In 2023, the Bologna Children’s Book Fair surprised the global book business by moving its 2024 show to April rather than March, as was its recent custom. That prompted the London Book Fair to exchange its own typical April dates for a March run. While some industry insiders lodged complaints about having to visit Foggy Ol’ at an even drearier time of year, others observed that the move might ultimately prove to the fair’s advantage. After all, London, and not Bologna, is now the first major rights fair on the calendar.
This year’s LBF seems to be the proof in that black pudding of prediction, with literary scouts and agents pointing to a buoyancy in mood, preshow deals, and scheduled meetings alike. “It feels as big as it’s ever been in my career,” says Byrd Leavell, cohead of publishing at United Talent Agency. “You factor in the postpandemic energy and the immolation of Book Expo and, when you move London earlier, all these other factors have really lifted it up.”
An International Rights Center with roughly 10% more tables than in 2024 will serve as the central staging ground for deals inked at the fair, with a handful of local pubs and the corners of select stairwells at the Olympia inevitably accommodating overflow. But the email-driven lead-up “feels a little bit more lively, submissions-wise, than it has for the past couple fairs,” says Erin Edmison of Edmison/Harper Literary Scouting. “There’s a lot flying around right now.”
Much of the fiction that’s flying is firmly on the feel-good side, tending toward “hope-filled, uplifting, entertainment-driven works,” as Curtis Brown agent Felicity Blunt puts it. Romantasy isn’t going anywhere, nor, says Atria Books editorial director Kate Nintzel, is the “cozy Japanese or Korean book with a cat in it.”
Edmison sees a microtrend forming in comedic thrillers in the vein of the Coen Brothers, noting three novels on submission “that are wacky capers, or a group of bumbling dads trying to solve a crime.” Blunt adds that a strong interest in “books that touch on the edges of genre” remains in the market, be they “big, epic romances or gritty thrillers with a time twist” or “books that move into horror.”
Some agents in international markets noted concerns at last year’s fair that the nonfiction portion of the U.S. publishing business would disappear down a Donald Trump–shaped rabbit hole should the 45th president return to the Oval Office this January. That isn’t yet the case. “Writing a book about what’s happening now is impossible, because tomorrow it’s completely different,” Blunt explains. “It’s just the most extraordinary cycle of news that I’ve seen, ever.”
Instead, self-help and health and wellness remain a key focus. “It travels around the world,” Leavell says. “Having the best books in that space is one of the best things that you could possibly have right now.”
For their money, UTA and Curtis Brown, its U.K.-based subsidiary, are touting Inner Excellence by Jim Murphy as just that. The self-published title’s appearance in the hands of star Philadelphia wideout A.J. Brown during the Eagles’ January victory over the Green Bay Packers sent it soaring to the top of the bestseller lists before the team’s Super Bowl win earlier this month. At Amazon, the book currently sits at #2 overall.
“[Grand Central president and publisher] Ben Sevier was saying he thinks it was the biggest marketing hit a book has had ever,” Leavell says, adding that Hachette ultimately bought the book after an “insane auction.” Foreign-language rights weren’t hampered by the historically limited appeal of American football abroad, notes Sophie Baker, Curtis Brown’s head of translation rights. Rights were preempted in Brazil, where the Eagles played their opening game of the 2024 NFL season (also a win over the Packers), and other international deals were “done before the U.K. and U.S. deals closed.”
Edmison notes the prefair attention to Social Equality by Princeton professor Betsy Levy Paluck. The book, she says, examines rapidly changing social norms and behaviors, providing analysis that could apply to some of the chaos of the early second Trump administration. Or, as she puts it, “The subtext, to me, is, How the fuck did we get here, where people are behaving so crazily?”
