (not just debut authors, but seasoned authors
being discovered for a new work). The importance of
diverse voices and experiences has been well argued by
others and it’s good to see efforts being made in these areas.
But are enough voices being given the opportunity to break
through? Are independent publishers able to take up the
slack as corporate publishing becomes more risk-averse?
In the UK we are particularly dependent on two
discoverability mechanics: prize lists and retail promotions.
FEATURED SESSIONS
Collaboration & Community:
The Transition to Open Access
Tuesday 10 April
11:30 –12:30
Stand 7A11, Hall 7
Small Steps, Giant Leaps:
The Digital Transformation
Experience
Wednesday 11 April
13:00 –14:00
Stand 7A11, Hall 7
Aspirations and
Anxieties: How Authors
See Copyright Today
Thursday 12 April
13:00 –14:00
Stand 7A11, Hall 7
 THURSDAY 12 APRIL 2018
discovered
We are lucky to have a number of new prizes specifically set
up to find new voices, and they are doing it brilliantly, but
there are only a few prizes that on their own make a marked
difference to sales. In the literary sphere the recent changes
to the Man Booker Prize have affected the number of
undiscovered voices that can find a new audience, both at
home and internationally, due to the inclusion of American
authors. I’m a fan of many of the US authors honoured on
the recent shortlists, but for an American author to be
eligible they have to have a UK or Irish publisher, and that
generally means they will already have an audience and have
been recognised on other prize lists. It means UK publishers
have to look at other ways to break through an author who
doesn’t already have an international profile.
Prizes are important in themselves and also as a way to
encourage retailers to support an author. With fewer prize
slots available for undiscovered writers we are more reliant
than we have been before on a book being chosen for a
promotion or booksellers deciding to hand-sell a title. I was
told recently by a bookseller — when I asked why the small
chain bookshop we were in didn’t appear to have any
copies of a recently published hardback — that they had a
“reactive” buying policy and no-one had bought the one
Visit Stand 6C99
to learn about opportunities
for translation rights
Magination Press publishes books that promote healthy social
and emotional development in children and teens. Written
by experts, our titles are grounded in psychological science
and cover a broad range of topics, from bullying and self-
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LONDON SHOW DAILY
copy they had so they weren’t ordering more. I know this is
not representative of booksellers in general, for whose
passionate support of many titles in blogs, vlogs, tweets
and in person I am so grateful, but it worried me that it
might be closer to the policy of the head office buying
teams, where orders are predicated on previous sales
success and the numbers are cautious for any title or author
that has not already been discovered or included in a
promotion. (The paperback of a recent literary title had an
order of only 300 from a major chain despite impressive
coverage on hardback publication, and I was told this was
disappointing, but not unusual). How can a reader discover
a book and author if they can’t find it in a shop or if it’s out
of stock online? We need our retailers to be profitable just
as we need our publishers to make money, but ideally not
from the same pool of 100 titles.
All this aside I am looking forward to walking the halls
at Olympia and sharing news of brilliant writers and
projects with my publishing colleagues and friends, and
celebrating the great new voices that have been recognised
over the last year.  ■
Lucy Luck is an agent with C+W Agency and a committee member of the
Association of Authors’ Agents.
11
 LONDON SHOW DAILY
Paulo Coelho: still making magic
The internationally revered author prepares to launch his new book, Hippie, as his
bestselling book, The Alchemist, turns 30. Carlo Carrenho reports
In the spring of 1988, a
meeting at the Argumento
bookstore in the trendy
Leblon neighbourhood of
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,
would help spark the global
success of the best-known
Brazilian writer of our
times, writes Carlo
Carrenho. It was there,
among the shelves of
Argumento, that Paulo Paulo Coelho in 1970
Coelho had a fortuitous
encounter with publisher Paulo Rocco.
“Coelho approached me and said he had two books
published by a small house that had no interest in
working with him anymore,” recalls Rocco. “We
followed up with a meeting, and I had to face the deal’s
demands: I had to buy the remaining stock, I had to buy
Four questions with Paulo Coelho
Carlo Carennho chatted, in the run up to the Fair, with the author about his new book, and the state of
the book business today
CC: Your new book, Hippie, is a novel written in the third
person, but also very autobiographical. Tell us a little bit about
the creative process of this book?
PC: My idea was to recreate a time that I lived intensely, and
the values that we shared back then — solidarity above all.
Writing Hippie in the third person allowed me to give voice to
other characters who were on the Magic Bus in 1970, going
from Amsterdam to Kathmandu. Back in that September of
1970, women were free, and empowered; money was a
consequence; respect for nature was basic, not a goal. And we
had better music. Today, we see a political correctness that is
more oppressive than liberating.
CC: In a talk at the 2014 Frankfurt Book Fair, you challenged
publishers on ebook prices, telling them not to be “greedy”.
Now almost four years later, the ebook market, for the major
publishers, at least, has stagnated. Do you still believe ebook
prices are too high?
PC: Very much so. Not long ago, HarperCollins US did a
promotion, a Kindle Daily Deal, where my books were priced
at $1.99. The results were extraordinary, an increase close to
900% in sales. And the halo effect lasted for at least a week.
That being said, part of the stagnation in ebooks is a reflection
of the market as a whole. If a publisher compares sales 10 years
12
THURSDAY 12 APRIL 2018
the films, and I had to
launch the first book
before Christmas.”
Deciding more from his
gut than anything else,
Rocco agreed, and added
photo: NielsAkermann
The Pilgrimage and The
Alchemist to Editora
Rocco’s catalogue.
This May marks 30 years
since Eco, an obscure
Paulo Coelho Brazilian publishing house,
first published The
Alchemist. The small publisher would give up the future
mega-selling author just six months later. And in the
three decades since it was first published, the book has
gone on to sell tens of millions of copies worldwide in
more than 80 languages, including more than 20 million
copies sold in English alone.
ago with sales today, they would feel totally discouraged.
Therefore, it is better not to visit the past.
CC: At that same talk in Frankfurt, you said that bookstores
were temples. And publishers over the last few years have been
talking about a print revival — while ebooks have declined,
print sales have inched back up. Do you think bookstores are
safe for a while?
PC: It is my understanding that [the rise in print sales] is more
a public relations movement than a revival. The booksellers, the
true heroes of the book industry, are still not as supported as
they need to be.
CC: Social media is having a huge impact on the book
business, everything from promoting books to the nature of
storytelling itself. What is your take on social media?
PC: Social media is a great tool to promote, but it is bad to sell. I
don’t know what will be the next big thing, but I am sure that it
will not be Facebook. Maybe audiobooks, since they are showing
a significant growth. We appear to be going back to the way the
ancient Greeks used to share their ideas — aphorisms. Short
sentences with clear and limpid stories, with no more long
descriptions of anything. As for books, they were, they are, and
will always be a movie that takes part in the mind of the reader.
 THURSDAY 12 APRIL 2018
Now 30 years after the The Alchemist,
Coelho is back with a new work: Hippie
will be launched in Brazil by Companhia
das Letras in May (and by Knopf in the US
this autumn, and worldwide through the
second half of 2018). The autobiographical
novel tells the story of a bus journey that
Coelho took from Amsterdam to Istanbul
in 1970.
“Hippie is Paulo Coelho’s most
autobiographical work, which makes it very
special,” says Companhia das Letras’ editor
Matinas Suzuki. “In the book, the author
transits between moments of love and
discovery, and moments of despair and high
tension, which become more powerful as the
reader places Coelho himself in the story.”
How did Coelho go from an obscure writer published
by a small Brazilian publisher, to one of the world’s
bestselling, and most beloved authors? Marcos Pereira,
publisher of Sextante, which holds the Portuguese rights
for The Alchemist in Brazil, credits Coelho’s
