Frankfurt under the shadow of Covid

Even though many countries' pandemic restrictions began in February or March, owing to the spring/autumn cyclical nature of the global rights trading schedule the international book trade will head into this virtual Frankfurt Book Fair—#Fakefurt as some on social media have it—without having a major book fair in real life for a year. As we see in our “New Normal” feature, rights professionals have adjusted during the course of 2020, shifting their modes of working, and translation sales have remained robust. But it is difficult to measure intangibles—those chance meetings and new business a physical fair can give you—and as rights sales are often about a long game, it may be a year or two before we know the true cost of 12 months without international agents and editors meeting “Irl”.

It is interesting to see that the pandemic is already informing some of our Agents’ Hotlists and has become, for lack of a better word, a trend. Andrew Wylie at The Wylie Agency has two titles—CNN presenter Fareed Zakaria’s Ten Lessons for a Post-pandemic World and historian Niall Ferguson’s “plague year post-mortem” Doom—while there’s also the memoir of Gennaro Arma (Enrichetta Frezzato, Curtis Brown), the captain of the Covid-19-riddled cruise ship “Diamond Princess” and, with a historical view, Catharine Arnold’s Pandemic 1918 (Andrew Lownie).

Perhaps because this is still a very fluid situation (figuratively and literally), there are few examples in fiction, though Sarah Such has the Arthur C Clarke-winning SFF authors Anne Charnock’s Becoming Edie which has “post-pandemic City girl Flo” fleeing to the country for a life closer to nature. Indeed, on the DHH Literary website m.d. David Headley says he simply does not want to receive any pandemic novel submissions. He adds: “I’m just not interested in reading them right now because I think it’s too early as I wonder how we’re all going to deal with this in the future: can you write a novel set in 2020, and not address the pandemic at all?”

Perhaps Covid-related—or more accurately Covid-anxiety related—is that there is a raft of titles that deal with the difficulties of getting to sleep. This has been a bubbling-under trend of recent years with hits such as Matthew Walker’s Why We Sleep but it seems to be full boil this FBF. In fiction there are thrillers such as Liam Bell’s The Sleepless, set in a commune where “sleep is considered an unnecessary social construct” (Joanna Swainson, Hardman & Swainson); Louise Mumford’s similarly titled Sleepless, in which a young woman insomniac takes part in a sleep trial on a remote Scottish island “where nothing is what it seems” (Kate Shaw, The Shaw Agency); and Jemma Wayne’s While Sleeping (Eve White), where a woman’s sleep disorder “comes back to haunt her when her high school sweetheart’s daughter goes missing”.

A definite trend emerging out of this pandemic is cosy crime. The received wisdom is that in times of trouble readers move to escapism in fiction—almost categorically untrue if you look at the sales data, but, heck, it makes an easy story for lazy journalists in the wider media. But maybe this time out, the gentle deaths and ordered world with a satisfying conclusion is the escape people will look for. It is certainly what editors across the globe want with one of the big rights hits, S J Bennett’s The Windsor Knot (Charlie Campbell, Kingsford Campbell), which has Queen Elizabeth II solving crimes in the midst of her royal duties, going to 14 territories. Other hot properties this FBF in this arena are “Death in Paradise” creator Robert Thorogood’s The Marlow Murder Club (Ed Wilson, Johnson & Alcock), Tom Hindle’s A Fatal Endeavour (Harry Illingworth, DHH), Kate High’s début The Cat and the Corpse in the Old Barn (Anne Williams, Kate Horden) and Faith Martin’s The Birthday Mystery (Kate Nash).

I have been compiling these book fair hotlists for over a decade and this FBF has by far the greatest number of submissions by authors who come from a black, Asian or minority ethnic background. It would be reductive to call this a “trend” as these authors come from a multiplicity of upbringings and are writing on all manner of subjects. But it is worth noting, given the trade’s diversity discussions these past few years and the Black Lives Matters protests of this summer which led to a deep interrogation—and uncomfortable Twitter moments for a few powerful agents—of the submissions process.

But it is also worth noting that there are 134 individual agents across these hotlists and just six of them come from a BAME background—4.5%. This is not a comprehensive list of all British agents as each agency is limited to five entries (and a few in this Covid year did not want to submit), but that percentage is probably reflective of industry demographics. It is not just author clients that agencies—particularly the bigger ones—need to be focused on, it is the hiring practices.

Frankfurt Book Fair 2020 Digital Highlights

Frankfurt Rights Meeting 13th October
15.00–17.00
It’s all change for the 34th Frankfurt Rights Meeting (rebranded from the Rights Directors Meeting last year), and not solely because of the move to digital. The annual pre-fair conference is usually a smallish gathering of rights professionals sharing some “inside baseball” information. While not dumbing-down the programme, FBF organisers have broadened the sessions for a more general industry audience, starting with a talk by Andrew Nurnberg on the publishing and rights-trading landscape in a post-Covid world. Postponed Guest of Honour Canada will be represented with two well-respected indie publishers: Janice Yoon from Toronto’s House of Anansi Press will look at the country’s English-language market; while Antoine Tanguay, founder of Montreal’s Alto, takes on the Francophone side.
 
Improving Diversity in Publishing 14th October
10.00-11.00
Dialogue Books publisher Sharmaine Lovegrove kicks off the Publishing Insights professional programme with a keynote speech on where the industry is now in its diversity and inclusion agenda and what steps need to be taken from here. She will be joined by Michiel Kolman, Elsevier’s senior vice-president of information, industry relations. 

The Changing Retail Landscape 14th October
16.25-16.50
The most important person in bricks-and-mortar Anglophone bookselling, Waterstones and Barnes & Noble chief James Daunt, will speak of the difficulties and redundancies of the past year, and the challenges that lay ahead on both sides of the Atlantic. 

C.e.o. Panel 14th October
15.20-15.55
This year’s global publishing boss interview is with Ananth Padmanabhan, who has led HarperCollins India since 2015, after nearly 20 years with Penguin Random House. In his five years at the helm, Padmanabhan’s HC has made significant gains in India’s English-language market but this pandemic year has been transformative, with a 100% jump in consumer e-book sales in a market which has been resistant to digital books, and the launch of the online classroom platform Collins Evaluate.

BookFest Digital 17th October
10.00-20.00
The consumer-facing book festival, now in its third year, has a fairly heavy-hitting Anglophone line-up, with Jamie Oliver, Matt Haig, Elizabeth Gilbert and Karin Slaughter among those featured in the digital stream. For those who happen to be in Frankfurt, at the moment the mainly German-language live events of BookFest City are still scheduled to go ahead.

All times CEST