Dear newsletter subscriber,
December News
This year has been the most successful in the agency’s twenty-five year history. There were fifty six UK deals, compared to thirty nine last year, divided between eighteen publishers with ten deals with Collins, eight with Random House, five with Oneworld and four each with Orion, Blake, Icon, and Macmillan . US/Canadian and Australian deals were up four from the twenty in 2012 and there were seventy four deals in translation compared to sixty nine the year before.
According to Publishers Marketplace, among literary agents worldwide Andrew Lownie is currently:
- No.1 in Agents
- No.1 in International rights: UK Non-fiction
- No.2 in Non-fiction: History/Politics/Current Affairs
- The Agency overall is:
- No.1 in International rights: UK Non-fiction
- No.4 in Non-fiction: History/Politics/Current Affairs worldwide
- No.8 in Agencies worldwide
Lynne Barrett-Lee’s creative writing guide Novel: Plan it. Write it. Sell it. reached number one in its Amazon categories Authorship, Publishing and Books.
Ian Graham’s The Ultimate Book of Impostors was the subject of a feature in the New York Post.
Marina Chapman was once again featured in the Mail on Sunday to tie in with a documentary on the National Geographic Channel. Her The Girl With No Name: The Incredible True Story of the Girl Raised by Monkeysremained in the top twenty paperback non-fiction bestsellers.
Simon Cursey’s account of British undercover operations in Northern Ireland, MRF: Shadow Troop generated huge coverage following a BBC Panorama investigation and Mail on Sunday serial.
NetGalley selected James Davies’ Cracked: Why Psychiatry is Doing More Harm Than Good as one of the ten best books of 2013.
Cathy Glass was third and fifth respectively in the Sunday Times bestselling memoirs of the year with Please Don’t Take My Baby, published in April, selling 48,145 copies and Will You Love Me?: Lucy's Story, published in September, selling 40,625 copies. Her new creative writing guide About Writing And How to Publish went straight to number one in its Amazon category.
Paul Jones’ Haggard Hawks and Paltry Poltroons was featured in The Guardian as one of the Best Language Books of 2013.
Sean McMeekin’s July 1914: Countdown to War was widely reviewed and praised and named by Kirkus as one of the best non-fiction books of 2013.
Casey Watson’s A Last Kiss for Mummy was no 17 in the paperback non-fiction best seller list.
Recent Sales
Bonnier bought World English rights in the memoirs of the Queen’s former Press Secretary Dickie Arbiter, for publication next autumn. The book, already the subject of diary pieces and serial and foreign interest, provides a rare insight into the life of the Queen and her family not least the marriage breakdown of Prince Charles and the events surrounding the death of Princess Diana.
Andy Donaldson’s Terrible Estate Agent Photos based on his successful blog was bought by Random House imprint Square Peg.
Annabelle Forest’s Child of Courage: My Escape From a Satanic Sex Cult, ghosted by Katy Weitz, was sold to Simon & Schuster.
Transworld bought Race to Truth in which Lance Armstrong’s soigneur Emma O’Reilly lifts the lid on life behind the Tour de France and one of the biggest sports scandals this century.
Vanessa Nicolson’s family memoir, On Mothers and Men, centred around the death of her nineteen year old daughter and her own complex relationship with her parents was bought by Granta as a lead title for next year.
Black Inc bought ANZ rights in Gabriella Santos’s Full Brazilian : The true story of baring all in the front line of lap dancing.. UK & US rights remain free.
US publisher Pegasus bought two further Desmond Seward titles - The Last White Rose: Fear and Paranoia in the Tudor court and his forthcoming history of the Plantagenets The Demon's Brood
Foreign rights sales included:
Nicholas Best’s Five Days That Shocked The World: An Oral History of Europe at the End of World War Two to Spain.
Roger Crowley’s Constantinople: The Last Great Siege to Spain.
Cathy Glass’s Will You Love Me?: Lucy's Story to Germany.
Stewart Lansley’s Londongrad: From Russia with Cash to Poland.
Ian Millthorpe’s Mum's Way to China.
Andrew Lownie
Selected current submissions
Timothy Good’s latest UFO book Earth: An Alien Enterprise. US rights to Pegasus.
Denise Gossage’s Raise Your Grade a revision guide for GCSE and A Level students based on a unique methodology of PUMP: Plan, Understand, Memorise, Practise.
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.
Teena Lyons’ The Complete guide to ghostwriting based on interviews with leading ghosts, agents and publishers.
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
Ross Slater’s memoir Spy Games: One Man's Account of What it Takes to be a Double Agent
Mandy Smith’s exhilarating, and often hilarious, account of what it’s like to be a stewardess in the modern world of air travel. Cabin Fever.
Lee Trimble’s investigation into his father’s extraordinary wartime exploits Beyond the Call: The Incredible True Story of One American’s Life-or-Death Mission on the Eastern Front in World War II. US rights sold to Penguin
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.
We are very grateful to the agency team without whom we couldn’t operate: Jing Dong for all he does to maintain the website; to Meg Davis and Jo Cantello who handle drama and documentary rights; Camilla Ferrier, Jemma McDonagh, Sarah McFadden, Georgina Le Grice, Charlotte Bruton and Farhat Malik at the Marsh Agency who sell translation rights; Andrew Subramanian, Vivien Phung and Pradyuman Vyas who take care of vat and the accounts and Hazel Hill who assiduously checks the royalty statements. A special thanks to Jeremy Dronfield who joined the agency as an author and ghost this year and also has been a fantastically quick and astute reader .
A Happy New Year to them and to you.
Best wishes, Andrew Lownie & David Haviland