international success to a few factors.
LONDON SHOW DAILY
“The book was embraced in France by
Anne Carrière, daughter of publisher
Robert Laffont, who launched The
Alchemist just after starting her own
house,” he says. “Then there was the work
of Monica Antunes, Coelho’s exclusive
agent, who convinced some of the most
important publishers in the world to
publish the book.”
And then there is the author himself,
Pereira says. “During the six years we
were Coelho’s publishing house in
Brazil, I saw personally the effort
Coelho puts into the promotion of his
books, work that is reflected in the
work of the whole company.”
Paulo Rocco agrees with Pereira. “Paulo Coelho was
always present during the publication process, always
participating in all the phases,” he says. “His
participation was key and we exchanged opinions all the
time. It was a successful partnership.” ■
Carlo Carrenho is the founder and CEO of PublishNews.
13
 LONDON SHOW DAILY
The efficiency paradox
The optimism that greeted the dawn of the
digital era was not lost on journalist and
historian Edward Tenner, writes Christopher
Kenneally. A distinguished scholar of the
Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center for the Study of
Invention and Innovation, and a visiting scholar
in the Rutgers University Department of History,
he recognised early in the 1990s that access to
information online and the time saving
advantages of word processing over laborious
typing were enabling him to research and write
more easily than ever. Edward Tenner
Yet a decade ago, Tenner began to rethink his
digital enthusiasm. Since 2008, as the smartphone and the Great
Recession both took hold around the globe, Tenner started to
consider the cost to our culture, and to our personal freedom,
from the relentless drive for efficiency. In his latest book, The
Efficiency Paradox (out this month in the US from Alfred Knopf,
and which earned a starred review from Publishers Weekly), he
documents how the futurist’s dream of a friction-free world has
dimmed considerably.
“The modern idea of efficiency evolved since the early 19th
century with the Industrial Revolution. The great contribution of
industrialisation was a continuous process. Paper mills, instead
of having a single sheet at a time, made possible newspapers and
books and mass literacy. Steel mills, glass works and so many
other factories turned out things in continuous streams,” Tenner
told me in an interview for Copyright Clearance Center’s
“Beyond the Book” podcast series.
“More recently, especially since the late 20th century, we’ve
had another kind of efficiency,” he noted. “It’s
what Bill Gates described as friction-free. These
are the platforms [and] online services that, in
principle, reduce the cost of doing everything
and make possible, again in principle, an
extremely efficient way of life.” Handheld
devices, mushrooming amounts of computing
power, and algorithms able to digest data like
digital whales have all brought improvements
in commerce and communication, Tenner
concedes. However, he raises troubling concerns about the way
those advancements are increasingly overshadowed by anxiety
over security and privacy, as well as a decline in civil society.
A self-described skeptic, though hardly an alarmist, Tenner
first detailed the so-called “revenge effects” of technological
advancements in Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the
Revenge of Unintended Consequences (Knopf, 1997). His TED
Talk on unintended consequences had nearly 800,000 views.
And even in the Digital Age, Tenner maintains, the rule of
unintended consequences has yet to be broken.
“One of my favourite examples comes from that same TED
meeting at which I spoke,” he recalled. “Another speaker, from
Uber, was talking about a future Utopia in which there would be
fewer cars and in which people could get from place to place more
14
THURSDAY 12 APRIL 2018
easily in a customised way, and in which pollution
would be eliminated. But according to a number
of studies, the opposite has been happening,
Tenner said. “People are using ride-sharing
services to take more and more rides than ever
before. In fact, they’re having more journeys than
they did, and there is more pollution, there’s more
congestion, and there’s also a problem for public
transportation systems. So environmentally, it’s
turning out to be a minus.”
At the heart of the dilemma, he says is data —
or, more precisely, an almost religious reliance on
data as the cure for every ill. Tenner identifies the
dangers of putting too much confidence in the power of bits and
bytes. “If people are too dependent on the efficient systems that
they’re using, they’re not going to be able to respond efficiently
when something goes wrong and they need to rely on what really
should be reflexes,” he explained. “We still don’t have fully
automated aircraft because people, reasonably, believe that pilots
should be able to — in an emergency, if the systems fail —
execute the manoeuvers that they’ve been trained to do.”
Of course, as the publishing industry knows well, algorithms
underlie many more activities than those we immediately
associate with purely technical functions, including everything
from online advertising, to book recommendations and
streaming music platforms. For example, text mining within
résumés is often harnessed to identify, among hundreds of
candidates, who may be most successful in a job.
Reality changes
“You can use big data to show who are the best salespeople, or,
in publishing, to say who are the best acquisition editors. As a
result, and based on your recent experience, you can have a team
that is very, very effective at what they do,” Tenner observed.
“However, reality is always changing. The person who is really
effective in a given environment may be less effective as the
environment changes. So, it’s much better to have a staff of
people with diverse backgrounds, with diverse ways of thinking,”
he continued. “Even though in the short run, that might be a little
less efficient, in the long run, it’s going to be protection against a
disaster that comes when everybody on your staff is unprepared
for a new environment.”
As an antidote to a toxic monoculture dependent on data,
Tenner argues for a new approach to building algorithms that
allows greater information diversity and leaves room for just plain
luck. He cites recent research appearing to show that the more
time given an online search, the higher results. “Of course, people
really want efficient search in the sense that everything should be
available in a fraction of a second,” Tenner said. “But even though
in one sense that’s more efficient, it’s also less efficient or effective in
finding the best results that you’re looking for.” ■
Christopher Kenneally is director, Relationship Marketing, for Copyright
Clearance Center and host of CCC’s podcast series “Beyond the Book”.
He may be reached at chrisk@copyright.com.
 THURSDAY 12 APRIL 2018
Bilge Rat - Pirate Adventurer
PW’s Star Watch Award Winning Young Adult Series
by Kevin Charles Smith
This year marks the fourth year of Publishers Weekly’s Star
Watch programme, in association with the Frankfurter
Buchmesse, which recognises up-and-coming members of
the US publishing community and provides one chosen
honoree with an all-expense paid trip to the Frankfurt Book One Book Two
Book Fair, for networking and career-building Remarkable Rascal Black Tarantula
opportunities on a global level, writes Erin Cox.
Past winners have included Helen Yentus, art director
Riverhead Books; Andrew (Harwell) Eliopulos, executive
editor, HarperTeen; and, last year’s winner, Gabriella Page-
Fort, editorial director at AmazonCrossing.
“The privilege of working in publishing humbles me,
and I take the responsibility that comes with my role as
editorial director at AmazonCrossing very seriously,”
Page-Fort said of her win. “May the diversity of the
literature we read be the bedrock, fostering compassion
and respect across borders as we race toward an ever-
more-connected future.”
Meanwhile, Publishers Weekly officials confirm that this
year the Star Watch programme will expand to include
nominations from Canada. The expansion recognises the
close relationship between the two nations, and the
signficant crossover in the book business. In 2020, Canada
will be the guest of honour country at the Frankfurter Book Three- Demon Pirate
Buchmesse. “There is already quite a lot of synergy
between the US and Canada,” explains Jim Milliot,
editorial director of Publishers Weekly, “and we hope this
will help strengthen that relationship even further.”
Those interested in being considered for the Star Watch
programme may nominate themselves, their colleagues, or
peers who are working hard to advance publishing in
North America. The 40 stars chosen will be featured in an
editorial feature in the 3rd September issue of Publishers
Weekly and celebrated at events in New York in September
and during the Frankfurt Book Fair in October. ■

