Doubleday snags UK rights to 'Beetlejuice' screenwriter Michael McDowell’s 1983 gothic-horror saga

Doubleday has acquired UK rights to publish "Beetlejuice" scriptwriter Michael McDowell’s gothic-horror saga more than 40 years after it was first published and after the reissued books sold more than 1.5m copies across Europe. 

Originally published back in 1983, the BIackwater saga is a series of six short novels set in Perdido, Alabama. Blackwater was rediscovered by Valancourt Books, a specialist US press who published the books in one volume. It was then acquired in France by Monsieur Toussaint Louverture, who decided to publish as per the original in six volumes, with stunning covers designed by the artist Pedro Oyarbide, releasing a new volume every two weeks.

More than a million copies have sold in France so far (1.2 million), with 300,000 sold in Italy and 250,000 sold in Spain. 

Doubleday acquired Blackwater from Piergiorgio Nicolazzini at Piergiorgio Nicolazzini Literary Agency (PNLA) who has been handling the rights in the UK on behalf of Valancourt Books, and who has now gone on to sell the series on behalf of the author’s estate in 18 territories. 

Kirsty Dunseath, publisher of Doubleday in the UK, said: “I heard about Blackwater via a Spanish contact and at first assumed that they must already have been picked up in the UK. I sought out Piergiorgio Nicolazzini at the London Book Fair and when he confirmed that the UK and Commonwealth rights were free, I leapt on them.” 

Doubleday will be replicating the packaging that has been so successful in Europe with the first volume, The Flood, publishing on 5th September 2024, and subsequent volumes every two weeks.  

McDowell was an American screenwriter and novelist who died in 1999.