News & Reviews

WORD: Frankfurt Book Fair starts with no Round 2 of fight over English language rights
Edited Press Release

With most of the big-name American literary agents and rights managers crossing the Atlantic this week to attend the Frankfurt Book Fair, many expected a repeat performance of the angry exchanges that took place earlier this year at Book Expo America (BEA), when senior U.S. and British publishers came to verbal blows over the issue of who should possess the rights to sell English language books in continental Europe.

However, on the eve of the Frankfurt Book Fair, the 20th Rights Directors Meeting took place with organizers saying that the very protagonists who participated in the BEA punch-out were the ones who came in for criticism from several quarters for unnecessarily inflaming the debate.

Chairing the three-hour meeting was Diane Spivey, rights and contracts director for Little, Brown in the UK, who disengaged from the verbal fistfight and said she hoped that the meeting would be practical and constructive. "The alternative may be a free-for-all without long-term benefits for anyone," she said.

Carolyn Savarese of U.S. independent Perseus Book Group suggested the heated debate at BEA had come about through "an anxiety about global markets in a changing world," and said that British publishers trying to command markets could be compared to those U.S. car manufacturers in Detroit who tried to oppose the rise of the Japanese car industry.

"Globally, consumers want what they want now, and the global market doesn’t want to be restricted to the British edition of the book," she said. Savarese argued that what was needed was a creative, agile, open media industry, adding that "it is only competition that keeps us on our toes."British literary agent Carole Blake of Blake Friedmann encouraged delegates to get practical about breaking up English-language rights between the major markets and focus on "how we can all make more money."

It was a question of finding the best publisher to publish a book in a particular market and, she argued, that was rarely a single global publishing house. The advantages for author and agent were significant, she said: while a larger initial advance may be missed, higher royalty rates and better publishing could eventually provide a better return.

Patrick Gallagher, chairman and publishing director of Australia’s largest independent publishing house Allen & Unwin, gave a picture of the opportunities offered by the Australian book market, a market "with all the sophistication of overseas markets without the discounting of the United Kingdom or the huge advances of the U.S."

Gallagher argued for separation of rights, although also pointing out that many British publishers successfully sell finished copies of their books in Australia through Australian distributors. The trend, though, is towards more local publishing, as Australian publishers become more active in the international rights trade.

The chaos faced by unresolved territorial issues was well illustrated by V. K. Karthika of Penguin Books India, who complained that U.S. editions of books her company had sold to the U.S. were sometimes re-imported because the U.S. publisher considered India an "open market." Such practices caused enormous confusion in the Indian market.

She encouraged all delegates to look closely at the emerging Indian market. English is replacing all other languages as the language of the middleclass, she said, adding that European publishers were typically more open to Indian writing than British and American publishers.

The Frankfurt Book Fair, the world’s largest marketplace for trading in publishing rights and licenses, is now underway with over 7,000 exhibitors from 111 countries. It runs from October 4 to 8, 2006. For more information on this year’s fair, check out their website.

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