Releasing September 19, 2018

See Us at London Book Fair

#23V - International Rights Pavilion
Mark B Miller, Management
markbmiller@aol.com
The Frankfurter Buchmesse Young Talent honorees in 2017 +1-215-399-6064
 NEW YORK
Join thousands of professionals from around the globe
to do important business in the heart of New York.

May 30 -June 1, 2018 Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 W. 18th Street, New York City

Who you’ll meet:

• Literary agents • Literary managers
• Scouts • Rights owners
• Foreign rights associates • Publishers
• Film producers • IP Professionals

What you’ll find:

• Bustling exhibit floor • Rights-focused panels
• Content professionals • Talking Pictures cultural program
• Agents’ rights center • Global Kids Connect panel
• Global Rights Showcase • Networking Events
RIGHTS FAIR
The International Adult & Children’s Content & Licensing Marketplace

VISIT US DURING
LONDON BOOK FAIR
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Learn more at www.NewYorkRightsFair.com

Presented by
 LONDON SHOW DAILY
Embracing change: Imagine That
Change in a business is inevitable, writes David
Henderson. Sooner or later, every business
identifies that it needs to adapt. Maybe the market
changes, the strengths and culture of the business
change, the competition changes, or perhaps the
industry landscape changes through technological
advancements. In all cases, businesses identify that
something is no longer the way it was, and change
is necessary. And this is also possibly the most
exciting aspect of running a business! As we
celebrate 20 years of trading, it is fair to say that
we have seen our share of ups and downs, and David Henderson
adapted accordingly on our journey.
Although historically being known as a “books plus” packager,
our business, Top That, has evolved to become a leading
independent children’s publisher, specialising in activity, novelty
and picture books, and selling more than 11 million books a year.
Over 20 years, our list and product mix has evolved
significantly, as has our vision of success and our strategic
targets. Yet our branding had remained constant. In our
anniversary year, it seemed fitting to crystalise our progression
and undertake the ultimate change and evolution of the
business, by rebranding, and launching our new strategy.
Come Visit Us!
Stand 2C30
The Original Version, Restored and Revised™
Worldwide bestseller. The copyright-protected
edition that makes all others obsolete.
Nigel J. Yorwerth • nigel@publishingcoaches.com
Stand 2C30 (upstairs) next to SCB Distributors
© The Mindpower Press
18
THURSDAY 12 APRIL 2018
We had listened to our customers’ honest
feedback, powerful ideas from our team and
observed activities of our industry peers. Our
vision for what the company had become was
out of sync with what we were known for, and
it was clear that what we offered as a business
was no longer always accurately conveyed in
our brand. The challenge was on! Staff
involvement in an engagement survey and the
formation of a team of volunteers to work on
defining and articulating the values of the
company helped us to erode resistances to
change through encouragement and support.
As we reset our growth ambitions, it was apparent we
needed to clearly differentiate between our well-established
books plus ranges, and our highly acclaimed novelty and
activity lines. Additionally, we wanted to provide a broader
range of books for new emerging and confident young
readers. The biggest challenge to us all was to agree and then
maintain focus on the core elements we wanted to change,
whilst simultaneously continuing to build on our strengths.
Supporting the company’s ethos of inspiring children to read,
learn, play and create, we have reshaped our business leading to
the creation of three distinct imprints. The Imagine That imprint,
produces wonderful tactile novelty books, and stunning
educational activity books, including some from one of the
company’s best-known characters — the early learning through
art series Arty Mouse. The founding Top That imprint is now
dedicated to the company’s world-leading books plus portfolio.
Our new fiction imprint, Willow Tree publishes picture story
books and chapter fiction from loved and trusted authors for
children and parents to share together. The distinct focus, goals
and strategies of each imprint, have already started to give our
customers the clarity they sought from our expansive list.
As an independent company we were open and accepted the
need to deconstruct, reorganise, and reinvent our business and
our culture. Difficult decisions had to be made, and challenging
conversations were faced head on. One of the principal lessons
we have learned in this process, is that the change strategies we
introduced have the greatest chance of success when they are
driven by the collective heart of the company.
This year promises to be another exciting chapter for us. We
are on course for our third successive year of double-digit
growth, and the challenges that lie ahead will be embraced by
a fully engaged and inspirational team.
Regarding the rebrand — only time will tell those parts we
got right, and those parts we may need to change in the future.
But we are unafraid of making mistakes and the team came
through with flying colours! We continue to learn as fast as we
can, and as we grow, we look forward to another 20 years of
independent publishing. Imagine That! ■
David Henderson is managing director of Imagine That Publishing
(formerly Top That Publishing). The company sells more than 11 million
books and kits per year in more than 70 countries around the world.
 THURSDAY 12 APRIL 2018 LONDON SHOW DAILY

Book and journal exports are essential

John Kampfner outlines the measures that must be taken if Brexit is not to
knock Britain off the top of the world’s bestseller list
The UK is the world’s biggest bestseller. An Australia and New Zealand at 125,000 copies,
opening line I hope I never have to prefix with Europe at 33,000 copies, India at 30,000 copies,
the phrase “once upon a time”. With a narrow South Africa at 12,500 copies, and the rest of the
margin, our 16% share of the world’s physical world at 8,000 copies.
book market just beats the US at 15%, and The message is clear: as emerging markets
Germany comes third with 10%. But Brexit outside of the EU and US grow, so do their
now threatens this narrow lead with potentially educated, literate middle classes, who have the
more regulation, tariffs and bureaucracy.  money and time to consume more content.
Our international trading success is a However, this is not to disregard the creative
remarkable achievement, not only because of industries’ concerns about the post-Brexit world.
our English-speaking heritage, but the hard The 35% of our exports that go to the EU cannot
work and quality of our creative writers and John Kampfner be immediately replaced by emerging markets.
publishers, as well as successfully pursuing new Our members are, by their very nature, creative
markets across the world.  problem solvers, optimists and achievers. We don’t want to lose
Exports are essential for the UK’s publishing industry, with the our narrow global lead in book exports, we want to increase it.
estimated £2.6bn revenues from book and journal exports in 2016 Hence our recommendations in the Brexit negotiations, and calls
accounting for 54% of the industry’s total revenues. The 35% of for export training initiatives, support for innovation and practical
these exports that go to the EU are now at risk with Brexit.  guidance on identifying new market opportunities. ■
And it’s not just about money. Creative industries like publishing John Kampfner is chief executive of the Creative Industries Federation.
give the UK invaluable soft power — our “global calling card” —
which should be capitalised on, and not taken for granted. 
Our members highlight three main risks to the publishing www.tnq.co.in

