Contents for the issue sent October 12, 1999:

Breakfast Sale at Frankfurt Nets DM300,000
Another Noted Canadian Writer Heard From
Selling Rights Via the Internet
Book from Father of "X-Files" Star
It's Off to Alaska for Walking Hero Author
Sherpa (Who Is Also Movie Star) Is Signed
How to Subscribe


Breakfast Sale at Frankfurt Nets DM300,000
The first significant transaction we heard of at this 51st Frankfurt Book Fair -- the last in this millennium -- was the sale, for DM300,000 (about $175,000) of Olivia Goldsmith's Bad Boy School, which as we recall began life as a movie idea, and had a big movie sale, before it was presented as a book.

Agent Nick Ellison was the pleased seller of the novel, which is a comedy about a pleasant youth coached by his girl friend in how to play hard to get and therefore irresistible to women. The sale was made over one of those legendary Frankfurt breakfasts on Tuesday, October 12, before the fair was even officially open. The buyer was Alicka Pistek of Goldmann, who bought German hard and softcover rights.

Ellison adds that the book, not due until early in 2000, has been made a main selection of the Literary Guild and the Doubleday Book Clubs.


Another Noted Canadian Writer Heard From
There seems no end to the talented Canadian writers coming down the pike these days, and another seems to be causing a stir in Frankfurt for McClelland & Stewart, his Toronto publishers, who also hold rights to his short stories and a novel. He is Alistair MacLeod, whose first book of stories, published in 1991 by Cape in London, drew comparisons to Chekhov and De Maupassant. It was called in the U.K. The Lost Salt Gift of Blood, and was followed this fall by the publication by M&S of a first novel, No Great Mischief.

Cape was quick to pick up its option to the novel, and when M&S rights director Marilyn Biderman auctioned U.S. rights in New York last week the interest was intense. In the end it was W.W. Norton's Starling Lawrence who prevailed, beating out Nan Graham and Jake Klisivich of Scribner.

Why all the excitement? Here's what the Toronto Globe & Mail had to say about No Great Mischief: "MacLeod is the greatest living Canadian writer and one of the most distinguished writers of the world. No Great Mischief is a once-in-a-lifetime achievement."


Selling Rights Via the Internet
The 13th annual International Rights Directors meeting that preceded this year's fair had this theme, and turned out to be the best-attended ever, with more than 300 people crowding the hall to hear about online rights experiences. As it turned out, there wasn't much talk of sales that were actually made online, but as the very able moderator, London agent Carole Blake, pointed out, the aim of the session was to show how the Net aids sales, not how they were actually made online. (In any case, it was mentioned that agent John Brockman d s in fact make sales using the Net.)

The most useful part of the meeting was the introduction of three new Web sites -- one so new that the Frankfurt audience was seeing it up for the first time. This was a site produced by France Edition, the French publishers association, representing 240 French publishers. The lists of each are set forth, with the availability of their titles in each world market. When the audience was asked how many actually were there buying French rights, disappointingly few hands were raised, but the site could be a model for publisher associations in other countries seeking markets for their titles.

Paul Marsh of London's Marsh Agency described an elaborate site that went live in February and is being tested in detail for the first time at the fair. It lists "hot titles" among the nearly 200 authors, other agents and scouts it represents for international sales, as well as current title availability and backlist, and is updated weekly. There were no online transactions "at the moment," Marsh said.

RightsCenter.com grew out of a program originally created for Brockman's New York agency, and Tim McHugh described how it is now being marketed as a tool for other agencies to set up their own online arrangements. He listed the advantages of online rights interchanges: speed (decreasing distribution and response times), savings in printing, mailing and phone costs, and elimination of much duplication of effort.

In summing up, these were seen as key issues, along with ease of use, control and the ability to interchange information readily. As to when online transactions might be regularly made, the model of Ebay, the online auction service, was held up as an ideal on two occasions, once from the platform and once from the floor.



Book from Father of "X-Files" Star
Amram Ducovny, father of actor David Duchovny (he adds an "h"), who stars in the hit TV series The X-Files, has written a noirish first novel about Coney Island in the late 1930s, and Overlook's Tracy Carns has bought world rights in a deal made with agent Andrew Blauner of Blauner Books.

She describes the book by the 72-year-old Ducovny as "a Calvino-esque novel with an atmosphere that calls up the novels of E.L. Doctorow. He has a brilliant literary gift, along with an uncommon comic touch." The author, who lives and works in Paris, has written a number of nonfiction books, as well as an off-Broadway play, The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald, which became an award-winning TV movie.

The novel, Coney, is set for publication next October.


It's Off to Alaska for Walking Hero Author
Peter Jenkins made his name as an author with his indefatigable walking feats. First, in the bestselling A Walk Across America (a million copies sold), and later, in A Walk West, he helped shape the current craze for adventure travel books. Now he's gone to Alaska, which he is not promising to cross on foot, but which will be the scene of "In Alaska," which editor Kelly Ragland at St. Martin's Press just bought from agents Michael Carlisle and Neal Bascomb of Carlisle and Company for six figures.

Jenkins will combine with his 19-year-old daughter and traveling companion, Rebekah, to create a journal of a year spent exploring the still largely wild state. The book will be lavishly illustrated, and is set for publication in fall 2001.


Sherpa (Who Is Also Movie Star) Is Signed
Harper San Francisco has paid what is described as a substantial six figures for a memoir by the Sherpa Himalayan mountain guide Jamling Tenzing Norgay, who is the son of Tenzing Norgay, the first man to climb Mount Everest, alongside Sir Edmund Hilary, in 1953. Perhaps Norgay junior is better known, however, as the star of the IMAX big-screen movie Everest, which tells of his desire to walk in the footsteps of his father, and of the Sherpas' ancient way of life in the mountains.

The deal was signed between Harper senior editor Doug Abrams and Heide Lange of the Sanford J. Greenburger agency. It was Adams who came up with the idea for the book after he and other HarperSF employees saw the movie on a company outing. It happened, by a coincidence the Sherpa calls "karmic," that Norgay, who lives in Darjeeling, India, was in the city at the same time for a speaking appearance, and Adams arranged to meet him and pitch the book idea. The book, says Adams, "promises to reveal a side of Everest that few Westerners have ever seen."

The book, to be called Touching My Father's Soul: A Sherpa's Sacred Journey to the Top of Everest, will tell of the many Sherpas who have climbed the mountain, as well as the Buddhist faith that sustains them in their relationship to a mountain they regard as a sacred site.


PW RIGHTS ALERT
Executive Editor: John F. Baker (jobaker@cahners.com or 212-463-6752) Contributing Editor: Judy Quinn (jquinn@cahners.com or 212-463-6769)

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