Air Kisses at the Hof

Prior to the official opening of the Literary Agents & Scouts Centre, agents and publishers are already deal-making. The action is in the lobbies and bars of the Frankfurter Hof and the Hessischer Hof, where groups sit in small groups at table flipping through books, materials, drinking tea, smiling and nodding. Others, in between appointments, linger on the fringes looking expectant, as if they are waiting for someone asking them to dance.

Rooms at the two hotels are so sought after during the Frankfurt Book Fair that it’s said someone has to die before you can get a reservation. Consequently, most of the faces belong to familiar names: There’s Jamie Byng of Scotland’s Cannongate air kissing George Gibson of Bloomsbury USA (they are both Europeans after all) David Poindexter of San Francisco’s MacAdam/Cage stopping by to say hi to Esther Margolis of Newmarket Press. Languages range across English, German and a smattering of French.

On Monday, Daisy Hutton sat at the bar observing the room at the Hessischer Hof. A nine-year veteran of Frankfurt, she was attending the fair for the first time in the role of VP of International Licensing for Thomas Nelson – a Christian publisher based out of Nashville and seventh biggest publisher in the US – a job she’d held for just a month.

Hutton was on the selling side and deemed the FBF so important to her job that she traveled despite having given birth just four months ago. She was on the selling side, looking for publishers to purchase rights to Nelson’s titles, and was waiting to meet a Brazilian publisher.

“The rights world is such a small world and everyone knows everyone else”, she said. “You never want to burn a bridge because you’ll probably find yourself working with or for everyone else at one point or another.”

Hutton observed that the global economic downturn has led some people to be more conservative in their purchases.

“There was less early buying, with people snapping up books prior to the Fair,” she said, “People are waiting to see how they perform in the marketplace.”

Hutton’s biggest surprise so far: The emergence of “terroir” fiction. “It’s something a French publisher told me about and I’d never heard of – she used the term in reference to one of our Amish titles, which are becoming very popular.

Catherine MacGregor, rights director for HarperCollins Canada, was “cautiously optimistic” that the economy wouldn’t have a serious impact on her business.

“Yes, people are less apt to take risks,” she said, “but things are still steady.”

In publishing, timing can be everything. One book MacGregor is selling that she thinks might interest publishers is “Filthy Lucre: Economics for People Who Hat Capitalism” by Joseph Heath.

“We’re publishing the book next year and Frankfurt is the time when it’s important to get the word out. It’s when you can generate buzz, especially among scouts and sub-agents.”

The Grove/Atlantic team from the US divided forces, with publisher Morgan Entriken commandeering the couch at the Hessischer Hof, while Amy Hundley, subsidiary rights director worked the room at the Frankfurter Hof.

To Hundley, the scene was all about relationship building. “You get to reacquaint yourself with what kinds of books different editors are interested in, who has similar tastes as you,” she explained.

Observing how many American editors, publishers and agents were present Hundley (a newlywed who went directly from her Honeymoon in Amsterdam to the Frankfurter Hof) scoffed at the recent comments by the secretary of the Swedish Academy that said Americans don’t read enough translated fiction.

“If you look at books like ‘The Shadow of the Wind’ and ‘Night Train to Lisbon,’ they were both bestsellers in the US,” she said.

In 2007, Hundley had an extremely busy Fair, as publisher in ten different countries snapped up rights to the book “The Butterfly Mosque,” a memoir by G. Willow Wilson, an American woman who converts to Islam and moves to Cairo.

This year she has high hopes for Robert Olen Butler’s latest novel “Hell” – about a journalist who does the nightly newscast in Hell and is looking for way out.

“It’s a very clever book and is the only book at the Fair that has the character of Dick Cheney [the US vice president] as a minion of Satan,” she says, adding after some reconsideration “well, maybe not the only book…”

It is then that the popping of Champagne corks behind the bar interrupts our conversation, signaling that the deal making for the day is done and the party has begun.

Tags: Agents, Frankfurter Hof

Posted in Book Fair, Deals, book industry