industry with Brexit: the free movement of talent, frictionless

THE
trade and the protection of intellectual property. 
As Jonny Geller, joint CEO at Curtis Brown, said: “[Our greatest
concern is that] rights sales and IP moves to Europe and traffic that
comes through London will relocate. At present UK publishers
control EU countries for export and without membership of the
EU, cheaper US versions of the books we sell will enter the market.
Authors will suffer as their royalties will decrease sharply and UK COST OF
publishers will lose their hold over this market on our doorstep.” 
What is clear is that “no deal” and reverting to World Trade PAGE MAKING
Organisation (WTO) rules would be catastrophic for the creative
industries. Exports, innovation, and intellectual property
JUST SHRANK
protection and enforcement would all be dangerously disrupted. 
So, what are the steps that need to be taken to protect this
thriving industry and the hundreds of thousands of people it
employs? In the Brexit negotiations, the government must agree
a reciprocal arrangement to ensure zero-tariff circulation of
print publications in the EU. Robust international intellectual
property protection is also essential to ensure that brilliant
British ideas are protected. As our publishing members have
told us, this should be a red line in all free-trade agreements.
 But we’re not just arguing for the status quo. The rise of
both digital and emerging economies is opening up new
markets. One of Penguin Random House’s bestsellers of 2017,
Page Central
www.pagecentralhub.com
Into the Water by Paula Hawkins, shipped more than 200,000
copies globally. Major marketing and publicity campaigns were
executed worldwide to make the book one of the top bestsellers DEMO AT: Booth 7D10, Hall 7, London Book Fair, April 10 to 12, 2018
of the year, with a truly global reach. To date, orders stand at: CONTACT: yakov@tnqtech.com, sunil@tnqtech.com

19
 LONDON SHOW DAILY THURSDAY 12 APRIL 2018

Books: The universal currency

At Book Aid International we have been working for more than
60 years towards a world where everyone has access to books that
will enrich and improve their lives, writes Emma Taylor.
Increasingly, our focus is on the people and the communities where
the investment of brand new books has the greatest potential to
create change.

Reaching countries within countries

With an unprecedented 65.6 million people around the world
forced from their homes, it is no longer enough to just focus on a
country or region that needs the books that we can provide.
In Kenya, for example, Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps are
home to more than 420,000 refugees who cannot travel without
permits or even leave the camps at night. In effect, these refugees
live in a different country entirely — one which is not served by the
national library or government schools. It is these “countries
within countries” that we aim to reach by working with the
NGOs that work in the camps: the Windle Trust and World
Lutheran Federation.
Sending books to either camp requires a journey which can be
dangerous and take many weeks. Dadaab is on the border with
Somalia, a contentious area where Islamic extremist groups are
active, and reaching Kakuma by road requires passing through
A daily serving of news and views
delivered to your mobile device or desktop
Donated books being used in Lebanon
unsafe regions in Kenya’s Northern provinces. Despite the
challenges, we continue to work with our partners to increase the
number of books reaching these camps because they are a lifeline
for the people who live there.
In Kakuma’s single community library, children can wait for
hours to read and study. The books offer a rare opportunity to
learn, succeed in education and to catch a glimpse of the outside
world. On a recent trip to Kakuma, I met 22-year-old Yvonne who
was born in a refugee camp and has lived in three camps over the
years. I asked her why, given all the challenges she faces, books
have value. “From my childhood I have seen people succeeding
through education — and you get education through books,” she
said. “My dream is to go out of the camp and become someone
who has an identity in a country. I am going to achieve this
through books. I applied for a scholarship and I am praying to get
it, but if I did not have books, I do not think that I would have
learned anything and I would not have been qualified to apply for
a scholarship.”

Books for people affected by conflict

While reaching Kakuma and Dadaab is challenging, they are far
from the most difficult to reach places where the books publishers
donate are being read.
www.bookbrunch.co.uk After months of work last year we were able to deliver 1,899
• Sign up to receive our Daily Newsletter email for FREE books to Jusoor Syria, an NGO supporting Syrian refugee children
• Do take a look at our website – all current articles
are free to view during the London Book Fair week
• BookBrunch is discounted by 25%* for members of
IPG and Society of Authors
• BookBrunch is discounted by 30%* for freelancers
• BookBrunch is discounted by 55%* for members of
Society of Young Publishers
• BookBrunch is FREE for booksellers and students

Contact editor@bookbrunch.co.uk
for more details
* Applies to annual subscriptions
School librarian Maha reading to school children in the West Bank

20
 THURSDAY 12 APRIL 2018 LONDON SHOW DAILY

Even in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, where most

Yvonne reading with refugee girls in Kakuma refugee camp, Kenya
in Lebanon. These books are, of course, helping children continue
interrupted educations — but they are also delivering a few hours
of escape from the trauma refugee children face. One young reader
told us: “I love school and I like it when the teacher takes us to the
library to read. I forget about the war and that I live in a tent. Now
I can learn about the world.”
people speak Arabic and the day-to-day challenges of
making ends meet in the face of instability, roadblocks and
even outright violence can be overwhelming, the demand
for books in English keeps growing.
We have heard school librarian Maha’s sentiments expressed
again and again: “There are not many publishers here and we
cannot have post delivered directly from any other country.
Books in English are really valued. Parents encourage their
children to learn English so that they can get good jobs.
Children love to learn it because it makes them feel connected
to the outside world.”
As we continue to expand our work we are reminded by
Maha, Yvonne and many like them of the need for books and
of their universal power. While the places where books are
most needed changes over time, the fundamental need for the
information that those books provide does not.
That information is a currency which never loses its value.
With the continuing support of the publishers who generously
donate the books we send, we look forward to many more
years of providing books around the world. ■

Emma Taylor is head of communications at BookAid International (Stand

University of Mosul 4A03). She can be contacted at Emma.Taylor@bookaid.org.
And on Monday, 12th March, after a year of working to find a
safe shipping route, more than 7,000 brand new books donated
by UK publishers arrived in Mosul, Iraq. Mosul fell to the
so-called Islamic State (IS) in June 2014 and remained under IS
control for three years. In 2015, IS fighters deliberately destroyed
the library of the University of Mosul, burning thousands of
books in what UNESCO called “one of the most devastating
acts of destruction of library collections in human history”.
The books sent include 3,791 carefully selected books to help
the University of Mosul rebuild its library collection and get
students back to learning. Alongside the books for the university
are 3,452 new children’s books which War Child UK will use in its
work with children who have been affected by the conflict.
Dr Alaa Hamdon from the University of Mosul spoke of what
the arrival of books means to him: “I am looking so forward to
seeing these books reach the library shelves. My hope and my
dream is to see those books being used by students and readers.”

