Audio at heart of FBF scrum

The UK book market is “hot” and “buoyant” ahead of the Frankfurt Book Fair 2017, with the fight for audiobook rights fiercer than ever, The Bookseller has been told.

The value of the audio market rising, estimated to be around £91m in 2015 according to a Nielsen report, and growing by 28.8% (to $74.7m) in 2017’s first quarter in the US, securing those rights has become a challenge for some publishers in the face of competition from audio-specialist lists. Will Atkinson, m.d of Atlantic Books, said: “The general market is hot, but there is more of a battleground over audio rights. Trying to work out how big the market is going to be is difficult, as is deciding whether to pay a lot of money for audio rights.”

While the audio download market is taking off, spurred by the promotional budgets and reach of Audible, the format’s sales only accounted for a single-digit percentage of the total book market in 2015—3%, according to Nielsen. However, Hardman & Swainson agent Joanna Swainson agreed that audio rights were becoming more fiercely contested, and said agents were having to “fight harder” to retain rights for authors, with publishers making a bigger play for the full suite of world rights. “Audio seems to be going from strength to strength,” she said. “There’s a real hunger among audio publishers to acquire, and for some time now they’ve often been the first to make an offer.”

Agent Andrew Nurnberg added that “in an ideal world” his agency would place audio rights separately, so that the author receives a full royalty, but said that where the print publisher is granted audio, “this should be subject to its own advance and accounting”.

Despite the spectre of Brexit and fears over the UK economy, pre-FBF deal-making has not suffered, with trade as strong as ever with European counterparts, The Bookseller has heard. “The Europeans have remained extraordinarily friendly, sympathetic and supportive,” said Andrew Franklin, m.d. at Profile Books, defying his fears that UK lists would be “tainted” following the nation’s vote to leave the European Union.

Amid concerns US publishers may move in on European rights exclusivity post-Brexit, agents are confident there are “sound commercial arguments” for the UK retaining European rights. According to Curtis Brown’s Gordon Wise, “US publishers may object but they haven’t shown us a good reason; [and] selling books out of New York is not as efficient . . . It can get tied up into this political argument quite easily, when actually there are sound commercial arguments that operate separately.”

For the right titles, UK publishers are still prepared to “invest heavily”, he added, dismissing the impact of currency flux in what is “a long-term game that we all play”.

While no single title dominated the pre-fair rights frenzy, multiple publisher auctions were underway as The Bookseller went to press, with the auction for Queenie by Candice Carty- Williams, senior marketing executive at Vintage Books—represented by Jo Unwin—culminating in a six-figure deal being struck with Orion.

Swainson reported it was her agency’s “best fair yet”, selling more débuts in the UK than ever before, which suggests “publishers are still prepared to put money on the table”.

Louisa Joyner, editorial director at Faber, said: “There has been lots of excitement about big submissions. Last week, I was trying to pre-empt two different things on the same day—that’s never happened before.”

Foreign rights sales are also going strong. Agent Madeleine Milburn reported they are “significantly up compared to last year” for her agency, whose much-discussed title, Beautiful Bad by Annie Ward, has seen “major” international pre-empts and “multiple offers” in the UK. PFD international rights director Alexandra Cliff, meanwhile, said she had seen “a flurry” of foreign rights deals in what has been “the busiest autumn” she could remember.