Authors

Earlier this year I was chatting with a journalist who covers media for a prominent online magazine when the topic of Jane Friedman arose. Did I know what her plans were? No idea. He’d been getting the same response from everyone he asked and was clearly bewildered. But, he said, one word did keep coming up: legacy. No-one would tell him what it meant though. Aha, I thought. The rapid conglomeration of publishing businesses from the 1960’s through the present, combined with the subsequent layoffs necessitated by the relative failure of the mergers to produce the anticipated profits had combined to eviscerate the institutional knowledge of the combined intellectual property. So while these companies did have licenses to vast amounts of quality content, there were very few people left who knew very much about what the damn content was. Jane, however, had a pretty significant repository of information—she was a one-woman institutional memory. So, I suggested, if I had that knowledge myself, one thing I might do is, to use a wee bit of jargon, “arbitrage those asymmetries”—exploit the gap between what I knew of the value of a given backlist book and what that book’s publisher knew.

Fast forward to this early afternoon in the Film & Media Center where Jane is sitting down to a chat with her business partner, the film producer Jeff Sharp. Delighted, I am, to note the format. A conversation between two knowledgable folks is really an ideal format for presenting new business models to a rather disparate audience. The programming folks at the Book Fair are very mindful of this in how they approach authors: the conversation, as opposed to the reading, is the classic format for authors being introduced to the Frankfurt Fair goers, and using it more on the business side of things would be wonderful.

That all said, it’s the content, rather than the format, that has engendered a standing-room crowd. Metaphorically, we know what’s coming, for her new company is called Open Road Integrated Media, and it’s clear Jane wants to hit the open road. But, in the classic brusque locution, show me the money!

In a four page press release, she duly obliges. Consider the following an idiosyncratic cheatsheet for wherever you find yourself this evening when the question of what’s Jane up to arises.

— Arbitrage the Asymmetries! Basically Open Road is going to monetize Jane’s relationships with established authors with significant backlists: Styron, Conroy, Murdoch (Iris, not Rupert), Heller…Crichton is a TK (copyediting speak for “to come”), “joining the Open Road down the road,” says Friedman. What’s the asymmetry? Well, for one, it’s trust. Publishing is a people business, after all, and authors and agents trust her.

— “The Author is the Brand” Open Road’s not shooting to brand itself but is going to offer a platform for all the aforementioned authors’ content in an author-centric platform. So the trust is being reinforced by Open Road’s willingness to make the author front-and-center.

— Rich digital media. A digital media development firm called Code & Theory is developing a proprietary platform that hosts ancillary bells and whistles—profiles, audio, mini-documentaries, and so forth. (Notwithstanding the digital cornucopia, “the eBook is the center of our universe,” Friedman clarified—the video is promotional, not living inside the book.) Both Sharp himself and a third principal Luke Parker Bowles (yes, son of), have a background in film and video and believe that the quality of the Open Road video will be above the average. This appears to be a major dimension of the day-to-day activity of the company as they’re going to have significant in-house production facilities.

— “Co-Marketing.” They’re taking their digital platform and their video production facilities and integrating it with business partners focused on niche content: Kensington’s GBLTQ list and African-American list to start with and also some Grove Atlantic titles (“literary” being the niche: Jim Harrison, Mark Bowden, P.J. O’Rourke announced thus far…) Given the business relationship is described with a rather fuzzy “co-marketing,” this falls for the moment under the rubric of “terms not [yet] disclosed.”

— Frontlist and self-publishing. The division that will handle this dimension is called Studio and run by Gotham Books’ founding publisher Brendan Cahill. Parallel to Studio is Discovery, and Discovery is a “curated” self-publishing wing—both operations benefit from the integrated digital marketing platform, and from print-on-demand (with possible subsequent conventional distribution or licensing). Unclear so far though are the terms of the self-publishing deal and how significant a component of the projected revenue it constitutes. Friedman indicated that Open Road would be absorbing marketing cost: “We plan to service every author in whatever way the author wants.”

Other stuff you should know:

— Their website OpenRoadMedia.com is not going to retail eBooks. It’s a general marketing platform for the Backlist, and the Studio and Discovery frontlist.

— Although this was barely discussed, the movie production aspect of this has to be one of, if not the largest revenue stream; Sharp currently has Styron’s “Lie Down in Darkness” in development.

— No advances.

— Profit share, numbers undisclosed.

