Company spotlight: S B Rights Agency

Going global is aim for Stephanie Barrouillet’s Israel-based start-up

Relocating to Tel Aviv almost five years ago was the inspiration that Stephanie Barrouillet needed to set up her own personal, bespoke international rights agency, focusing on smaller publishers and smaller markets. The S B Rights Agency was launched in May, drawing on Barrouillet’s years of experience in the rights and export departments of Walker Books and Israeli publisher Kinneret Zmora-Bitan Dvir.

She says: “I started working at Walker in 1999 and I have always been very passionate about publishing. Picture books are definitely my field and I really wanted to carry on working with them and foreign rights when I moved to Israel. I started to explore the market in Israel, which I suppose we can call ‘up and coming’, and within a year of relocating I started working with Kinneret, with a goal of selling rights to its children’s books.

“At Bologna [Children’s Book Fair] in 2011 I launched its rights department, and during the next three years I learnt a lot about selling rights from a new, less-established market—which is very different from selling them from the UK. That was a real learning curve for me,” Barrouillet adds. “I learnt to overcome lots of barriers, primarily the language barrier, but also logistical things such as taking a book that is read left to right to countries that read right to left, as well as managing the expectations of authors and illustrators who have never been translated or presented before.

“In those three years I learnt a huge amount and it took off really quickly. I was really surprised about how open international publishers were and how genuinely interested they were to look at books from a market they didn’t really know. The thrill of bringing a treasure of Hebrew children’s books to the international scene made me realise that I could help other publishers do the same. So I decided to go it alone and set up my own international agency, but with a special interest in representing either small publishers or publishers from smaller markets. I am the middle man, really. I am the matchmaker. I don’t just sell rights, I also consult and advise publishers on new books and how to make their lists more internationally suitable, on contract advice. It needs to be a very thorough role.”

The matchmaker

The S B Rights Agency now has around 80 titles on its list—including titles by celebrated Israeli illustrator Paul Kor—and works on placing books for publishers around the world, including Kinneret, French children’s publisher Éditions Les P’tits Bérets and Editorial Kókinos in Spain.

Barrouillet says that what interests her most about her global matchmaking is “working with publishers who have very different styles of illustration and bringing them together. I think there is an openness from parents to buying books with different styles, and publishers want to see something new. It’s a lot of hard work picking a list, believing in those titles and then finding the right fit. I have to know that specific title can work for that specific publisher.”

For Barrouillet, one of the most interesting changes in the picture book market over the past five years is that it has “become a global one”. Driven by initiatives and prizes from different book fairs and various translation grants, she explains that smaller publishers from all around the world now have a fantastic chance of breaking out a global hit. “I think for picture books it is still in its early stages, but it is starting to happen—someone like Hervé Tullet is breaking through in various markets and going to the top of bestseller lists across the world.”