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Deals of FBF past: The return of the Mushens-o-meter
Due to overwhelming public demand, Tom Tivnan dusts off the Mushensometer as it returns—for a special two-page edition—to gauge the successes (and failures) that set the Messe alight during the course of recent Frankfurt Book Fairs, as editors prepare to get the chequebook out…
FBF 2009
Sympathy for the Devil fails to make a mark?
Fifteens years ago the halls of the Messe were riven by angst about big tech strip-mining copyrighted works without compensating authors (how times have changed!). One hot non-digital story was Patrick Walsh selling cheeky former-drug baron Howard Marks’ crime novels for six figures to a number of territories. It seemed a sure bet; Marks’ Mr Nice memoir had been a massive global hit, later made into a successful film starring Rhys Ifans. Alas, Sympathy for the Devil and its follow-up, The Score (the third book did not materialise before Marks’ death), did not have the same resonance as Marks’ non-fiction, selling 2,500 and 700 print units in the UK, respectively.
Mushensometer: Lukewarm 1/5
FBF 2019
Lost in the woods?
Tiger has yet to tee off With much hoopla during the last Frankfurt of The Before Times, HarperOne signed golf legend Tiger Woods—and latterly, legend of TMZ and the tabloids—to a global deal to write a memoir about his career and his comeback (which would undoubtedly elide over the juiciest bits of his eventful personal life). “It will be the publishing event of the decade,” HarperOne boss Judith Curr trumpeted to The Bookseller Daily. Well, it might well be, but the question is: which decade? Because ol’ Tiger has yet to deliver, and with little news on its progress barring HarperOne’s terse 2021 press release (which was literally one line which reeked of exasperation and fury) which said the book had been postponed.
Mushensometer: TBC
FBF 2019
Mass Appeal for Miranda Jewess’ Viper launch
The Bookseller Daily’s first 2019 edition carried the news of a cascade of acquisitions conducted by Serpent’s Tail’s Miranda Jewess for the first five books in her new crime list at the indie Viper. The deals included bagging National Public Radio’s senior editor V L Valentine’s The Plague Letters, Nicola White’s A Famished Heart, David Jackson’s standalone thriller The Resident and, the last of the launch list, journalist and screenwriter Janice Hallett’s first novel, The Appeal. Hallett’s cosy crime, written in emails and texts/WhatsApp messages, was the breakout, spawning a series of hit follow-ups and a raft of imitators. Hallett re-upped with Viper for four more books ahead of FBF 2022.
Mushensometer: Sizzlin’ 4/4
FBF 2014
Mirchandani makes his first Picador poach
The Bookseller Daily made hay with a story that has featured a few times in its pages over the years, just with different participants (including at FBF 2024): editor to the literary stars Ravi Mirchandani making his first buy with a new publisher. In 2014, the house was Picador, the book Herman Koch’s Dear Mr M (translated by Sam Garrett). Mirchandani had published the Dutch author’s The Dinner to great success while at Atlantic, but, crap-shoot that translated fiction is, Dear Mr M has only sold around 3,500 print units in the UK. Mirchandani went on, of course, to have a fecund run at Picador before his recent move to Simon & Schuster.
Mushensometer: So hot right now 3/5
FBF 2007
Tense War Child battle fought on the floors of the Buchmesse
Though they were becoming rarer, there were still a few titles actually bought and sold at the tables of the LitAg in the mid- 2000s. In 2007 there was a hard-fought tussle for the UK rights to the memoir of Emmanuel Jal, a child soldier when growing up in Sudan who became one of Kenya’s biggest hip-hop stars. It was a drama apparently unfolding at such a rate that The Bookseller Daily covered it for all three days of the fair, with agent Ivan Mulcahy eventually selling to Little, Brown for “a strong five-figure sum”. The compelling memoir was well-received critically at launch in 2009 but, alas, has sold only 3,500 copies in the UK.
Mushensometer: So hot right now 3/5
FBF 2021
Things can only get much Butter
The first fair between lockdowns was a stripped-down, low-key event, though on the bright side the hotel rooms were cheap and the queues at the Frankfurter Hof bar minimal. And a smattering of business was done. The biggest, as it panned out, was arguably Fourth Estate’s Kishani Widyaratna and her American HarperEcco colleague Helen Atsma bagging Anglophone rights to Asako Yuzuki’s Butter. Yuzuki’s Japanese prize-winner and bestseller, after being published in the UK this year in Polly Barton’s translation, has gone on to be a smash, selling 100,000 units (and counting) helped by one of the best-designed cover treatments and book packages in many years.