— 750-1000 titles in Year One is the plan, but Friedman did not indicate the proprtions of that comprised by established author backlist, frontlist Studio, frontlist Discovery, and co-marketing agreements with Kensington and Grove.

—While their profit share terms apparently the current royalty offered by publishers for digital, Friedman is not intersted in competing on price. It doesn’t matter if other publishers match her royalty rate because, she says, she’ll do a better job marketing. “The secret sauce is the marketing platform.”

I’d love to give you a two cent opinion on how this all adds up but one has to be cautious. It is clear that Friedman has a wealth of relationships to monetize, it is clear that Sharp knows how to produce financial successful movies, it is clear that they can make a very robust digital marketing platform happen, and that at both the author and publisher level, that platform will be very useful. If that platform is to make money by generating unit sales of eBooks, sales will have to be pretty enormous, but if the platform is also being licensed on a fee-basis above costs of production for all that amazing video, it could be profitable fairly quickly.

Juergen Boos, in his welcoming speech, reminds us that what we see at first isn’t necessarily the whole picture.  There is often more to see behind the first impression, just like in Antonioni’s cult film ‘Blow Up’ when a photographer realises he’s unwittingly captured the scene of a murder when innocently taking a picture of a couple in the park.  And so it is the case with Argentina.  At first glance Argentina may appear to be all about what’s on the surface - but there’s more to it once you start to dig a little deeper. 

For those of you who may have forgotten, the literature of Latin America was first Guest of Honour in 1976, and indeed Mexico was honoured in 1992 and Brazil in 1994 - so the ground has been well prepared for Argentina in a way.  Violence, reminiscences and myths, as well as humour, are the themes offered by Argentina in 2009, breaking ground for its appearance in 2010.  With over 300 publising houses and around 22,000 new publications every year, there will be many opportunities in the Argentinian book market.

2010 marks the bicentenary of Argentina’s independence, Victorio Taccetti reminds us.  What i hadn’t realised was that by the middle of the 20th century, as a result of education becoming a real focus in the country, Argentina boasted the largest publishing industry in the Spanish-speaking world.  Another impressive statistic is that the production of books has risen from 50 million copies in 1990 to over 82 million in 2008.  Average growth in the publishing sector has also risen to 8.5% since 2003.   It has to be said, not many other countries around the world can boast these figures nowadays.  In addition, if you add in imports and take away exports, Argentina is today a market that consumes 147 million books.  So that’s a huge market to tap into if you are not already doing business in that area.

Next to the stage is Magdalena Faillace, President of the Orgnaizing Committee for Argentina’s appearance in 2010.  She starts by asking the question: how much does Argentina belong to Latin America?  It’s not all about geopolitical aspects of course - they also have a shared history.  One of Argentina’s aims, she explains, is to open up to the world and to be a place where education and culture can be accessed by the masses, not just by the priviledged few.  Their aim, as Guest of Honour, is to show off the diversity of their country - not only the traditional side but the lesser-known one as well.  She also points out that the country is keen to show that they are not all about Borges, Maradonna, and tango!  There is so much more to offer now - the modern Argentina is also a producer of food and technology, and a place where a wide range of literature can be found.  It’s not about the past now - it’s about the future too.  Already in the build up to the Guest of Honour appearance, many bridges are already being built between Argentina and Germany.  And not just on the subject of immigration - there’s also the influence of German Expressionism which we already see in the tareas of theatre and art.  She finishes by announcing that Martin Fierro will be the cornerstone in next year’s exhibition and that the books and authors in the pavilion will be presided over by Jorge Louis Borges and Julio Cortazar, two of the most internationally well-known authors.  There follows a history of the Argentinian publishing industry and what they represent by Gloria Lopez Llovet de Rodrigue, representing the Argentine Chamber of Publications.  In the early 20th century publishing houses such as Abeledo Perrot, El Ateneo, Tor and Claridad were established.  There were also representatives from Spanish publishers too.  But it was during the Spanish Civil War that the greatest change took place when the offices established in Argentina went from being mere distributors to actual publishing houses because, due to the war taking place - and it should be noted as a result of heavy censorship - their parent companies found themselves unable to publish in Spain itself.  As a direct consequence many intellectuals made their way to Argentina and many ended up founding publishing houses themselves.  Nowadays there are many independent publishing houses, of all different sizes, in Argentina as well as a strong representation of the main Spanish, Mexican and Colombian firms which have now become well-established.

