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Posts Tagged ‘Curtis Brown’

Congratulations to 28-year-old Emma Healey who attended a couple of LWW workshops way back in 2008 and 2009.  Her debut novel was the object of intense interest at the London Bookfair this year, with publishers from all over the world bidding for rights.

Strange Companions is the story of Maud, an elderly woman slipping into dementia while also struggling to find her best friend Elizabeth. As her mind drifts back to the 1940s, Maud leaves notes around the flat to remind her of her quest but struggles to remember what she had for lunch or whether her daughter has been to visit yet. It’s described on the Curtis Brown site as ‘a fast-paced mystery and a moving meditation on memory and identity, told through Maud’s unforgettable voice.’

Until recently, Emma was employed as a web content administrator at UEA, which is where she met her agent Karolina Sutton of Curtis Brown. She’s now given up her job to focus on her writing full-time. Strange Companions is due to be published in the UK in 2014 by Penguin, in the US by HarperCollins and in Canada by Knopf. Translation rights have been sold in five languages … and the bidding continues!

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This week, ‘super agent’ Ed Victor announced that he is setting up a new digital and print on demand publishing venture, Bedford Square Books, which will release six titles by authors his agency represents this September, with another six planned for January 2012. Authors’ royalties will be 50% as opposed to the 26% traditionally on offer from publishers for ebooks.  Now, The Bookseller reports that agencies Curtis Brown and Blake Friedman are planning to follow his example. Agent Sonia Land has already made 100 of Catherine Cookson’s out of print titles available as e-books, apparently frustrated by the lack of interest from the traditional publishers. She reacted to the news of Bedford Square Books by warning publishers to “rethink their legacy operation”.

In July last year, US literary agent Andrew Wylie (AKA ‘the Jackal’), created an imprint called Odyssey Books and struck a deal with Amazon to make a number of classic titles by some of his extremely famous clients –  for example, Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint, Nabokov’s Lolita – available on Kindle. Random House reacted furiously by declaring that it now regarded the the Wylie Agency as a direct competitor. In the end Wylie was forced to scale down his plans, although books like Brideshead Revisited and The Naked and the Dead are still available on Odyssey.

As yet, Ed Victor’s move has not attracted such ire. The CEO of the Publishers Association, Richard Mollet, wished Victor luck and added that he “hope[d] he would consider joining the PA”.

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