Firstly, I should say – for the avoidance of doubt – that this photo has nothing to do with anything bookish. I just wanted to give you an image of summer coming; a young Greenhouse dachshund enjoying himself. We have to keep things in perspective, right?

Just back from nearly a week in New York, seeing editors, chatting with other agents, and hauling my weary self around the alternately chilly/stuffy vastness of BEA.  If there were prizes for the world’s least popular buildings, the Javits Center would be right up there.

Tempted to go to BEA one year? Sure, you can pick up ARCs and go to signings, but a weird kind of hallucinogenic disorientation sets in once you’ve shoved your way through the tightly packed millions, without natural light, for eight hours or more.  And the bathroom line? Are you female? Forget it. Anyway, you’ll be fine, since the lines to buy coffee are several miles long so your liquid intake will be minimal.

Whinge, whinge.  But in spite of the Javits, it was a great trip – met lots of new people, went to the brilliant Macmillan and HarperCollins parties, breakfasted with editor Erica Sussman of Harper, lunched with editors Alexandra Penfold (S&S;) and Stacie Barney (Putnam), dined with my agent buddy Jennifer Laughran and colleagues from Rights People who were in town . . . .  Oh, and lots more good stuff.

(Sorry, I know it sounds like a gastronomic tour of New York and you wouldn’t be far wrong.)

So what is the good word from the Big Apple this month? What are all those editors seeking – what’s hot and what’s not?

Well, the first thing I have to tell you – as always – is that if your manuscript is great it will sell. Which will make you roll your eyes with frustration, obviously.  Every ‘rule’ is ripe to be broken if you present me with a great, original concept and quality writing, and it’s the pairing of those two factors that everyone seeks.

Editors will tell you that dystopia is getting really tricky – so much is starting to publish, there are some serious frontrunners in terms of sales (obviously THE HUNGER GAMES and MATCHED, but now DIVERGENT is making inroads on the NYT Bestsellers), and lots more publishing later this year and next.

And yet . . . . a couple of weeks ago I did a major six-figure, 3-book deal for Sarah Crossan’s YA novel BREATHE (sold to Virginia Duncan/Martha Mihalick at Greenwillow, HarperCollins), and my email has been ablaze with film interest. We’re also about to announce a deal for UK/Commonwealth this coming week (congratulations, Julia, for that one!).

So what does BREATHE have that other futuristic manuscripts don’t?  For starters, a great concept – a world without trees where oxygen has become a valuable commodity, where the rich breathe easily, the poor struggle painfully with thin air, and where wrongdoers and misfits are thrown out of the inhabited glass pod to suffocate alone.

Told from the perspectives of three teens who set out into the Outlands beyond the pod, with just two days of oxygen in their tanks, it’s an exciting and very original story. And yes, the writing is really strong. In fact, Julia previously sold this author’s debut verse novel to Bloomsbury UK, so she is a writer with considerable range.

What am I saying therefore about dystopian/speculative/futuristic fiction? I’m saying great deals can still be done – if your premise truly feels new and if you match that with compelling writing. There’s GOT to be something unique about your story or it’s in danger of getting stuck at query stage.

Take a look at the books highlighted at the BEA YA Buzz Panel. As PW says, ‘This fall, it’s all about multi-layered thrills, chills, adventure, and romance, mixed in with the paranormal.’

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-book-news/article/47431-bea-2011-ya-buzz-panel-rocks-javits.html

This small selection of big up-and-comings underscores what editors are saying to me – that they’re in search of work that crosses, or rather blends, genres. Dystopian and magic; paranormal/witchcraft and history; love triangles and steampunk; futuristic thrillers etc etc.

There’s also a bit of a vogue for stories that ‘mess with time’ – perhaps influenced to some extent by the success of Lauren Oliver’s BEFORE I FALL.  The idea of a life unraveling and being put back together; revisiting the past.

And what about middle grade? It’s tough. All editors are saying how much they want it, but it’s got to be pitch perfect or they’ll reject it. They’re seeking the big ones, because MG is slower burn, slower build in terms of readership and sales.

Again here, it’s the ‘big’ story that is triumphing; the big canvas, the grand and imaginative ideas.  As PW says, ‘MG can have all the action, wonder, and power of books published for older readers.’ Take a look at the five books featured on the BEA MG Buzz Panel:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-book-news/article/47432-bea-2011-a-bea-first-a-middle-grade-buzz-panel.html

So where does this leave contemporary, real-world fiction in both MG and YA? Again, it’s not easy at the moment – to break through your novel in this area has got to have a real hook, disarming and quality writing, and characters who make that leap into the reader’s heart and head. But editors DO want to find contemporary stories to balance out their list – IF it’s really something that pops. Take, for example, Sheila O’Connor’s evocative, memorable and mysterious SPARROW ROAD, which Stacie Barney just sent me and which I’m already halfway through. A true delight.

