Bloomsbury wins FBF's 'Three Women' after six-publisher auction

One of Frankfurt Book Fair’s most talked-about books, a “revelatory" eight-year investigation into women’s sex lives, has gone to Bloomsbury following a six-publisher auction which almost reached six figures.

The “unique” Three Women, from American journalist and academic Lisa Taddeo, went to Simon & Schuster US for seven figures, The Bookseller revealed last week, and continued to spark excitement across the Frankfurt Book Fair (FBF) with international auctions taking place in Holland and Germany and many other international offers. 

This week Curtis Brown agent Cathryn Summerhayes closed a six-publisher auction for UK and Commonwealth rights with Alexis Kirschbaum, publishing director at Bloomsbury, emerging triumphant, and the deal running close to six-figures. The bidding war featured a mixture of corporates and indies, accompanied by keen interest in the audio rights, according to Summerhayes.

Kirschbaum told The Bookseller: "I admire Lisa Taddeo for her bravery, insight, muscular writing and for her lack of polemic. It is heart-breaking, revelatory and compulsive, and I want it to be a book that changes our culture like Erica Jong's Fear of Flying did when it was first published.”   

C+W m.d. Jake Smith-Bosanquet told The Bookseller last week he thought the book was “the most exciting literary non-fiction I’ve had at the fair.”

While S&S US executive editor Jofie Ferrari-Adler bought the title plus a novel and a collection of short stories by Taddeo, from Jenn Joel at ICM, Bloomsbury acquired Three Women only.

Publication is slated for summer 2019 in the UK and US.