A typical street in Kakuma refugee camp, Kenya

21
 LONDON SHOW DAILY
Baltic mysteries
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, this year’s London Book
Fair Market Focus countries, may not be known for their
mystery and crime fiction. But with more English
translations in the works that, writes Lenny Picker, may be
about to change.
The point of this Baltic mystery spear may be The Music
Teacher by novelist, poet, essayist and literary critic Renata
Serelyte, published in February by Noir Press. The book,
which was shortlisted for the Lithuanian Book of the Year
Award, has already been adapted for film in Lithuania and
editor Stephan Collishaw believes it to be the first
translation of Lithuanian detective fiction into English.
The plot is a variation on a genre trope familiar to mystery
fans: the murder of a teenage girl in a small town, and the
hampering of the investigation by the powers that be.
Serelyte, who says she admires GK Chesterton’s Father
Brown mysteries, takes issue with those who attribute the
lower volume of Lithuanian detective novels to a general
lack of faith in justice left over from the country’s Soviet
heritage. “If there are limits to the reach of the judicial
system in Lithuania now — corruption, power and influence
— nothing prevents the exercise of justice, at least in crime
novels,” she says. “Justice is one of the most important moral
norms, one of the characteristics of human nature.”
Lithuanian mystery fiction
While Serelyte may be among the first Lithuanians to have
her mystery fiction translated to English, she is far from her
country’s only practitioner. Art critic, curator and essayist
Ernestas Parulskis, an expert on Lithuanian mystery
fiction, says that the market is “slowly developing”.
Parulskis says the most prominent Lithuanian mystery
author is Kazys Almenas, a nuclear physicist, who founded
the Detective Writers’ Club in Vilnius in 2005; the club has
become “a catalyst” for the development of the Lithuanian
detective fiction genre.
Almenas’ lead, Donatas Vėbra, is a policeman stationed
in Kaunas, Lithuania’s second-largest city, who has
appeared in four classic detective novels, starting with
1977’s Skatikų sauja (A Handful of Pennies), written while
Almenas was living in America as an active member of the
Renata Serelyte
22
THURSDAY 12 APRIL 2018
Lithuanian diaspora’s
politically liberal
community. His second
novel, Lietingos dienos
(Rainy Days, 1988), in which
Vėbra himself ends up as the
prime suspect, was also
penned while Almenas was
in America. He wrote the
series’ final two instalments,
Vaivos juosta (Vaiva’s Bow
2014) and Trispalvė Iljičiui Indrek Hargla
(A Tricolour for Ilyich,
2015), after he had returned to Lithuania.
The Detective Writers’ Club’s members
include Birutė Mackonytė, whose series
lead, Romualdas Gailiušis, is an attorney
who is forced by circumstances to
become an amateur private detective,
and Valdas Bartas, who published three
novels about an investigative journalist
named Tadas Dirvonis. The Club’s
ranks also feature members of official
law enforcement who based their novels on real-life cases,
such as Lithuanian police commissioner, Zurabas
Džavachišvilis, and Judge Pavel Borkovski, from the
Vilnius Regional Court, whose 2007 Lizdų ardytojas
(Destroyer of Nests) featured a psychopath on the loose
along the main highway between Vilnius and Kaunas.
As in Japan during the Second World War, when Japanese
government censors banned detective novels on the grounds
that such fiction was unpatriotic, decadent and counter-
productive to the war effort, the Soviet occupation of
Lithuania also limited fictional creativity. Ernestas Parulskis
says authors were forced to adapt to “strict ideological
censorship rules” which, among other requirements, meant
avoiding the subject of murder, “a phenomenon that was not
supposed to exist in Soviet society”, as well as “daring
investigations” and “car chases that might violate traffic
rules”. Not surprisingly, he says, the resulting offerings were
“rather boring, for readers and writers alike”.
But while the Soviet occupation slowed the development of
Lithuanian detective fiction, Parulskis says he expects the pace
to pick up, given the huge demand for the genre in Lithuania.
“Indeed, statistical data provided by the Central Vilnius
Library in 2016 show that, of the 20 most popular books in
Lithuania that year, 10 were detective novels,” he says, “by Jo
Nesbo, Michel Bussi, Michael Connelly, Robert Galbraith,
Kate Atkinson, Harlan Coben and Sandra Brown.”
Estonian historical mysteries
Similarly, Estonia has also not produced many genre titles,
Elle-Mari Talivee, of the Estonian Literature Centre, says.
Her country’s “most noteworthy genre author”, Indrek
 THURSDAY 12 APRIL 2018

BUILD YOUR
NORTH AMERICAN
Hargla, actually preceded Serelyte in English translation. BUSINESS AT
Hargla has authored a series of historical mysteries, set in
medieval Tallin, today his country’s capital, which have all
been bestsellers in Estonia.
Hargla’s unusual choice of lead, Melchior Wakenstede,
is the city apothecary, a profession that Hargla told
Publishers Weekly was “more interesting than making
him a judge or other city official” and one that would
give his sleuth “useful knowledge” about poisons,
anatomy and medicine. “Chemist shops at the time were
like pubs or taverns,” he explains, “where gossip and
news was traded.” May 30 - June 1, 2018
Six Apothecary Melchior books have appeared thus far,
and British publisher Peter Owen has translated two into Javits Center | New York City, NY
English: 2016’s Apothecary Melchior and the Mystery of St
Olaf’s Church and Apothecary Melchior and the Ghost of
Rataskaevu Street. All of the books have appeared in
French and Finnish, and some have also been translated

Essential For Anyone

into German, Hungarian and Latvian.
Talivee suspects that the huge popularity in Estonia of
Scandinavian authors such as Nesbo, Henning Maskell,
Jens Lapidus and Stieg Larsson will continue to influence Selling To The North
Estonian crime writing, as it has already with two other
popular Estonian authors, Birk
American Market
Rohelend and Katrin Pauts, whose
books focus on small communities
hiding long-buried secrets.

Latvian crime fiction

growing
Promote Your
Mystery and crime fiction in Imprints & Company
Latvia, too, is also showing signs of
growth. “Latvian crime fiction
tends to focus less on plot, with
authors paying more attention to
the atmosphere and language,” says writer and translator
Vilis Kasims, who has focused on bringing Latvian Attract Influential
literature to English markets. “There’s still a strong
moralistic undercurrent in a lot of the more recent novels, Distributors
which might be a leftover of the Soviet era, where crime
novels otherwise wouldn’t stand a chance of being
published. The alternative was to set the novels in Western
countries, which then showcased the decadence of the Visit us in booth 2C60 or
West, and didn’t run the risk of portraying the Soviet
system as somehow producing criminals.” visit bookexpoamerica.com
Kasims says he considers Bailes (Fear), by the author today to learn more.
using the pseudonym Indriķis Latvietis (Indriķis, the
Latvian), to be the most notable recent Latvian crime
fiction; Bailes features real life local politicians, lawyers
and businessmen as its characters, and was one of the
country’s bestselling titles in 2017.
Kasims also identified the following as being good
candidates for translation into English: Franciska Ermlere,
Dace Judina and Aldis Bukšs.  ■