Feeling down? Feeling like you can’t do it? Persevere, but wait till you have a really, really good idea for your story – and then make sure you know how best to get that story down on your screen. And even if you don’t hit the sweet spot the first five times, your sixth might get there. It’s been known to happen - and don’t forget that all those lofty BEA Buzz picks were once writers stumbling to find their way and their story.

Enjoy your holiday weekend. It’s a scorcher here!

Pix: 1) A dachsund + a river = a mess.  2) The roof of Javits Center; a metaphor and image of how you feel when you’re stuck in there for hours.  3) Continuing the abstract, design theme: a strange plant unfurling at the National Arboretum, DC; also a metaphor for your buzzy manuscript opening up.

It’s been a crazy Spring – tons of travel, arguably too many conferences (despite all three being very good), and a succession of deals coming from the Greenhouse both at home and abroad.  It’s all great, we are awash with opportunity, but it’s taken a toll on blogging. I’m very happy to have a period of quiet through May and June and will hopefully be able to return to my habit of blogging weekly. I’ve missed it!

To see what we’ve been up to in more detail, do make sure to follow us on Facebook – our address is http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Greenhouse-Literary-Agency/359292813053.

The overwhelming feeling I have this Spring, as we slide into Summer, is one of positivity and energy. In honour of that, all the pics on this post are of things that make me feel outstandingly excited and positive.  See below to find out more about them!

Let’s start with Bologna, which was great and we had lots of lovely comments about our upcoming titles and the books/authors we’ve already sold.  Industry professionals around the world seem to be liking our taste and what we offer – very encouraging to have so much affirmation that we’re on the right track.

Given how buoyant things feel generally, it took me by surprise when I was asked to do an online interview a while ago that felt quite gloomy in tone.  There were questions like, ‘Now editors don’t edit as much, how do you manage/deal with …. Etc etc.’ ‘Now publishers are paying smaller advances, how do you manage/deal with . . . .etc etc.’

It brought me up short because anyone who hangs around Twitter will know that many editors are hard at work editing at weekends, and the experience of our authors is overwhelmingly that today’s editors are incredibly precise, rigorous and dedicated as they go over and over texts in often multiple revisions. Plots are dismembered and reincarnated, editorial axes are taken (painfully) to dead wood, and no detail is spared in the exacting quest for the best possible manuscript.

I hate this negative stuff about editors – most do their utmost, often at considerable personal sacrifice of time and leisure, and we should give them a loud cheer for going beyond the call of duty (especially since not many are exactly earning a bomb of money). However arduous and scary a major revision can feel, all our authors have ultimately been delighted that they were asked/cajoled/persuaded into getting dug into their stories again and again. You will meet very few writers who won’t one day say, IT WAS ALL WORTH IT!

The thing about publishers paying ‘smaller advances’?  Well, I’d only say subscribe to Publishers Marketplace and you’ll see no shortage of deals being done – again a great feeling of acquisition energy. I recently had two publishers in one week contacting me to say, ‘We have money to spend, what can you sell us?’ And several more emailing: ‘It’s Spring – bear us in mind for any great manuscripts.’ While we shouldn’t get too fixated on those 6-figure deals, they are popping up everywhere too! Realistic advances? I can live with that – and your first royalty statement (ie, what is unearned) won’t look so terrifying either.

A pervasive sense of gloom can also be detected at times in my submissions inbox – a small percentage of (usually scrappy) queries written by people who say things like, ‘I know the submission process is all a lottery. My chances of being picked for representation are about a million to one.’

I want to grab those people, give them a shake – and then put a kindly arm around their defeated shoulders.  No – it’s NOT a lottery. It’s a weird, commercial kind of meritocracy, where writing skill, great ideas, WILL be spotted and ultimately win out. However, there’s one big proviso:  the submission in question has to be something I personally feel I can sell, at a time when I can do it, and you the writer, full justice.

At my conferences this Spring I’ve talked about novelist Graham Greene’s theory of ‘emotional compost’.  That each of us has our own personal history, experience, attitudes, perception, tastes – and that we READ from that place (authors WRITE from there too).  This means that we all react to stories differently; even editors and agents have a surprising range of opinions about the same manuscript.  So what I’m trying to say is – I can only take on the small number of manuscripts that hit that sweet spot for me personally - and I will inevitably make different decisions to other agents on some work. 

The decisions we make have nothing to do with the writer’s worth as a human being (though I’m guessing it must sometimes feel like that as most rejections and setbacks in life do). They are commercial decisions and very carefully considered.
But not, for one moment, is the submission system a lottery!  If you write something fabulous and unique, we – or another agent – will find it. And it’s worth reiterating that virtually all the authors Greenhouse represents came to us through a simple query.