Author Mempo Giardinelli then gives us his views on Argentinian literature.  Romanticism is something that he talks about a lot, as is the importance of Buenos Aires as a city.  He also points out that topics such as history, immigration, politics, military rule, violence and exile are all things that bind Argentina’s literature together.  He then highlights some of the characteristics of Argentinian literature today: the predominant role of women; the country’s national history; immigration flows; how Argentina managed to shun the Magic Realism of the 60s and the so-called Boom; human rights and military rule; literature coming from areas in Argentina other than Buenos Aires; the powerful tradition of the short story; poetry; the essay; and finally, the bizarrely ‘exclusive’ list of authors currently being promoted by the literary establishment. 

Music from Argentina

Last to address the conference is Daniel Divinsky, who has been an independent publisher since 1967 at the publishing house Ediciones, and who is today representating the Argentina Chamber of Books.  He begins by telling the gathered press attendees that in 1977 he and his wife were sent to prison for four months as a result of publishing a children’s book, the copyright to which they had bought at the Frankfurt Book Fair.  He went on to explain that at the time it seems thousands of books were being burned by order of the government and people were getting rid of any titles that might be found to be compromising.   The story had a happy ending because the Frankfurt Book Fair came to their rescue.  Not only did they send a message of solidarity and support (thus protecting them from any further serious consequences) but they also extended a special invitaiton to the couple inviting them to that year’s Fair, including as they did so the vital air tickets which enabled them to get out of the country on their release!  A presentation of Argentina’s Guest of Honour logo wraps up the conference, followed by a musical interlude outside provided by a rather good Argentinian trio on piano, double-bass and accordian….

The Penguin stand in Hall 8.0

Hall 8.0 is busy.  A quick tour round earlier on and lots of familiar faces from the UK publishing trade were seen huddled around tables, engaged in conversation, meetings well under way, even at 9.30am.  For someone like me, experiencing Frankfurt for the first time, it’s everything I expected it to be and more.  Yes, the scale of the place is daunting to begin with but after you’ve got your bearings it all makes perfect sense and the fairground is surprisingly easy to navigate round.

The Clients Lounge in Hall 8.0

The Clients Lounge in Hall 8.0 is proving a popular place for events already.  This morning there was a panel discussion entitled ‘Global Ranking’ with a panel of four speakers from around the world.  It was well-attended and as i listened from the back there were a number of interesting questions about globalisation raised by members of the audience.  It was refreshing to seeing visitors stop and want to engage in discussion.

The mood of the fair today is good i would say.  People are here because they want to do business.  Yes, times are tough and some publishers may have cut down on their numbers, but i get the impression that those who are here are very focussed.  They have an agenda, they have plenty of meetings, and they are not wasting time.  Half-hourly slots on their Blackberrys are filling up fast…

This afternoon i’m off to explore the other halls and get a taste of what other international publishers are up to.  It’s hard to think of anywhere else that you would find so many people from so many different parts of the world all congregated in one place.  I guess that’s what makes Frankfurt special.

Simpson’s artist Bill Morrison was a star attraction today at the Comics Centre of the FBF. (See a video of an interview with Morrison here) During a Q&A session, he answered the fans most vexing questions about the show and the comics, starting with the most important:

“Where is Springfield.”

His answer: A lot of people think Springfield is in Oregon where Matt Groening is from. But the real answer is Springfield everywhere, except probably Japan. A couple years ago there was a contest in the United States to find the “real” Springfield where the movie premier would be and Springfield, Vermont won.

Q: Why does the city of Springfield keep changing? Sometime there’s a building here, or something different there?

A: It may sound strange to say it, but Springfield is a lot like Batman’s utility belt. Whatever you need for an episode has to be there. We never sacrifice comedy for continuity, so people sometimes act like it’s a soap opera and get upset when it’s not what they expect.

Q: What is your favorite Simpson’s character?”

A: Homer, though he said that Comic Book Guy was becoming his favorite.

Q: When will Maggie say another word?

A: She’s already said two words. Her first was “Daddy,” then there was “sequel” at the end of the movie. There have been episodes in which you see the Simpson’s in the future and Maggie is there an always on the phone. Whenever she’s about to speak, she gets interrupted. I don’t think that’s a joke they want to ruin, so I would have to say probably never.

Q: Will the Simpson’s ever grow older?

A: Only in those episodes where you see them in the future.

Q: Will there be a sequel to the movie? Or perhaps a live action version, such as one that would have Brad Pitt starring as Bart Simpson.