23
 LONDON SHOW DAILY
Work at Zed, own Zed
Kika Sroka-Miller, of Zed Books, tells Julie Vuong why the indie’s radical model
of collective ownership serves as a blueprint for a brave new world of publishing
In 2015, news that Zed Books had evolved
from a co-operative business model into a
collective somewhat slipped under the radar.
The paucity of attention was surprising, as
Zed was the first UK publishing house to do
away with hierarchy. Then the following year,
after a rebrand and website relaunch, there
was again little fanfare from the publishing
world. The reason, according to Zed, was its
deliberate policy of introducing the changes
quietly until the time was right. Now that’s
about to change. As 2018 hits its stride and Kika Sroka-Miller
the political indie press begins to reap the
rewards from its top-to-bottom restructure, Zed Books is
ready to talk — bang the drum even — about how its
egalitarian approach is paying off.
“Zed as you see it now did not exist before 2016; since
we gained a new visual identity and online platform, we’re
more explicit about our model,” explains Kika Sroka-
Miller, Zed’s brand director. “We didn’t really shout about
it before, and if we did, certain tranches of the publishing
world were just not interested. Now we’re ready to show
off our uniqueness. In 2015, we made bold moves
internally, but it’s only been in the last 18 months that we
could demonstrate how what we did made sense — and
how our lives have been richer for it.”
Sroka-Miller’s assertion of uniqueness is no overstatement.
Here’s Zed at a glance: there are no employees, and all 11
members are directors; it’s a flat structure with no hierarchy;
everyone takes home the same wage (£40,000) and is given
equal say in the business strategy. “Our model is the one
thing people are most interested in, and rightly so. We’re the
world’s biggest publishing collective: we don’t have an MD,
publisher or CEO. We’re financially autonomous and not
owned by another press. The reason we do this is political.
We don’t have any assistants or interns, and we’re quite
fierce that if you work at Zed, you own Zed.”
ZED BOOKS IN NUMBERS
Turnover: (2017) £1,484,908 (2016) £1,247,286
Gross profit: (2017) £995,115 (2016) £798,676
Net profit before tax, loan interest, “dividend” and
depreciation: (2017) £167,890 (2016) £32,538
Salary: £40,000 (24% higher than industry standard)
Gender pay gap: 0%
LBF RIGHTS
Myanmar’s Enemy Within by Francis Wade
Aftershock by John Feffer
Happy Abortions by Erica Miller
China’s Asian Dream by Tom Miller
24
THURSDAY 12 APRIL 2018
Radical from output to identity
Sroka-Miller was editor at the Royal Institute
of Chartered Surveyors before joining Zed
eight years ago. She has been a pivotal figure
in pushing through the indie’s new
incarnation, believing Zed’s radical political
output should be reflected in its own
everyday working practices. To honour fully
its long legacy of publishing activist
literature, such as Assata: An Autobiography
by Assata Shakur and Woman at Point Zero
by Egyptian feminist writer and activist
Nawal El Saadawi, she believed that Zed’s
former co-operative model did not go far enough. “Our
content is political and so are we,” she states. “The New
Internationalist magazine is a co-operative, but so are Peter
Jones and John Lewis; it doesn’t necessarily imply that they
are non-hierarchical operations. At Zed, we all have equal
ownership — we are all publishers. We collectively decide
what books we take on, whom to offer contracts to; we
write the business plan and budget together. It does mean a
different way of working. For instance, our finance and
operations directors attend acquisition meetings, and they
have as much say in the yes or no as anyone else. The result
is that every title is genuinely owned by us all. And that’s a
big difference from the vast majority of publishing.”
Set up in 1976 as a private venture by Roger van
Zwanenberg, now chairman of Pluto Press, Zed became a
co-operative in 1989. “The change meant he signed over
ownership to a certain extent,” Sroka-Miller explains, “but
until 2015 we still had an explicit hierarchy: we had a board
— all elected, but a governing board nonetheless. On paper
our set up sounded radical, and while we also challenged ideas
through our content, we were not really doing so through our
own model.” Adapting an existing business had its challenges.
“It was a very long process,” she explains. “Some people took
a pay cut to create the salary level the whole company was
happy with; it’s not for everyone, and a few left. But since then,
we’ve had three new hires who are very much on board.”
Commercial and personal gains
In an industry known for its established structures and
processes, Zed is quite the one-off. “In the art world,
collectively run galleries are not unknown; in publishing it’s
bizarre!” she smiles. “People don’t like change, and we are
definitely behind other creative industries. Some would accuse
Zed of being a glorified non-commercial entity making books
— that’s why it was crucial that we demonstrated profitability.
This is the challenge, and it’s our main business objective for
the next five years.” Better financial returns have also come
 THURSDAY 12 APRIL 2018
NEW READER EXPERIENCE
WITH PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
DIGITAL EDITION
with greater personal rewards. “The freedom it allows us as
individuals is incredible,” she enthuses. “Our core office hours
are 10 to 4, but we’re extremely flexible, and all of our job
descriptions are objective-based. If these are being met, we
encourage people to work how they want. I have so much
more autonomy — and Zed is doing better now than when
we had less autonomy! I can’t speak for everyone, but this is,
for me, one of the best things about working here. It’s a real,
authentic investment and everyone’s attitude to work changes.
It takes away that rigidity and obsession with process.”
It is clear that Zed’s idealism hasn’t been to the detriment of
commercial pursuit. “Before the rebrand we hovered at £1.2
million annual turnover for decades,” Sroka-Miller says, “and
now we’ve just recorded our best ever quarter. It is exciting
and wonderful — and no, it isn’t down to one bestseller.
Personally I’m really happy about that, because we have relied
on a different kind of growth and success. We’ve seen
substantial and steady growth in all channels of the business
and that’s made us better organised. For instance, we changed
our reps and database, working now with Bibliocloud.”

No utopia
Sroka-Miller points out that, while the rewards are plentiful,
there have been big challenges in becoming a collective. “I
don’t want to present Zed as some kind of utopia,” she says.
“One of the key things we had to consider was HR:
recruitment here is pretty harsh! It’s really important to get this
right — we’re recruiting for a partner essentially, not an
employee. So, it is an in-depth process and everyone is
involved. There are no longer employees and employers in the
traditional sense, so HR is carried out by the collective. A way
we address any concerns, relating to HR or otherwise, is once
a month we have communications training. We bring ourselves
and nothing else. We discuss how we talk to each other, give MAXIMIZED
FOR MOBILE
feedback and say what we want.”
Sroka-Miller is excited about the 2018 list. “In May, we’re
releasing It’s Only Blood by Anna Dahlqvist, which covers
how global communities are shattering taboos around
menstruation, while in October there’s Back to Black by
Kehinde Andrews, who was the first person to set up a black 500,000 MOBILE USERS
studies course in the UK — only last year if you can believe it! rely on PW mobile as a daily source of information.
He sets out to reframe black radicalism to be more inclusive
and intersectional. It’s a method for addressing the inequalities
in the West and beyond.”
Sroka-Miller believes Zed has a role as an industry pioneer.
“We need to shout about what we do more,” she says, “such as Early Access of the
how we have a gender pay gap of zero. It could really instigate
change in the industry. I sometimes get frustrated by the talk of Digital Edition on Saturday
diversity in this and that, especially when nothing actually Available on the PW App or Your Desktop
changes. Maybe it takes a few organisations, Zed being one of
them and Tilted Axis another, to do some butt-kicking! Who
knows, perhaps in 20 years’ time we will have more indie
presses making a mark and saying there’s a different way of
doing things.” ■