Mushensometer: Book of the fair 5/5
FBF 2017
Evelyn awe: Turton’s Seven Deaths makes a killing
Buried in a broader story on the hot international trends—and reportage on the perhaps delusional, and quite frankly atypical, optimism among British rightstraders that Brexit would not hurt its industry—was a notice about a début called The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle that was turning heads in the LitAg. Stuart Turton’s genrebending mystery, repped by DHH’s Harry Illingworth, had been bought pre-fair by Raven in the UK, then hoovered up by Sourcebooks in the US with deals notched in a further five territories during Frankfurt. Turton’s book would go on to be a monster hit, while bagging the Costa First Novel prize (among other gongs).
Mushensometer: Sizzlin’ 4/4
FBF 2022
Century’s splash for the books of Ruth pays off
Former criminal defence lawyer Ruth Mancini’s first two thrillers—2019’s In the Blood and 2020’s One Dark, Two Light—sold well but not spectacularly for Head of Zeus, though the latter was published amid the pandemic, not ideal timing for an early-career novelist. But Cornerstone’s Selina Walker saw potential and snapped up the author’s next two titles (from Judith Murray at Greene & Heaton) in a big-money pre-empt less than 24 hours after submission. The first book in that deal, The Woman on the Ledge, shifted 12,000 copies in hardback on launch last year but has since taken off in paperback and digitally, with the release of the mass market hitting the bestseller lists in September this year.
Mushensometer: Sizzlin’ 4/4
FBF 2012
Mushens’ Cause célèbre makes some waves
The Mushens-ometer takes its first look at a deal from Juliet Mushens herself who, it turns out, is a literary agent. Who knew? A dozen years ago the then-PFD staffer submitted Natural Causes, the previously self-published thriller by James Oswald, the Thursday before Frankfurt. She ended up concluding an auction, with three publishers at the final stages, in less than a week, with Michael Joseph winning for a “good six-figure sum”. German rights were also pre-empted during the fair, again for six figures. Oswald’s now 13-strong Inspector McLean series has gone on to sell over half a million print units for nearly £3m in the UK.
Mushensometer: Sizzlin’ 4/4
FBF 2016
Frankfurt gets fired up by Celeste Ng’s sophomore effort
It is unclear whether Little, Brown publishing director Clare Smith knew during FBF 2016 that Reese Witherspoon had already had sight of the manuscript of Celeste Ng’s second novel, Little Fires Everywhere, with a view to adapt it. But whether she did or not, Smith plumped for Ng’s moving meditation on motherhood, race and privilege, with the novel launching in 2017 as a superlead. To be frank, it did not roar off the shelves in hardback in Britain (circa-11,000 units via Nielsen BookScan) but when the Amazon Prime adaptation starring Witherspoon and Kerry Washington dropped in 2020 the paperback went to the stratosphere, shifting more than a quarter of a million copies.
Mushensometer: Sizzlin’ 4/4
FBF 2017
Susan Lewis turns a corner in major move to HarperCollins
From the mid-2010s when HarperCollins launched its global publishing programme, the publisher has taken some hefty swings to lure commercial superstars on-board such as Karin Slaughter, Philippa Gregory and Jeffrey Archer. For its big-brand buy in Frankfurt 2017, where HC UK’s Kate Elton and Kimberley Young, plus their US colleague Liate Stehlik at Morrow—it takes a village to acquire an HC global author, I guess— pitched a massive seven-figure, six-book world rights deal to lure Susan Lewis over from Cornerstone. The Bristol-born psychological thriller writer has had a sparkling run with HC since, including A Sicilian Affair, her 2024 summer reading hit.
Mushensometer: Sizzlin’ 4/4
FBF 2017
Ahmed mines the gold in C Pam Zhang’s first fiction
One of the big buys on the literary side at Frankfurt seven years ago was then-Virago-ite Ailah Ahmed plumping for UK and Commonwealth rights to C Pam Zhang’s début, How Much of These Hills Is Gold with RCW’s Peter Straus, acting for The Clegg Agency founder Bill Clegg. The novel ended being a cult hit on publication three years later, helped by being longlisted for the Booker and named by Barack Obama on his Books of 2020 list. Zhang obviously liked working with Ahmed; she joined the now Hutchinson Heinemann publishing director at the Penguin Random House imprint for her next title.
Mushensometer: Sizzlin’ 4/4
FBF 2022
Like billy-o: Jamie serves up a treat for young readers
Probably the starriest deal at FBF of two years ago was Jamie Oliver, by some margin the UK’s top-selling non-fiction author of all time, making the jump to children’s to write a middle-grade series for Puffin, to be illustrated by Mónica Armiño. It made sense given the Naked Chef’s platform and, of course, celebs becoming kids’ authors was, and continues to be, all the rage—despite the trend causing much ire on children’s book Twitter (Scholastic revealed its deal with Spice Girl Geri Halliwell-Horner at the same fair). But the trio of Oliver’s kids’ titles released thus far are ticking over, but not quite selling like hot cakes: 37,000 copies through Nielsen BookScan UK.
Mushensometer: So hot right now 3/5