A: Knowing the movie studio’s love of money, I would say yes, but only after they have a good script are they likely to announce it. I think a live action movie would be great. There was a version of the opening sequence filmed in the UK using real people. It was great. They used it once on the actual show.

If I recall correctly, Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader was the hit of the 1994 Frankfurt Book Fair. It went on to be translated into 39 languages and become the first novel by a German to hit the top of the New York Times bestseller list. A film of the book starring Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes is currently in production, and is due for release next year. 

There is a new book by Schlink being offered at this year’s fair. It’s a powerful work of nonfiction called Guilt about the Past. In the book, which consists of six essays based on the Weidenfeld Lectures he gave at Oxford University earlier this year, Schlink explores the phenomenon of guilt and how it attaches to a whole society, not just to individual perpetrators. He considers how to use the lesson of history to motivate individual moral behaviour, how to reconcile a guilt-laden past, the role of law in this process and how the theme of guilt influences his own fiction. 

The book is coming from an unlikely source: Australia’s University of Queensland Press (UQP). In something of a coup, the press has been granted world English language rights by the author.

Interest in the book, which will be published in Australia in January 2009, has so far been ‘white hot … and people are getting out their calculators!’ UQP’s ebullient general manager Greg Bain told me yesterday. The interest will undoubtedly shed more light on this excellent press, which for 60 years has been publishing a wide range of quality adult and youth literature, as well as academic and adult nonfiction works, from its headquarters in Brisbane, Australia.

Acclaimed Nigerian-American writer Uzodinma Iweala (Uzo, for short) arrived in Frankfurt to offer an afternoon reading from his novel “Beasts of No Nation” – the harrowing story of a child soldier fighting in an unnamed West African country. I caught up with Iweala to ask him a few questions about the international reaction to his book and his response to critics:

FBF: What has the international audience reacted to your book now that it’s appeared in more countries? Is it different than the initial reaction in America?

UI: I’ve been lucky, in that people have reacted to the book very positively. I think that the reason is the topic is one that people have exposure to through the news, but don’t get an in-depth exposure. A novel is a different way of looking at a topic than a news article.

I’ve also been unlucky in the sense that people question whether or not I have a right to have write the book. I think it’s a fair question: Why do you think you can write about child soldiers? My answer is “what gives you the right to say anything.” What has been tough is people calling me an opportunist without understanding my background. People ask me, ‘Why aren’t you a child soldier? Why are you wearing a sweater and jeans?’

FBF: Does that have largely to do with race? White writers have written about Africa without being similarly criticized.

UI: I think you’re on to something. If you’re a good writer, then write about what you want. Take Philip Gourevitch [editor of The Paris Review and author of We Wish To Inform You Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families] he’s a Jewish guy writing about the Rwandan massacre. It’s all about empathy, that’s why you write books.

There is this thing where you are expected to speak for Africa if you’re an African writer. I think that’s where the criticism comes into this. People are looking for the authentic African author – one who is unspoiled and un-Westernized. I don’t think that exists.

Everyone knows Paulo Coelho was a rock lyricist early in his career, but who knew he could sing? The author was surprisingly on-key as he joined the band on stage last night in a version of Bob Marley’s classic “No Woman, No Cry” at party in his honor at the King Kamehameha Club, sponsored jointly by his German language publisher Diogenes and Mercedes Benz.

The 61-year-old was all smiles while serenading the crowd of publishing execs and assorted well wishers.

Fans of Coelho treat him with a cultish, messianic fervor. Just in case you miss the comparison with God, the invitation made it overt. It came – at least to one friend, hand delivered – on a near poster sized card and the image, of Coelho reaching out and pointing to a glass of wine – riffed on Michaelango’s portrait of God on the Sistine Chapel ceiling as he reaches out his hand to give life to Adam.

Flat screen TV’s around the club flashed portraits of Coelho’s fans posing with their favorite of his books, images he solicited himself off his Website. The only thing missing from the evening were temporary tattoos of the author that could be applied to one’s body, or at the very least, some free copies of his books. Perhaps the organizers assumed everyone there was already familiar with his work (though a surprising number surveyed admitted to having never read him..

As the evening wound down, people slowly trickled out into the drizzling night, the Bossa Nova band, with an impossibly leggy Brazilian singer, finished up with the Joao Gilberto songbook.

Surprisingly, for such a posh party the liquor on offer were call brands only and there were no goodie bags of gifts (or maybe I just got there too late).

