Publishers keep a watchful eye on intricate non-fiction as LBF approaches

Against a background of unease as to whether London Book Fair will still go ahead—in the wake of the spread of the coronavirus across Europe, reports of mass cancellations of meetings at the fair and the postponement of the Bologna Children’s Book Fair—anticipation has nonetheless been building in this key buying time for the industry, with an uptick in agented submissions and deals brokered in recent weeks. Emerging trends include a craving for fiction with “huge emotional punch” as well as continued interest in ‘soft self-help’, the “professional confessional”, and books waxing lyrical on the state of the world today and how we got there.

The latest statement from the London Book Fair read: “Our event in London is going ahead, March 10th‚Äì12th as scheduled.” It added that, as part of Reed Exhibitions worldwide, “we are actively and continuously monitoring the situation around Covid-19 Coronavirus, in line with Public Health England and WHO guidelines and our policies reflect those of the relevant government in the countries in which our events take place. We wish to reassure all our participants of the London Book Fair that should the UK govern- ment issue any further guidelines they will be applied to the London Book Fair and we are updating, and will continue to update, every- one involved on a regular basis.”

A number of publishers raised doubts that the fair would proceed, although meeting cancellations have so far only affected visitors from China and South Korea, according to those contacted by The Bookseller. Will Francis from Janklow & Nesbit said the Italians were assessing the situation “day by day”, and predicted more disruption to come.

Looking to submissions, there has been a particular buzz around Crisis, a history of the world told through a series of historical crises. It was pre-empted last week by Cape (UK and Commonwealth rights, including exclusive Europe), in spite of rumoured interest from eight other publishers. Likened to Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens and Peter Frankopan, the book everyone is talking about was penned by political economist and LSE fellow Jerome Roos (pictured left), and is represented by agent Chris Wellbelove at Aitken Alexander. Wellbelove said it has been pre-empted in seven more territories, including by Knopf in the US. At the time of going to press, a nine-way auction was under way in Germany.

Another book that has whipped up interest is New Statesman science journalist and debunker Tracy King’s memoir Learning to Think, a title about the murder of her father when she was 12 and “the liberating power of a scientific view of the world”. With UK and Commonwealth rights picked up by Transworld in a seven-way auction—publishing director Susanna Wadeson branded it the most exciting non-fiction proposal any of her team had seen for months—the book is now generating “lots of excitement” in the US, said Janklow & Nesbit’s Francis, who is agenting the title.

Flying non-fiction
Francis described the non-fiction market as “ebullient”, with previously fiction-focused publishers rushing to occupy the space. Interest was growing in “the more commercial and lifestyle end of science writing” he said, in the vein of Dr Rangan Chatterjee. “There seems to be a lot of oxygen for people writing about those subjects in an accessible way, writers with a scientific or medical ground- ing,” he said, adding: “People are also after non-fiction by experts with a particular purview on a particular social issue.”

Susannah Otter, newly of Bonnier Books UK, agreed, saying it seemed “busier” than usual with promising projects “moving quicker” as a consequence of the recent influx of new non-fiction imprints. “Everyone has lists to fill,” she said. Mike Harpley, Atlantic’s editorial director for non-fiction, said that the rise in non-fiction lists had in turn attracted more proposals in the area: “Agents are focusing more on non-fiction than they were. It’s definitely a more active market, and things go for more money in the UK than they did a few years ago.”

Otter said she had also observed a number of books on fertility struggles coming through, as well as environmental how-tos, and said that the “professional confessional” was “still going strong”—evidenced recently in the speed of Chatto’s acquisition of Those Who Can: A Teacher’s Story within 24 hours of the text going on submission. UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, in Ryan Wilson’s memoir of 10 years in teaching were snapped up by editor Charlotte Humphery, who dubbed it “a book for teach- ers... and the ex-school pupil in all of us”.

People are also looking for books that explain 21st century relationships or provide “an emotional understanding of a slightly fucked up world”, according to Cathryn Summerhayes (pictured right) of Curtis Brown. Julia Silk, agent at Kingsford Campbell Literary Agency, said that in wellbeing, “stealth help” seemed to be going “from strength to strength”, describing it as “a relatable and relevant hybrid of memoir and self-help”.

Rebecca Wearmouth, international rights director at PFD, agreed non-fiction was still dominating the UK and US markets. Wearmouth said Hands of Time by Rebecca Struthers, a title that tells the history of watchmaking through seven timepieces, which has just been picked up by HarperCollins in the US, was illustrative of the kind of titles people were looking for. The book's agent is David Godwin's Kirsty McLachlan and UK rights were sold to Hodder at auction, German rights to Penguin Verlag at auction and Italian rights were pre-empted by Garzanti. “I think these kinds of cultural histories, [texts that] break things down into very simple concepts, seem to really be working,” she said. “The other thing we have found to be working is big, sweeping accessible histories that cover a certain period and can be seen as the authority on that topic, but aren’t too dense,” she said, giving the example of The Persians by Lloyd Llewellyn Jones, recently acquired by Headline at auction. “You can feel like, as a reader, you buy that one volume and you’re going to understand everything there is to know about that empire or a period of time that can cover hundreds of years.”

Harpley said he had noticed a pattern in coveted books centred on “big ideas” and, in the UK, books that seek to evaluate the place of the UK post-Brexit. “Lots of editors were avoiding Brexit because it was so hard to know what was going to happen,” he said. “Now it’s at least crystallising that something is going to happen, I imagine there will be lots brought out fairly quickly.”

Fiction trends
Wearmouth said Europe still appeared “hungry” for fiction though, with interest returning in speculative fiction and cosy crime, perhaps sparked by the rights frenzy for Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club (Viking). Summerhayes said feminist dystopias in the vein of Margaret Atwood appeared to be a growing trend, after a clamour of pre-empt attempts for The End of Men by Christina Sweeney-Baird, represented by her Curtis Brown colleague Felicity Blunt. The novel’s timely plot centres on a global pandemic—however, this one only kills men.

Madeleine Milburn said her agency was seeing the most noise around “bold, ‘conversation starting’ reading-group fiction that packs a huge emotional punch” alongside “global interest for epic love stories, diverse fiction and zeitgeisty topics”. Silk concurred: “High-quality commercial fiction with depth and heart—[Sally Rooney’s] Normal People, [Taylor Jenkins Reid’s] Daisy Jones and the Six, [Candice Carty-Williams’] Queenie, [Oyinkan Braithwaite’s] My Sister, the Serial Killer—is what editors I’m talking to are looking for. Books to compete with subscription video on demand, in other words.”