When I was fourteen I read Mary Hoffman’s Stravaganza: City of Masks, a young adult novel set both in contemporary England and in an alternate Venice 500 years in the past. Reading that book whilst on a family holiday captured my imagination and sparked my love of Venice. It made me want to learn Italian so I could revisit the city during my gap year, and eventually live there to study at Ca’ Foscari and Venice International University during my BA Erasmus year.

Why am I talking about Venice, when myself and my peers at OICPS have recently visited Bologna for the international rights fair?

Because as an introduction to the event Brookes had arranged by complete coincidence for us to meet the author of Stravaganza! What a dream come true.

I’d expressed my happiness at the coincidence on twitter the week before, and Mary responded in turn to say how happy she was that a reader of her books would be at the meeting. In a strange coincidence she was due to meet with Laura Tosi after her jaunt at Bologna, a lady whose lecture I had attended whilst studying in Venice.

Meeting with myself, Laura and Judith in the comfortable business lounge (complete with squishy seats!) Mary Hoffman set the scene and gave us insight into this year at the fair. We discussed her findings and our own. In conversation with The Bookseller, she’d noted that picture books were on the rise. The illustrator presence at the fair was huge, with walls of example pictures and cards coating the lounge, and engaging talks with some key players. There was Big Picture Press a new sister imprint of Templar. Scholastic had a great title, The Snatcha Book in which a little creature snatches away bedtime stories for company. Emily Gravett had a promising next offering, Little Mouse’s Big Book of Beasts. In my wandering I also stumbled upon David Fickling Book's gorgeous cover for Very Little Red Riding Hood by Heapy and Heap at the Random House stand. And Salariya had reissued a childhood classic in Old Bear that had many of us feeling nostalgia pangs.

One of the biggest draws of the fair was Nosy Crow's stand, their bright red display proudly boasting the numerous awards they have scooped up in recent years particularly for their ahead of the times digital content and apps for younger readers. When we walked past them the queue was building up the aisle for the chance to talk to their team. 

There was likewise some buzz for several young adult authors, S.R. Johannes’ wilderness thriller Untraceable offering contemporary realism and romance, Walker Books’ Neverending a sinister new romance, and a lot of interest in Hot Key Books list which is expanding from 9 titles published in 2012 to 50 in 2013. They saw success with the crossover appeal of Maggot Moon, creating an adult cover for a new edition, and generated buzz over titles such as The Blue Lady with eye catching cover art adorning wall sized posters. David Fickling Books YA forensic science meets magic book Spellbinder gained a lot of word of mouth and rumours of film interest. US publisher Little Brown still proudly displayed a range of YA supernatural titles like Malinda Lo’s Inheritance and Holly Black’s The Coldest Girl in Cold Town - described as the vampire book you didn’t know you still needed to read. However there was a definite moving away from the previous years' obsession with Young Adult dystopian trilogies. 

Barrington Stoke’s rebranded list of dyslexia friendly titles has captured the attention of high profile authors including Michael Morpurgo, Gillian Cross, Malorie Blackmam, Eoin Colfer and more. Their squirrel logo and slogan ‘cracking reading’ gives the publishing house a more approachable feel.

As a whole the industry was moving towards a lot of renewed interest in Middle Grade fiction. Bonnier imprint Red Lemon Press displayed Being A Boy by James Dawson. There was also Emily Diamand’s Ways to See A Ghost, and World War One fiction such as Dog In No-Mans Land. Little Brown also had a number of middle grade fiction titles including the sequel to Chris Colfer’s The Land Of Stories, cover art covered up under sheet paper until it is no longer embargoed. Disney-Hyperion praised Gracefully Grayson by Ami Polonsky, a middle grade book about transgender identity and gender fluidity, a book about issues that tells the story in a way that doesn’t become an “issue book”. R.J Palacio’s Wonder seemingly paving the way for a rise in engaging and stimulating books for younger readers.

We left Mary with lots to think about and keep an eye out for in our walk around the fair. And furthermore she graciously agreed to sign my copy of City of Masks with a lovely message. Maybe one day I will get to publish one of her books, as coincidences such as this chance encounter can happen when you least expect it!