25
 LONDON SHOW DAILY
Accessible publishers: celebrating success
The year 2018 is one in which to celebrate
success in the world of accessible publishers,
writes Emma House. RNIB (Royal National
Institute of Blind People) celebrates 150 years
and the Publishers Association’s Accessibility
Action Group (which brings together publishers
and organisations who are committed to
improving the availability of accessible
publications for print impaired people)
celebrates 10 years. It’s never been a better
landscape for those with a print disability, and
indeed there have been vast improvements, Emma House
especially in the last 10 years.
Some of that success can be measured by statistics provided
on RNIB’s services, which in themselves mark a step change in
the provision of accessible materials for both readers and
learners. Since its launch in 2016 the RNIB Bookshare services,
designed for schools and universities to either have direct access
to accessible textbooks and curriculum materials or request an
accessible file, now has sign-up from more than 450 publishers
and imprints, with almost 80,000 titles and images in their
rapidly growing collection. It is used by more than 10,000
learners, and almost 5,000 schools are signed up. The number
of RNIB Library customers (including Braille, giant print, music
as well as Talking Books) is now at 50,572, within which the
RNIB Library Talking Books service has more than 40,000
customers who have access to a catalogue of 28,700 titles. The
stats are starting to tell a good story.
Same title, same price, same day
We must remind ourselves however that this is a journey with an
end goal of “same title, same price, same day” for all readers and
learners, including those with print impairments, and we are a
long way off this goal. Reaching it will only come about through
greater collaboration between publishers, technology providers
and specialised organisations which assist with the provision of
accessible materials. Recent developments here in the UK have
seen the launch of inclusivepublishing.org — a web portal
developed by the DAISY consortium as an “information hub for
creating digital publications for all”. This is a content rich site for
the very supply chain that needs to work together — publishers,
educators, developers and consumers.
DAISY has also launched Ace, its new accessibility checking
tool. It helps content providers to evaluate the accessibility
features of EPUB publications, by checking the files against
WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) guidelines,
W3C accessibility rules (for audio and video content) and
DAISY-recommended best practices — to help make the best
books possible.
Much of our development focus is and rightly should be
focused on student and learner needs. Not only do they have a
moral right to accessible learning materials, they have legal
rights. The supply chain from publisher through to institution
all have a role to play in ensuring learners can access the
26
THURSDAY 12 APRIL 2018
content they need for their curriculum. As we’ve
been learning through the work Jisc (a not-for-
profit that works to provide advanced digital
technology to post-16 education and research
institutions) has been carrying out auditing
textbooks, the platforms through which they
are accessed and the guidance that is available,
the job is not as simple as providing an
accessible file that can then be manipulated.
Both publishers and readers are hostage to
the accessibility of the industry standard
delivery systems. Adobe Digital Editions and
BlueFire Reader pose significant accessibility
barriers for many print impaired readers — barriers worsened
by the lack of up-to-date accessibility guidance. Thus
publishers who have created accessible files and universities
who have purchased them both have to shoulder additional
costs in making good the inadequacies of partially accessible
delivery systems.
Focus on accessibility
From a publisher perspective, not only is a raft of expertise
required to create a properly accessible file (which takes into
consideration the accessible needs of describing illustrations,
graphs, maps and non-text materials), but manpower is
required to answer requests for files. From a platform
perspective, the platform itself needs to be accessible and not
disable or strip out accessibility functionality from files, with
proper guidance given on how to read the file — which reading
apps work better than others. And institutions need trained
staff and librarians to help disabled students negotiate the
partially-accessible mainstream tools and systems.
With the impending implementation of the Marrakesh Treaty
(drafted to facilitate access to published works for persons who
are blind, visually impaired, or otherwise print disabled) in
Europe and in the UK, the publishing community would do
well to ensure they have a focus on accessibility and are
working towards a strategy of fully born-accessible publishing.
We have some great role models in the UK to look to, and
when we think about celebrating success we can look to the
publishers who are winners of the ABC (Accessible Book
Consortium) International Excellence Award in Accessible
Publishing: SAGE, Elsevier, Cambridge University Press and
this year’s winners, Hachette Livre, all of whom have
demonstrated real progress in the journey to a fully accessible
publishing strategy. The 2018 ebook audit (involving Jisc,
publishers, aggregators and university librarians) will bring
transparency to where the accessibility blockages take place.
Many parts of the industry have made huge strides forward.
Now is the time for the remaining elements of the supply chain
to step up to the mark. ■
Emma House is deputy CEO of the Publishers Association. She will be
chairing the seminar Accessible Publishing: Strategies for Success today
(Thursday 12 April) 1.00pm to 2.00pm at the Fair.
 THURSDAY 12 APRIL 2018
Translation Database hosted by PW
Chad Post reports on recent improvements made to the Translation Database
Back in 2008, I created the Translation
Database on the Three Percent website at the
University of Rochester with one goal: to get
a more complete account of how many
works in translation were being published in
the United States, writes Chad Post. And
now, 10 years later, the database has gone
from a series of Excel spreadsheets (which
were updated whenever I had a spare day or
two) to an interactive, web-based database
hosted on Publishers Weekly’s website,
where anyone can search it, add to it, and Chad Post
have constant access to the most up-to-date
information about books in translation.
“We’ve now
Making the Translation Database added the
available in partnership with Publishers
Weekly (PW) is a huge boon for the
ability for
translation community. It’s now much easier database users
for rights holders to figure out which
publishers are most interested in foreign
to add missing
works (and from what regions). The same titles and
goes for translators, who can use it to better
hone their submission processes. Journalists correct
and researchers now can get answers to any inaccurate
number of questions about international
literature, for example: how many books information.”
have been translated from Spanish since
2008? How many of those were from Argentina? And how
many of those were written by women?
For years, institutions including the National
Endowment for the Arts and Bowker, had estimated that
approximately 3% of titles published in the US in a given
year were translated into English, including everything
from cookbooks to academic works, novels and computer
manuals. This was a powerful statistic — one that
emphasised how removed the American publishing scene
was from international voices. But it was also a very
imprecise one. What were these translated books? From
which languages and countries? Who was publishing them?
The Translation Database was the first serious attempt to
try and answer those questions.
A frequently referenced source
Looking back at my initial posts about the Translation
Database, back in January of 2008, it’s clear that I grossly
underestimated the amount of work necessary to maintain
such a database, and had little idea of how important this
data truly is. The project started as a way of creating
preview posts of forthcoming titles (which I still write for
Three Percent) but the database quickly developed into a
frequently referenced source by those interested in
international literature.
LONDON SHOW DAILY
Improving and maintaining
Enter PW, which recognising the value of
the database to so many constituencies,
was eager to help improve and maintain
it. Officially launched on the PW website
last September, users can now search by
author or translator name, publisher, year,
genre (fiction, poetry, children’s and non-
fiction), language, country, and author or
translator gender. And once you’ve run
one of these queries, you can even access
the data in “tab-delimited” format and
copy it into a spreadsheet for further
manipulation. (And when you access this
version of the data, you get all the
information, including pub month, pub
year, price, etc.)
As it is, the database is an incredibly
useful resource — and the only resource of
its kind in the world. But to ensure that it
remains as up-to-date and robust as
possible, we need something more: your
participation. We’ve now added the ability
for database users to add missing titles and
correct inaccurate information.
When adding records to the database,
there are a few things to keep in mind.
First off, we’re only tracking the first-ever instance of a
book in English translation. New translations of books
by Tolstoy or Goethe, for example, are not tracked here.
Also, the data only goes back to 2008 (for the time
being). And, after you add a title, the record has to be
reviewed and approved before it appears in the database,
so don’t be alarmed if your contribution does not show
up immediately.
Filling in the missing data
You may also notice that the listings for children’s books
and non-fiction are relatively thin compared to those for
fiction and poetry. These categories were closely tracked
between 2012-2014 as part of a special project, and we’re
in the process of filling in the missing data now. In the
meantime, we encourage anyone who has translated,
published, sold rights to, or otherwise was involved with a
children’s book or work of non-fiction in translation from
2008 onward to head over to PW and add it to the
database. And while you’re there, play around with the
database and see what you uncover. And if you have any
suggestions of improvements, please feel free to email them
to me at chad.post@rochester.edu. ■
Chad W Post is the Publisher of Open Letter Books at the University of
Rochester. He’s also the Managing Editor of the Three Percent website.
27
 LONDON SHOW DAILY THURSDAY 12 APRIL 2018

