Dear newsletter subscriber,
February News
According to Publishers Marketplace , Andrew Lownie remains the top selling agent in the world across all categories with 55 recorded US & UK deals over the last six months His nearest rival has 44 deals. The agency is ranked seventh worldwide behind large agencies such as Trident, Writers House and William Morris. In the category UK Non-fiction, he is also top with 57 deals over twelve months with the no 2 agent at 10 deals . The agency is also top in UK Non-fiction with the Viney Agency second at 12 deals. Lownie is also top worldwide in biography whilst in history/politics/current affairs, the agency is joint second worldwide with William Morris - two deals behind Trident Media Group. This is an extraordinary achievement given all but one of the deals were concluded by Lownie and the competing agencies have dozens of agents.
Andrew spoke at the London Author Fair on Friday 28th February on two panels: ‘Agents of Change: the Evolution of the Literary Agent’ and ‘The Big Publishing Brain Storm: how can we get to where we want to be in 2020?’
He also took part in a panel discussion on Monday 3rd March at the Biographers Club on how to pitch and promote biography.
He also appeared in the Daily Mail commenting on Les Dawson’s newly discovered romantic historical novel. Heard the one about Les Dawson’s secret life as a romantic novelist? And no, it’s not a joke, as his daughter reveals
Nicholas Best’s fascinating history of the British in Kenya, Happy Valley: The Story of the English in Kenya , recently reissued by Thistle Publishing, went into the non-fiction Top 100.
Jessie Childs’ God’s Traitors on the Catholic predicament in Elizabethan England through the eyes of one remarkable family: the Vauxes of Harrowden Hall has garnered terrific pre-publication reviews including:
"Scholarly, absorbing, even-handed and relevant." Ben Macintyre, The Times (Book of the Week)
"This vivid, minutely researched and brilliantly original history is a much-needed look at the dark side of the Elizabethan age". Dan Jones, Sunday Times
"A triumph of story-telling, backed by first-rate research." Antonia Fraser
"Childs has employed her impressive research skills and storytelling verve to bring that past vividly to life." Virginia Rounding, Daily Telegraph (5 stars)
"A riveting account of resistance in an age of intolerance, God’s Traitors brings alive the story of the men – and remarkable women – of a defiant family." Leanda de Lisle
Jeremy Clay has written another fascinating piece for the BBC, based on his book The Burglar Caught By A Skeleton and Other Singular Stories from the Victorian Press. Once again, the article quickly became one of the top 5 Most Read and Most Shared stories on the BBC site.10 bizarre Victorian love stories
Helen Croydon’s Screw the Fairytale: what if you don’t want marriage and kids?” has attracted a lot of media interest including an appearance of ITV’s Daybreak and a feature in the Independent.
Not the marrying kind: ‘A Modern Girl’s Guide to Sex and Love’
The PLR chart for the most borrowed authors in UK libraries features Ian Graham at number 321, ahead of JRR Tolkien, Jackie Collins, and even Dan Brown. PLR’s most borrowed
Carol Lee’s Out of Winter published by Hodder, was serialised in the Daily Mail.
Kathleen O’Shea’s Little Drifters has spent two the last two weeks in the non-fiction paperback list and is currently no 12 .
The serial of Monica Porter’s Raven: My Year of Dating Dangerously made headlines around the world.
Shaun Walker’s fascinating investigation Odessa Dreams: The Dark Heart of Ukraine’s Online Marriage Industry went into the Kindle Singles non-fiction top 20. Odessa Dreams
Several agency authors have been blogging in the Huffington Post including Paul Anthony Jones 13 Words You Probably Didn’t Know Were Coined By Authors & The Extraordinary Origins of 11 Ordinary Words and Rocky Mason Pirate Hunter
Joff Sharpe continues his regular column in the South China Morning Post based on his book Who Dares Wins in Business Thoroughbreds for any situation
February Deals
Andrew Lownie has sold to Orion Eat Your Way To Lower Cholesterol: : Delicious Recipes to Reduce Your Cholesterol by up to 20% in Under Three Months..., based on one of the most popular diet plans produced by the Mail on Sunday , and co-written by the agency’s author Dr Laura Corr.
Hardie Grant have bought Daisy de Villeneuve’s new collection of felt tip whimsical musings I Should Have Said.
