Dear Newsletter subscriber,
The agency continues to sell more than one book a week to either a UK or US publisher and remains top in the Publishers Marketplace list of agencies selling non-fiction in the UK with seventeen announced sales over the last few months – six ahead of the nearest rival.
Recent UK and US Sales
Constable have bought UK & Commonwealth rights in Jon Frost’s customs memoir Shooting the Queen’s Corgis for publication next year.
Collins have bought a new Cathy Glass memoir Please Don’t Take My Baby for publication next April.
Pegasus have bought North American rights in Earth: An Alien Enterprise by veteran best-selling UFO writer Timothy Good.
North American rights in Ian Graham’s collection Impostors have been sold to Source Books.
Piu Das Gupta’s They eat horses, don’t they?: Myths and facts about the French was bought by Head of Zeus for publication next spring.
Constable have bought UK & Commonwealth rights in Paul Jones’s word derivation book Haggard Hawks and Paltry Poltroons
North American rights in Nick Pope’s Rendezvous at Rendlesham have been bought by St Martin’s Press.
The latest in Mei Trow’s historical crime series featuring Christopher Marlowe Jealous Honour to Severn House.
The Girl With No Name: The Incredible True Story of the Girl Raised by Monkeys by Marina Chapman to Brazil.
Cathy Glass’s The Girl in the Mirror and Another Forgotten Child to Poland
Geoff Roberts’s Stalin’s General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov to Brazil
Daniel Tammet’s Thinking in Numbers to Korea and Japan
Chinese (simplified characters) in Christian Wolmar’s book on how railways changed the world Blood, Iron and Gold
Recent Successes
Cathy Glass’s latest fostering memoir Another Forgotten Child has spent most of the last six weeks in the top five paperback non-fiction list with three weeks at no 2.
Casey Watson’s fostering memoir Too Hurt to Stay has been in the top seven paperback non-fiction list for the last three weeks.
David Haviland’s trivia book How to Remove a Brain And Other Bizarre Medical Practices and Clare Mulley’s The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville were both serialized in the Daily Mail.
Real Business and London Loves Business serialised Shed Simove’s Success... Or Your Money Back!.
Books out in November
Duncan Falconer’s thriller Assassin
Paul Jones’s reference book The British Isles: A Trivia Gazetteer
Kerry Katona’s Still Standing: The autobiography
The paperback of Sam Faier’s best-selling Living Life the Essex Way
Current Submissions
Adrian Clark’s biography of the art collector and Cecil Beaton’s lover Peter Watson
Jeremy Clay’s trivia collection Lion Loose in Llandrindod: And Other Singular Tales from the Victorian Press
Helen Croydon's F*ck the Fairytale: A contented singleton explores alternative romance.
Peter Daughtrey's discovery of the lost city of Atlantis and The Silver City. US rights sold to Pegasus.
Gavin Evans's Gender Bender: men, women and evolutionary psychologists which sets out to show that male and female emotional and intellectual capacities are moulded more by culture than biology and Black brain, white brain which draws from recent discoveries in palaeontology, archaeology and biological anthropology to argue that race is useful as no more than a short-hand descriptive term and that the genetic differences between people from all over the world are miniscule compared with other species.
Joe Fuhrmann’s biography, just published in the US, Rasputin: The Untold Story
Tim Good’s UFO book Earth: An Alien Enterprise. US rights sold to Pegasus.
Ian Graham's Impostors which tells the stories of the boldest and most notorious impostors of the past 500 years. US rights sold to Source Books.
David Haviland Between the Lines which reveals some of the most fascinating, amusing, and little-known stories behind our favourite novels, poems and plays.
Mary Hollingsworth’s study of the 1559 papal election Conclave.
Roger Howard’s forgotten story of the former Nazi scientists who were recruited by Egypt in the 1950s and ‘60s to develop a long-range missile capable of striking Israel. Operation Damocles. US rights sold to Pegasus.
John Jobling's U2: The Goal is $oul, the first unauthorised biography of U2 to document and analyse their 35-year career objectively, going beyond the myth to present a fascinating warts-and-all portrait of the Irish rock band. US (St Martin’s Press) and Portuguese rights already sold.
Music producer and song writer Bob Johnston's memoirs of working with amongst others Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Simon & Garfunkel, Leonard Cohen, Aretha Franklin, The Byrds, Louis Armstrong, Paul Revere & the Raiders, The Click Clacks, Charlie Daniels, and Arcade Fire Is It Rolling, Bob?
David Long's Spy's London, a walking guide to the espionage capital of the world.
Debbie McDonald's The Mysterious Lives of Moura Budberg on the spy and lover of H G Wells and Maxim Gorky.
Chris Marinello's Raider of the Lost Art: The Incredible True Story of One Man's Journey into the World of Stolen Art
Paul Merrill’s comic memoir A Polar Bear Ate My Head: Confessions of a reluctant lad’s mag editor, satirical The History of Blokes in 100 Objects and subversive parenting guides Muddle Your Way Through Fatherhood: How to fool people into thinking you’re a great dad and Muddle Your Way Through Being a Grandparent: How to fool people into thinking you’re a great Granny or Gramps. ANZ rights sold to Random House(Australia).
Tim Newark's Black Soldiers in White Armies: Race, Class and War, the first popular history book to tell the epic story of African origin soldiers in British and American armies in their words, taken from personal journals, diaries and interviews.
Sonia Oatley's poignant memoir of her murdered daughter Bye, Mam, I love you.
Bijan Omrani’s historical travel book Caesar's Footprints.
Susan Ottaway’s Sisters, Secrets and Sacrifice: The True Story of WWII Special Agents Eileen and Jacqueline Nearne. UK rights sold to Harper Collins.
Peter Padfield’s Hess, Hitler and Churchill: The Real Turning Point of World War Two.
Stewardess Victoria Peters' humorous and sexy memoirs Fly Me!
Jamie Pike's The Ultimate Guide to Filming Locations in New York City an illustrated walking tour of New York film scenes.
Nick Pope’s UFO book Rendezvous at Rendlesham. US rights sold to St Martin’s Press
Economist Gary Smith's collection of dozens of examples of tortuous reasoning Fooling Ourselves
Barbara Stcherbatcheff's Women on Top: What the world's top businesswomen would change if they were in charge.
Fiction Submissions
David Haviland, who has worked at the agency since 2004, is building his own fiction list within the agency, and his current submissions include:
Dominic Adler’s thriller The Ninth Circle
Warwick Cairns’s historical romp The Fall
Casey Kelleher’s gritty crime novel, in the tradition of Martina Cole, Rise and Fall.
Louisa Treger’s literary novel The Lodger.
Recent Articles
Twenty Things American Publishers like
The background to Dear Mr Bigelow
Favourite Books of 2012
Andrew Lownie’s latest column answering questions about publishing can be found at issue.com
Best wishes, Andrew Lownie