Too much English — we’re missing out

At Hay Festival Cartagena de Indias writing talent. The Bogotá 39 was a
in Colombia this January, the South selection of 39 Latin American
African novelist JM Coetzee spoke of writers aged under 40. These were
the troubling dominance of the celebrated at our events around the
English language, writes Cristina world and published in a special
Fuentes La Roche. “I do not like the collection of short stories, translated
way that English is taking over the and distributed internationally.
world,” he said. “I don’t like its The list marked a generation of
universalist pretensions, by which I great writers, from Juan Gabriel
mean its unquestioned belief that the Vásquez and Junot Díaz to Wendy
world is as it appears in the mirror of Guerra and Eduardo Halfon, and
the English language. I don’t like the The new Bogotá 39 group more 39s followed. In 2009, the
arrogance that this situation breeds in its native speakers. Beirut 39 inspired a fresh look at modern Arab literature.
Therefore, I do what little I can to resist the hegemony.” In 2014, the Africa 39 offered a platform to the most
The audience of readers, packed into a 2,000-seater interesting voices from Africa south of the Sahara. Last
auditorium, was rapt, but this wasn’t exactly news to them. year, the Aarhus 39 shone a light on the next generation of
Many listened in English without needing the live Spanish children’s and YA writers across Europe.
translation offered.  Why do we believe this work is important? First, there’s
In Latin America, writers in English, both in the original the empathy aspect, i.e. that literature (and fiction in
and in translation, are widely read. By contrast, fewer particular) offers new perspectives to
Hispanic authors are household names in the UK. Take a inform our global outlook, a window into
quick look at Mexico’s bestseller list and you will see the lives of others. Second, there’s the fact
authors Jojo Moyes, Paula Hawkins, Stephen King, JRR that we are missing out on excellent
Tolkien and George Orwell. You would have to look for a writing by not having access to the full
long time in Waterstones’ charts to find their equivalents. galaxy of literary stars. Translated
In Britain just 2-3% of books published are in literature also offers a two-for-the-price-
translation, compared to 27% in France and 28% in Spain.  of-one benefit of enjoying the work of
But change is afoot, and Hay Festival is at the forefront. both author and translator.
First, the backstory: in 2007, to celebrate Bogotá’s year as A decade since Hay Festival’s first
UNESCO World Book Capital, Hay Festival launched a selection in Bogotá of 39 writers under
global project to celebrate the next generation of the region’s 40, we have returned to these pioneers with a fresh
perspective and even greater ambition. An expert jury
comprised of Darío Jaramillo (Colombia), Leila Guerriero
Bogotá 39 (Argentina) and Carmen Boullosa (Mexico) has chosen a
new list after a rigorous process of open submissions,
Carlos Manuel Álvarez (Cuba) Gabriela Jauregui (Mexico)
 which saw more than 200 writers nominated. 
Frank Báez (Dominican Laia Jufresa (Mexico)

Republic)  Mauro Libertella (Argentina)  This new Bogotá 39 group is showcased in an anthology
Natalia Borges Polesso (Brazil)  Brenda Lozano (Mexico)  of short stories, published in collaboration with 14
Giuseppe Caputo (Colombia)  Valeria Luiselli (Mexico)
 independent publishers across Latin America, and translated
Juan Cárdenas (Colombia)  Alan Mills (Guatemala)  and published in the UK by Oneworld next month. 
Mauro Javier Cárdenas Emiliano Monge (Mexico) 
(Colombia)  Mónica Ojeda (Ecuador)  The list (left) highlights the diversity and talent of the
María José Caro (Peru)  Eduardo Plaza (Chile)  region’s literature, with 15 countries represented: Argentina,
Martín Felipe Castagnet Eduardo Rabasa (Mexico)  Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador,
(Argentina)  Felipe Restrepo Pombo Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic,
Liliana Colanzi (Bolivia)
 (Colombia) 
Juan Esteban Constaín Juan Manuel Robles (Peru)  Uruguay and Venezuela. For many of these writers, it is the
(Colombia)  Cristian Romero (Colombia) first time their work will be available in English.
Lola Copacabana (Argentina)  Juan Pablo Ronconce (Chile)  Writers are being celebrated at our events around the
Gonzalo Eltesch (Chile)
 Daniel Saldaña París (Mexico)  world, from Wales to Spain, Mexico, Colombia and Peru.
Diego Erlan (Argentina)
 Samanta Schweblin (Argentina) 
Daniel Ferreira (Colombia)  Jesús Miguel Soto (Venezuela)  And we hope that, just as with the first list 10 years ago,
Carlos Fonseca (Costa Rica)  Luciana Sousa (Argentina)  this is just the beginning.
Damián González Bertolino Mariana Torres (Brazil)  Coetzee may be right: the English language might
(Uruguay)  Valentín Trujillo (Uruguay)  dominate the global stage, but there is indisputably room
Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón (Puerto Claudia Ulloa Donoso (Peru) 
Rico)  Diego Zúñiga (Chile) for many more voices besides. ■
 Cristina Fuentes La Roche is international director, Hay Festival.

28
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Virginia Burges
Satin Publishing
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Sylvie Chartrand
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Historical Tails
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Buzzy the dog lives a happy life as
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50 years of Heavy Metal
George Anagnostopoulos
Diavlos Publications
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The Art of War for
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Christos Charalampopoulos
Diavlos Publications
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Author-journalist in Brussels,
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City of Shards
A Story of Redemption
Steve Rodgers
JKS Communications
ISBN 978-0-9983616-0-4
In the Wormpile district, Larin must
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gods, and the battle within.
— Sure to be the next best novel in
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fantasy! (Amazon review)
info@steverodgersauthor.com
amazon.com/City-Shards-Spellgiver-Steve-Rodgers/dp/0998361615
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Hester Velmans
van Horton Books
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Meet the model for the world’s
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