UK rights in Dr James Barry: A Woman Ahead of Her Time, a life of the high-ranking British army surgeon found on death in 1865 to have been a woman , by Michael du Preez and Jeremy Dronfield has been bought by Oneworld and the drama rights optioned .
US rights in Ian Graham’s Courtesan which tells the stories of the lives of the most famous, or notorious, women whose liaisons with royalty and aristocrats brought them wealth, fame and freedom , have been bought by St Martin’s Press.
Clare Mulley’s new book The Women Who Flew for Hitler: : Hanna Reitsch and Melitta von Stauffenberg, the real Valkyries of WWII a joint biography of Nazi Germany’s most highly honoured female test-pilots, has been sold to Macmillan in the UK and St Martin’s Press in the US.
Harper Collins have commissioned two further title in Casey Watson’s successful fostering series . Too Ugly for Love revolves around eight-year old Phillipa, who has Foetal Alcohol Syndrome, and The Runaway tells the story of Leo who is sent to Casey’s unit because of his truancy.
John Murray have bought world rights in Josephine Wilkinson’s life of Henry VIII’s fifth wife Katherine Howard, : Tarnished Purity
Jonathan Conlin’s Tales of Two Cities: Paris and London, 1750-1914 has been sold to Japan andRoger Crowley’s City of Fortune: How Venice won and lost a naval empire sold in Russian
Andrew Lownie
Selected current submissions
Nicholas Best continues his series of snapshot evocations of critical periods of history, through the lives of dozens of famous people, by looking at the seven days around Pearl Harbour in Seven Days of Infamy.
Ronald Binns’s The True History of the Loch Ness Monster is an up-to-date, authoritative and readable insider’s account of the Loch Ness saga which covers every aspect of the monster and its habitat.
Crime correspondent Duncan Campbell’s new book is We'll All Be Murdered In Our Beds: a history of the world of crime reporting.
David Craig has two very different books on offer: The Thai Food Diet: Lose weight by eating the best food in the world and Your Money: : 50 ways to grow it in difficult times
Alicia Eaton’s Mind How Your Kids Eat which shows parents how to deal with the issues of fussy eating, childhood obesity, emotional overeating, junk food cravings and body image worries.
Gavin Evans’s Black brain, white brain , already sold in South Africa, challenges the idea that intelligence is influenced by racial origin whilst his Gender Bender: men, women and evolutionary psychologists sets out to show that male and female minds do not emerge from different planets and that our emotional and intellectual capacities are moulded more by culture than biology.
Eleanor Fitzsimon’s Wilde's Women which explores the many rewarding relationships that the writer Oscar Wilde enjoyed with a series of fascinating and accomplished women throughout his life.
Former wife of England footballer Paul Merson, Lorraine Fletcher’s blend of personal memoir with motivational writing, giving a fascinating insight into the reality of being a WAG while showing how anyone can change their life for the better.Connect With Yourself: from WAG to life coach.
Timothy Good’s latest UFO book Earth: An Alien Enterprise. US rights to Pegasus.
Glyn Gowan’s revisionist biography , Prince George: Duke of Kent, which reassesses the reputation of George V’s most handsome, glamorous and cultured son.
Martin Hammond’s Ask a Silly Question: Messages from eBay's most troublesome customer, a collection of stupidly funny and completely genuine email exchanges between the quirky Fredrick Facedass and the online sellers of eBay.
Christian Jennings’ account of a crucial Second World War battle in Italy Gothic Line : The First Battle of the Cold War
John Jobling’s investigation of the rock group U2: The Goal is $oul. St Martin’s Press publish in April to tie in with the release of their new album. Rights also sold to Poland and Portugal
Diana Kader’s Hear My Cry - the true story of a Yemeni/British woman, Diana Kader, who successfully resisted a forced marriage whilst on a dream holiday to the Yemen and two attempts on her life by her spurned suitor.
Katy Long’s Mending Migration: how to make immigration work for all of us which documents the real impact of migration upon our economic, social and cultural lives.
Sean Longden’s Deliver us from Evil: The Liberation of the Concentration Camps, 1945.
Christine Lord’s Who Killed My Son?: A devastating memoir of a boy taken too soon and his mother’s quest for justice part memoir and part investigation into how BSE started, how it was allowed to enter the human food chain and why it was kept secret from the public for so long.
Banker and historian David Lough’s ‘Churchill and his Money: A Perfect Sieve’ which tells the hitherto unknown story of Churchill’s lifetime of problems with his personal finances.
