Agents’ hotlists: the scripts set to light up the 2020 London Book Fair

With the full impact of the coronavirus outbreak yet to be determined, Olympia looks set to be a leaner proposition on the trade side this year—luckily, its consumer-facing offer looks staunch, and agents are reporting swift business.

No matter what occurs at this London Book Fair—even if a title sweeps through the Agents’ Centre, selling into 50 territories for nine figures—the main story will be outside the normal purview of a rights fair. Of course, the full impact of the coronavirus on LBF is yet to be seen but whatever happens, 2020’s edition will be an emptier Olympia, with no-shows from Far Eastern nations at the very least—and, as the situation develops even as I write this, perhaps some Middle Eastern and European countries. (Most of Italy’s biggest publishers are based in Lombardy, for example, the region where 12 towns are currently in lockdown.) 

 But while a very changeable global health crisis rambles on, LBF remains open for business—if the fair does go on, there will undoubtedly be fewer air kisses at the parties and deals may be concluded with a vigorous scrub of anti-bacterial gel, not a traditional handshake. 

LBF 2020 does have an extremely strong seminar and events programme, one that is arguably its most consumer-facing ever—perhaps fortuitous for day-ticket numbers given that there will be fewer international trade attendees on the stands. In addition to the Author of the Day programme headlined by the luminous Edna O’Brien, starry names scheduled to appear include crime queen and now podcaster Lynda La Plante, presenter turned children’s author Konnie Huq, comics legend Mark Millar—LBF’s Crossmedia Author of the Fair—and rock god Jimmy Page, who will perform with his partner, the poet Scarlet Sabet. (To parapharse Mrs Merton, I wonder what the 29-year-old Sabet sees in the 75-year-old multi-millionaire former Led Zeppelin guitarist?) 

Smokin’ hot
You will note a few new names in our Agents’ Hotlists this time out, as there has been a lot of moves of late, with more than the usual crop rotation of agents changing firms. These include the Toby Mundy-led ACM UK, the new British outpost of the US-based Acitvas Creative Management; 42, which Eugenie Furniss joined last year to bolster its literary arm; and The Soho Agency, formed last year with the Lucas Alexander Whitley and Factual Management merger which Furniss’ former partner Rowan Lawton joined in July. And a few agents have recently hung up a shingle, such as Anwen Hoosen (The Bird Agency), Davinia Andrew-Lynch (AndLyn) and Kate Shaw (The Shaw Agency). 

As always, trends emerge from the Hotlists. As we discuss in our Lead Story (see the weekly magazine, 28th February 2020, pp04–05), smart non-fiction remains as hot as it has been for the last couple of years. Feminism is a clear trend across both non-fiction and fiction, with offerings that seem to being pitched as either “the next Caroline Craido-Perez’s Invisible Women”—see Nina Ramirez’s Femina (Rosemary Scoular, United Agents) and Annabelle Williams’ Why Women Are Poorer Than Men (Karolina Sutton, Curtis Brown)—or, in fiction, “the next The Power”: Christina-Sweeney-Baird’s The End of Men (Felicty Blunt, Curtis Brown), already sold into four territories, appears the standout among the latter. 

Our relationship with technology is another fiction/non-fiction bridging trend. In fiction, there are the likes of Emma Hughes’ Perfect Complex, repped by Emma Finn at C&W (a woman tries to find the love of her life with a new dating service based on her digital footprint) and Tamsin Winters’ Eva in Real Life, a sort of digital era “The Truman Show”, about a 13-year-girl whose parents have posted every aspect of her life on social media since she was born (Luigi Bonomi, LBA). 

Non-fiction includes takes on troll culture in Philip Seargeant’s OUTRAGE (Sandra Sawicka, Marjacq), the crossroads of tech and politics in James Plunkett’s End State (Giles Milburn, Madeleine Milburn) and the downsides to being a social media star in Bella Younger’s How Not to be an Influencer (Laura Williams, Greene & Heaton).

The full list of Agents' Hotlists can be found here along with the rest of the LBF Preview.