Tonight I leave for the Bologna Book Fair, that magical place
where, once a year, international publishing executives, editors, international
rights managers and scouts gather together to buy, sell, and talk about rights
to children’s books. It’s the big business event of the year for the children’s
publishing community. There’s plenty of deal-closing, after-hours networking,
and—oh, yes—pasta.
Before any of that can happen, though, there’s much work to
be done. Every meeting in the Agents’ Centre, where each rights director gets
her or his own table for the duration of the fair, requires meticulous advance
preparation. We schedule appointments with editors from all over the world
months ahead of time, and they come visit us in our little agent holding pen.
(The Agents’ Centre can only be accessed by appointment and with a special pass
purchased in advance; the public can’t come in. This keeps us from getting pitched
by authors while we’re pitching to editors.)
I’ve received a few questions in the past about this, so I
thought it might be helpful if I shared a page from my book fair bible: our rights
list. This document showcases every title for which we have international
rights. It includes covers, synopses, reviews, author bios, foreign sales,
awards, and more, and not a day goes by in my job that I’m not updating it on
some level. Here’s the amazing Erin Bow’s page: CLICK! You can see the well-deserved
success of her gorgeous debut YA novel, PLAIN KATE, as well as some information
about her next book, SORROW’S KNOT, which comes out this fall (and which I am
so excited to take to the fair!).
Every agency’s rights list looks different. I’m really,
really attached to ours, to the point that I texted a picture of them with the
caption “Our babies!!” to my colleague when I picked them up from Kinko’s. (To
her credit, she finds this totally normal. Because it is. Ahem.) To work in foreign rights, you have
to be super type A. We have most of the information on our rights list
memorized, but when you’re doing back-to-back meetings all day on very little
sleep and suddenly you need to remember if that one book has been acquired in
Brazil or Portugal or both, which production company optioned that other book,
and how many starred reviews that last one got, your rights list has to be
there, and it has to be 100% correct. There would be nothing more embarrassing
than pitching a book to an editor from a territory where the book has already
sold. Or forgetting the name of the book you were going to use as a comp. Or
not remembering which US imprint is publishing a title. Or not being sure if
you have UK rights or not. (I'm cringing just thinking about it.)
The other key element of Bologna prep is your schedule. Each
of my international rights meetings gets its own page in a Word doc. It lists
all the deals we’ve done with that particular publisher and its status (Have
they paid? Has it published? Have they sent us the cover for author approval
yet?), a history of all the books we’ve ever submitted to them and their
statuses (Rejected? When? Have we received any news since then that might make
them reevaluate? Or is it still under submission?), notes from past meetings we’ve
had (sometimes including what the editor looks like so I remember!), and notes
on books they’ve published or acquired recently. If I haven’t read the books,
or if they haven’t yet been published in the US, I do some research to find out
more about those projects. Knowing this in advance helps me decide which of our
dozens of titles I want to focus on during the meeting. You only have time to focus on a select few
books, and it’s important to pick titles that are a good fit for that particular
editor, house, and territory. With my rights list and schedule in hand, I feel
well prepared to do that.
Lastly, I read all the books on our list and practice my
pitches out loud. And that’s my Bologna prep in a nutshell! (Okay, there’s also
a lot of pre-Bologna dress and shoe shopping. A lot.) For another take on fair prep from a really awesome rights director that's super helpful, check out Kathleen Ortiz's blog.
I’m going to try to tweet
throughout the fair, and I’ll do a wrap-up post when I return. Until then, I’m
off to finish packing (the rights lists are so going in my carry-on). I can't wait to fly the Folio flag at Bologna -- I'm truly lucky to have so many great books to discuss!