Teena Lyons’ The Complete guide to ghostwriting based on interviews with leading ghosts, agents and publishers.
Jacon Minnema’s Beyond Hope, the prison memoir of a sixteen year old American boy who spent a year in a Saudi jail
Malcolm Nelson’s memoirs of working for Customs & Excise The Perfect Run: Busting the Heathrow Smugglers
Elizabeth Norton’s two Tudor studies: Great Ladies: the Women Who Shaped Henry VIII’s Court and The Seymour Scandal
Tracy Norton’s For the Love of Lexie is the account of one woman’s fight – firstly to help her daughter overcome addiction, and then, when that failed, to keep her grand-daughter Lexie safe
Mike Pannett, author of a bestselling series of memoirs of policing in Yorkshire, with an account of his time in the Metropolitan Police Crime Squad
Former MOD official Nick Pope’s account of a famous UFO incident based on two new key witnesses Encounter in Rendlesham Forest
Lucy Popescu’s A Country of Refuge an anthology of new writings on asylum seekers.
Brazilian model Gabriella Santos’s memoir Full Brazilian : The true story of baring all in the front line of lap dancing lifting the lid on the lap dancing clubs, punters and girls. ANZ rights sold.
Ross Slater’s memoir Spy Games: One Man's Account of What it Takes to be a Double Agent
Mandy Smith’s Cabin Fever a raunchy and hilarious, account of what it’s like to be a stewardess in the modern world of air travel. ANZ rights sold.
Tim Tate’s Hitler, Erika and M a powerful, first-person account of being at the heart of one of the Nazi’s cruellest and most obscene experiments - the Lebensborn program to create a new Aryan master race.
Lee Trimble’s biography of his father Beyond the Call: The Incredible True Story of One American’s Life-or-Death Mission on the Eastern Front in World War II which tells the extraordinary World War Two story of an US pilot who covertly smuggled over a thousand people to freedom, including American POWs, foreign slave labourers and concentration camp inmates, from his airbase in the Ukraine. US rights sold to Penguin
Anita Varma’s Booze, Baths and Brothels: A Time Traveller’s Guide to First Century Rome not only brings together new research but offers a unique window into a world which has dominated our culture for centuries.
Dick Venables’ memoir of his career in Disaster Management and Disaster Victim Identification A Life in Death: The Remarkable Career of DI Richard Venables, Disaster Detective
Philip Walker’s The Men Who Shaped the Arab Revolt: T. E. Lawrence’s Forgotten Colleagues which takes a fresh approach to the campaign, by looking at it through the experiences of seventeen British officers and intelligence operatives.
Martin Williams’s The Price of God: How religion took over Britain. which tells the story of how the government has become a cash cow for religion.
David Haviland
Fiction submissions
Rickshaw, a gritty, comic tale of London nightlife and redemption from David McGrath.
The Gaps Between the Tracks, a quirky mystery featuring a blind detective, the debut novel from record producer Andy Bracken.
Weep No More, a romantic saga set against the sweep of history, in the tradition of James Clavell, Noel Barber and Colleen McCullough, by bestselling novelist Marius Gabriel.
Louisa Treger’s literary novel The Lodger, which tells the story of the passionate affair between writer Dorothy Richardson and H. G. Wells. US rights sold to St Martin’s Press.
Dominic Adler’s hard-boiled thriller The Ninth Circle, featuring reluctant assassin Cal Winter and his enigmatic employers The Firm.
The Art of Letting Go a thoughtful and surprising drama about art and artifice by award-winning debut novelist Chloe Banks.
Warwick Cairns’ action-packed historical romp The Fall, set during the English Civil War.
March Publications
God’s Traitors by Jessie Childs
Daddy's Little Princess by Cathy Glass
Stolen Voices by Shannon Kyle
The Demon's Brood by Desmond Seward
Last Gentleman of the SAS:: John Randall’s War 1939-45 by Mei Trow
True Lies by Ross Slater
Wish I Was There(pb) by Emily Lloyd and Douglas Wight
They eat horses, don’t they?: The Truth about the French(pb) by Piu Marie Eatwell
Confessions of a Chelsea Boy: The Autobiography (pb) by Spencer Matthews & Christian Guiltenane
Survivor on the River Kwai(pb) by Reg Twigg
Best wishes, Andrew Lownie & David Haviland