Part Two

OICPS organised several other meetings with industry members throughout Wednesday, demonstrating a variety of points of view across the Children's publishing world. Our Italian students paid a visit to Mondadori, who publish the translations of major bestsellers like Suzanne Collins and Rick Riordan as well as classic Italian literature like Italo Calvino's fairy tale retellings.

My next meeting was with Thames & Hudson, and Tiziana Zaini a former OICPS student who now works for the T&H Children’s Rights team. Known primarily for high quality art books for the adult market, the children’s list is a new direction for the publishing house.The children’s team not only had to establish themselves within the market, but also convince Thames & Hudson of the validity of creating this new list.

She and her boss gave us some insight into the way they work. It takes one year in advance of publication to secure the co-edition and foreign language deals necessary to make publication viable in its first print run. Due to the restriction of permissions, Thames & Hudson don’t offer digital content, instead they focus primarily on creating beautiful books that adults and children alike will want to display and treat as a valuable object. These are visually exquisite: The Book House displayed one of their latest titles, a paper cutting illustrated fairy tale book, in their Christmas window.

Disadvantages: time and start-up costs, including building contacts from scratch and conducting field research for younger readers. Money and investment in coming to extra fairs like Bologna, outside of Thames & Hudson’s previous publishing circle. The Rights team had only been to the fair for three years, and this year was the first that they’d felt they had successfully established themselves as a producer of children’s art materials in the eyes of their competitors and potential customers.

Advantages: Penetrating new markets, countries that wouldn’t invest in large hardback art books for adults due to costs but would happily invest in cheaper child friendly material. Likewise maintaining contacts with previous Thames & Hudson markets and expanding what they have to offer. By employing specialist editor Jane Wiltshire who had designer, editor and illustrator contacts, Thames & Hudson began to strengthen their list as an identity with a range of 25 titles, selling 350,000 copies in translation of 21 languages since 2007

Later we met with Usborne, whose striking red castle display lent itself well to the company image. Bright, playful and yet a sturdy and well recognised brand, our discussion showed the strength and expanding presence that Usborne holds in the children’s market place, particularly amongst activity books. Our contact had worked for Usborne for thirteen years and gushed about the company, saying she couldn’t imagine working anywhere else. I felt that compared to some of the others we had seen this was most definitely a giant, a well-oiled machine that delivered products for co-edition that were carefully in keeping with an established customer base expectation.  

At the Lion Hudson stand, Robert Seath the International Rights Manager offered us the chance to role play a Rights deal. Zara, Judith and I became an Italian travel publishers interested in expanding our list to include biblical gift books, whilst Karly and Laura attempted to purchase the US and Spanish translation Rights for a series of activity books for their Bible belt company. Walking through the deal, it was easy to see the nuances of negotiating, and the business mind required for the job. Honesty and a careful hand were the main criteria needed. Don’t promise too much yet don’t underestimate your abilities or your customers. Karly and Laura secured their deal taking it off the table with a handshake (an industry promise) whereas my little team decided to return with further research proving we could secure a large pre-order in the gift shop market.

After our conversation with Lion Hudson we met up with our teacher, Sally Hughes, in time for the OICPS talk at the digital cafe. Zara and Judith had researched the merits of apps and ebooks, and asked South Oxfordshire children whether they thought interactivity meant they read more. Their findings showed that encouraging children to read rather than play games is an ongoing process.  

Our final appointment of the day was with Oxford University Press. Polly Silk from SYP was mid-deal when we arrived so we waited a little while for the chance to speak with her and her boss Anne-Marie Hansen (keeping a hopeful eye out for handshakes and smiles!) But as we’d located an ice cream van and a bench to rest our aching feet, this wasn’t a hardship. Anne-Marie showed us the many language editions proudly displayed on OUP’s shelves, for example a modern illustrated edition of Wind in the Willows. She also explained that not all titles would sell to the markets you’d expect, for example the highly popular English picture book and young readers series Winnie the Witch has yet to break America despite 25 years of success in the UK. OUP illustrated dictionaries did very well in co-editions, with foreign publishers adapting cover designs to suit their own market (Scholastic’s Education branch adapting the cover to fit in with their own dictionary list.) The OUP stand was proudly illustrated with sea monkeys to show off their big buzz title Oliver and the Seawigs by Philip Reeve and Sarah McIntyre.

