Toby Mundy and ALLi release LBF rights guide

Toby Mundy Associates and the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) have published a rights guide in advance of the London Book Fair, showcasing 13 independent (self-published) authors, with sales ranging from 450,000 copies sold to 20,000.

The guide is aimed at helping trade publishers, either in English or in other languages, TV producers and film makers from around the world, acquire rights in the titles included. Translation rights will be handled by Georgina Le Grice at Ed Victor Limited.

One deal has already been struck ahead of the London Book Fair. Mark Richards, editorial director of John Murray, has pre-empted UK & Commonwealth (excluding Canada) rights, via Mundy, to Sasha O’Hara’s Calm the F*ck Down, an ‘irreverent adult colouring book’, and its forthcoming sequel, Chill the F*ck Out.

Sasha O’Hara is the pen name and alter ego for a pain and stress relief therapist based in Portland, Oregon. Calm the F*ck Down was published in the US using Amazon’s CreateSpace and has sold over 50,000 print copies in the US so far.

Mark Richards commented: “We all have stresses in our lives, and sometimes what we need is just to sit down and colour the things we can’t say. We at John Murray are very pleased to be helping to bring this American smash hit into British homes.”

John Murray will publish Calm the F*ck Down in the UK on 21 April 2016, as an £8.99 trade paperback, with Chill the F*ck Out to follow later in the year.

The rights guide contains information on 13 authors including J F (Joanna) Penn (more than 475,000 e-books sold worldwide); C J Lyons (more than 650,000 copies sold of the Lucy Guardino series) who has recently sold UK and Commonwealth rights to Canelo; Jennifer Foehner Wells (80,000 copies sold of Fluency); Peter Darman (100,000 copies sold across five titles); and Ben Galley (20,000 sales since publication of one title Bloodrush, 95,000 in total).

Orna Ross, director of ALLi, commented: “Being a successful indie author means doing whatever is best for your work, within the bounds of what's possible at a particular time. Sometimes that's self-publishing, sometimes trade-publishing, often a mix of both. Licensing translation and other rights is the most challenging arena for authors to handle independently and it’s great to be working with Toby Mundy, who understands the particular needs of self-publishing authors so well.”

In the introduction to the guide, Mundy and Ross added: “A small number of talented, enterprising and innovative self-published authors are achieving big sales and building big readerships. They are often doing so in intensely competitive publishing categories, like crime and thrillers, where it is most difficult to build audience and brands. The aim of this guide is to provide publishers all over the world -- as well as colleagues from film and television -- with an overview of some of the most exciting and successful authors in this new independent space. Each author in this guide has been selected according to rigorous sales criteria. Each wants to build even bigger audiences; each is open to different kinds of publishing and licensing deals.”