For me, this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair started and ended with Cate Kennedy.
Before that, however, I misplaced my voice somewhere between the airport and my hotel, and was never to find it again for the duration. By day one, I sounded like Donald Duck, had a full-blown cold, and had over 60 appointments to deal with. Somehow, it was all right on the night. At one stage I found myself apologising for the thin timbre of my speech, only to hear an equally surreal rasping noise reassure me that my interlocutor had the same problem. The Frankfurt Flu, as it’s often known, tends to afflict about a third of participants by fair’s end each year. It seems to be due to a combination of long-haul air travel and breathing in each other’s air in vast caverns at the fair.
For those who’ve never been to Frankfurt, it is an enormous set of halls housing publishers and agents from around the world who get together to try to buy and sell rights to their books. There are also publishing suppliers touting their services. Agents and publishers get together at a succession of half-hour meetings that can last from nine in the morning to six o'clock at night. And there’s drinks at various bars, dinners and drinks, and drinks and drinks later at night for those who have the stamina and networking skills.
I had interesting talks (believe it or not) with a few old friends and new ones, incuding a fascinating perambulation with my fellow blogger, Richard Charkin, the head of Macmillan UK. Richard is extremely gloomy about the state and fate of the UK book trade, and is particularly doleful about the prospects of large publishers like his. Later on, though, my old friend Andrew Franklin, the brilliant owner of the UK’s Profile Books (and small publisher of the year for the third time), was positively bubbling with enthusiasm, and claimed that publishers always complain, that the UK economy was doing well, and that the UK book trade was quite OK. (Andrew had just received an order from Tesco for 20,000 copies of one his titles, which may have affected his mood somewhat.) It struck me, once again, that success makes an agile independent trade-publisher feel more satisfaction with the state of publishing than heavyweights often do.
Which brings me to Cate Kennedy. On the eve of the fair, we sold North American rights in a two-book deal (her short-story collection, Dark Roots, and a novel that Cate has just started working on) to Elisabeth Schmitz at Grove/Atlantic. Elisabeth is highly regarded within the world of fiction publishing, and her judgement and enthusiasm carries great weight.
Then, on the first day of the fair, I sold UK & Commonwealth rights to Toby Mundy at Atlantic Books in London. And, suddenly, everyone I met seemed to be talking about or wanting to know about ‘the wonderful Australian writer, Cate Kennedy’. I gave copies to several European publishers, was asked to send copies by several others, and kept being congratulated on publishing Cate. I know that Elisabeth and Grove’s owner, Morgan Entrekin, was spreading the word around the fair – even though they derived no financial benefit by doing so. In fact, when I met Morgan at the very end of the fair, he was sitting and talking to an excellent Danish publisher, praising Cate’s work. As it happened, I’d just met with our Scandinavian agents, so I was able to tell him where to get a reading copy.
The generosity of spirit of Elisabeth and Morgan, and other publishers I met, kept me going when my voice and energy levels were hard to discern. In fact, I was struck by how much fellow-feeling there is amongst quality independent publishers around the world. They know each other, trust each other’s judgements, and are unstinting in their enthusiasm for each other’s work. It’s been a wonderful experience to be accepted in this fellowship, and I think it will be a great help to our authors as time goes by.
And, of course, one good turn deserves another. This year, like last year, I couldn’t resist buying a book from one of US publishing’s great men – Peter Mayer. Peter, who used to run US Penguin, is the owner of The Overlook Press in the States and Duckworth in the UK. In fact, I bought more than one book from him: Christopher’s Ghosts, the next novel by Charles McCarry, the US’s great spy-thriller writer (along with some of his best backlist titles), and an amazing spoof/hoax title called The Art of Funerary Violin– a kind of Molvania of violin history that was front-page news at the fair, and was reported on in The Guardian and The New York Times.
For the next few weeks, proposals, manuscripts, and finished books will be pouring into our office for possible acquistion by us. And we’ll be sending the same kinds of materials to agents and publishers interested in our authors' works. That’s Frankfurt. A little bit of selling, and a little bit of buying. And a few frankfurts. And a few drinks. Frenzy, friendships, and flu. If I can just find my voice, I’ll do it all again next year.
Henry Rosenbloom