After this long and intense but incredibly beneficial day, OICPS dashed to the cloakroom to rescue our coats with fifteen minutes to spare and then headed into the centre of Bologna to celebrate our success (and Sally’s recovery of her passport) with wine and pizza, spritz aperol and a buffet. Many thanks to Sara and Laura for finding Cafe Zamboni and showing us some Italian nightlife!

I had a really wonderful time visiting the fair, witnessing the real life of publishing and seeing books find homes in new markets around the world. I would definitely recommend paying the fair a visit if you are interested in Rights or in Children's publishing, as it shows how the industry operates on a large scale. I can't wait to see what happens to the books we heard whispers about when they are published and released into the wild!


I shall leave you with an image of the catalogues I managed to scoop up on my travels...

Part One

"Beware of badgers" - this was one of the key issues amongst the tips and tricks given to us by Lynette Owen and Diane Spivey in our Rights lecture this morning.

Now that the OICPS Rights class of 2013 have wrapped our collective heads around seven weeks worth of lectures, it is time to meet the lady who quite literally wrote the book on Selling Rights (now in its sixth edition.) Lynette Owen OBE is the Copyright Director of Pearson Education Ltd. She was given the London Book Fair International Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003 and the Inaugural Kim Scott Walwyn award for achievement by women in publishing in 2004. Diane Spivey is the Rights and Contracts Director at Little Brown, whose responsibilities include ensuring Ozzy Osborne has all the correct translated copies for his recent overseas concert – or suffer the wrath of Sharon.

Ensuring that copies of English books are available across the world is a tricky business. Operating from a lifetime of Book Fairs, someone working in Rights must be sensitive to carefully managed time, money, and cultural factors.

Selling translation rights of a business book entitled Are You a Badger or a Doormat? How to be a Leader Who Gets Results will prove difficult when the country whose market you are hoping to tap either: 1.) has badgers who look very different to our British natives living on the front cover, or 2.) don’t have badgers at all.

How will someone in Dubai know that a badger is a nocturnal animal wary of humans, emerging at night to be productive only to scurry away? And will that metaphor translate into the secretive boss who doesn't give much away to their staff?

When the badger is a key character in a children’s book, forget about co-editions unless marketing the book as a cultural oddity. What IS this strange black and white stripey thing?

To work in Rights means managing a personal database of connections across an international publishing industry so as to instinctively know who will be interested in your product. It is a job which means eliminating the people who aren’t suitable as much as finding those who are.

The goal is always to get the big deal, to sell to multiple markets and work the economy of scale for the best deal for publishers and their foreign partners. However tapping small markets with carefully constructed deals can prove equally beneficial if it means securing copyright management, avoiding piracy, and spreading brand recognition.

If this means compromising on details such as uniforms/no uniforms in school playgrounds, driving on the right instead of the left, taking out that image of Big Ben and replacing it with an Eiffel tower, then it can be done. And maybe we can substitute that badger for a groundhog? During our field trip to Oxford University Press last week, Children's and Educational Rights Manager, Polly Silk, explained that with digital developments, sometimes changing these issues can be as simple as a click on the computer to flip an image or reverse some colours. Diane Spivey reminds us, however, that these books still need special consideration when it comes to printing plates, and additional costs from designers and printers do occur.

I shall be heading to Bologna Children's Book Fair on the 26th March.

Key equipment to keep an eye out for around the stands:

Dummy copies – blank mock ups from the printers that demonstrate the quality, size and weight of a book.

AIs (advance information sheets) – documents listing summary, price, previous editions and unique selling points for upcoming titles.

Design spreads – especially for picture books, highly illustrated displays that get the look across to customers.

Catalogues – find the publisher’s list for the upcoming year and note previous bestsellers.

iPads – okay so the publishing industry is cutting down it’s print promotional material for costs and environmental reasons, but catalogues are making their way to visually appealing digital formats.

Calculators – this one might just be for my benefit. But I got to grasp with figuring out those gross profit details in the end. Practice makes perfect, right?