Really, after selling one hundred million copies, would the keys to a new Mercedes have been too much to ask?

One of several parties at the Frankfurter Hof Hotel last night was the Berlin Verlag party, where many publishing types gathered (including the Frankfurt Fellows, who seem to be at all the parties) to hear the announcement of this year’s Man Booker Prize. The Man Booker people, co-sponsors of the party, had arranged for the live announcement by the BBC to be shown on large TV screens dotted around the ornate and tightly packed hospitality room.

After a few false alarms, the announcement was finally made and the book industry could wallow in about ten seconds of glorious televised coverage before the BBC went back to covering the global financial crisis, and then showed a video of Tom Jones.

Still, this was sufficiently long to discover that Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger had won the £50,000 award, becoming the fourth Indian writer (not counting V S Naipaul), and the fourth debutant novelist, to win the award.

A novel about the last days of East Germany, Uwe Tellkamp’s Der Turm (The Tower) is this year’s winner of the 25,000 euro German Book Prize, Germany’s premier award for fiction. Notably, the novel (published by Suhrkamp) was only published in September in Germany and has yet to be published elsewhere.

‘Through the lives of a middle-class Dresden family, [Tellkamp] tells of conformity and of resistance within a system that has run its course,’ says the citation from the award’s seven judges. ‘The novel is set in very different milieus, among school students, doctors, the literati and political cadres. Uwe Tellkamp sends his rebellious hero Christian Hoffman on a journey through hell … as never before, the reader is given a true sense of the flavour, ways of speaking and mentalities in the final days of the GDR [German Democratic Republic].’

Der Turm was chosen from 161 novels published in Germany this year, and a shortlist of five.

English-language extracts and other information about the shortlisted books can be found here.

He is, arguably, the most popular writer on the planet, one so successful that he’s being vetted with a party tomorrow for having sold 100 million copies of his books worldwide. Paulo Coelho, the Brazilian “Alchemist of Words” gave the keynote speech this morning. Entitled “The writer as pop star,” Coelho meditated on his own use of digital publishing tools to reach his massive audience. (His blog alone gets 50,000 unique visitors a day).

Coelho joked before starting that the book had 1,000 more years to go before it would disappear “then the government can rescue it,” he said, making a reference to recent government bailouts of the finance industry.

Last year, in his keynote address, publishing consultant Michael Cader urged publishers to harness advances in technology to connect with their readers; Coelho has taken that advice to heart and demonstrated how it benefitted him. Already a superstar, Coelho has the instincts of a big time performer, a Bono of the literary world and has been prescient enough to embrace the Internet as a friend rather than foe. Earlier this year he made the decision to place his Portuguese works on his web site in a free digital format. Then, he explained, because he did not own the rights to the translation (they were not his work), he linked to file sharing sites across the Web that offered “pirated” copies of his works.

Following the appearance of his books online for free in America, where they can be read online but not printed, he found he had two books – the Alchemist and The Witch of Portobello – on the New York Times bestseller list simultaneously for the first time. Coelho’s thinking about the subject of giving away his book for free is simple: “People will read the first chapter and then realize they can’t take the computer on the subway so they will go and buy the book.”

And of course, in the spirit of sharing, he also made his Frankfurt speech available online immediately following the talk. Read it, it’s enlightening if only to underscore the fact that even a man closing in on retirement age is capable of mastering MySpace, blogging and the Internet in general. (Coelho slipped in the fact that his Web master is, appropriately, Turkish). If Coelho can do it, then publishers and authors half his age have no excuse not to at least make some effort.

Despite his enormous success, Coelho appears to have retained some humility. His answer to a an audience question about his opinion of women’s literature was simple and skillfully avoided controversy: “Writing is a feminine process” and as a consequence “there was only feminine writing, written by male authors and female authors.”

When asked the age old question of where he gets his ideas, he replied “other people.”

A quick survey among audience members suggested that self-styled “book people” may not be converted to Coelho just yet. More than a few said they’d yet to read one of his books.

Mostly likely, that wouldn’t give him pause and he’ just see them potential sales.

Alex Goia, a radio reporter from M94.5 in Munich was impressed enough to give him a try.

“He was smart, and funny. Older, but still young at heart,” said Goia. “I’ve not read any of his books, but a friend recommended “The Alchemist” and I think I’ll read it now.

And that is a perfect example of how is how you get to one hundred million sales – you do it by selling one book at a time.