The sun is shining. I was in London for the royal wedding and saw all the country come together in thousands of parties – in parks, pubs, and streets.  I saw a gorgeous wedding dress on a beautiful girl – and some truly insane hats. I stood in a field in the deepest English countryside waving my cellphone in the air to catch a signal and a call from New York that would transform the life of a debut author thousands of miles away.

Positive?  You bet I am.

Pix:  Sarah’s gallery of positivity: 1) Royal Wedding pic sneaked into a hair stylist’s window in my English home town; what fun that day was!  2) A foal, one hour old, in my favourite English village; such a happy memory. 3) The most gigantic piece of carrot cake, consumed with ease in the sunshine beside a pebbly beach. All the sweeter since I haven’t allowed myself cakes in weeks. FANTASTIC!!

Last week saw the launch of Undiscovered Voices – an anthology of unpublished and unagented children’s book writers organised by SCBWI UK. Apologies to our American readers, this competition isn’t one for you as it’s UK only – but hopefully you’ll find this post interesting as it’s also about what it takes to make it in the book business. The two subjects dovetail quite nicely.

UV has a special place in our hearts at Greenhouse. Sarah spotted and signed up Sarwat Chadda and Harriet Goodwin after judging the first anthology in 2008. And both authors have gone on to build thrilling careers and make us very proud.

For the second time running I’ll be on the judging panel and I can’t wait. It’s a fun, invigorating and eye-opening job, and the process also reveals a truth about our industry: in order to make it, you have to write something that another person is prepared to fight for.

Of course, the book business is a subjective one. You might not think too much of the book I love; I might feel a bit ‘blah’ about the book you’re raving about. When judging a writing competition you get to see that subjectivity up close and personal.

A couple of months before the judging on the 2010 anthology all of the six judges received a giant Jiffy bag filled with partials delivered to our offices. We had plenty of time to read through them, make notes, pick our favourites and think on our reasoning – and also to put aside the ones we weren’t so keen on. On judgment day everyone sat down around a table with bottles of (untouched) wine, clutching our top picks and brimming over with excitement for the job at hand.

Would it be a surprise if I told you that most judges had a different favourite? And a good few times it was a favourite that the other judges had discounted right at the first stage? As each of us went through our top picks there was nodding and agreement but also a fair bit of shaking heads and wide-eyed surprise.

Every writer who made it to the anthology was working at a high level, with a great many compliments to take home. Below are a few of the stories we talked about, and the reasons why they made it to the final 12.

FIFTEEN DAYS WITHOUT A HEAD – Fabulous title with a stand-out, original voice.

BLINDING DARKNESS – Contained one of the most sinister and memorable scenes of the anthology.

THE TRUTH ABOUT CELIA FROST – Started with some great drama and a dark, original premise.

BACK FROM THE DEAD – Punchy, poetic introduction and alarming, immediate first scene.

In the UV anthology there is no winner, there are 12 selected writers. And while we managed to bang out a fairly good consensus on the majority, getting to an agreement on the last few was like the UN. I wouldn’t say there was a lot blood on the walls of the judging room, but there were splatters.

I think every judge’s favourite made it through to the final 12. I made sure mine did. But the books which didn’t have a champion – a judge who put energy and a bit of fight behind them – fell out of the bottom. And that’s true of the industry as a whole. A champion is what a book needs from an agent and a publisher. And also a publicist and marketeer, a rights team and sales force, a bookseller, a librarian. A reader too. All these people have to have a bit of fight in them about the book, if it’s to become a success.

It really is a truth of our business. Not everyone is going to like a book, but a book doesn’t need to be liked. A book needs a fair few people to love it, like really LOVE it. To be prepared to back it, push, pull and defend it. It’s truly inspiring so see that play out on judgment day.

I’m counting the days till I get my Jiffy bag!

www.undiscoveredvoices.com

It’s all go behind the doors of the Greenhouse, and I have to admit Julia and I are pretty excited as the countdown begins to the Bologna Book Fair. I’m getting there a bit early, so I can acclimate to the time zone and also have a couple of days of relaxation in Bologna and nearby Florence, both of which I love but rarely have time to actually enjoy. 

I’m flying Thursday evening, via Frankfurt, and will stagger into our hotel – round the back of the glorious Piazza Maggiore – some time Friday morning.  Thinking of sending me a submission? You might do better to wait till I’m back on the 31st, as I won’t have time to look at email while I’m away.  I’m trying to get really up to date before I leave though, so if you’ve sent me a submission in the last week or two you should be hearing from me.

I talked about territorial rights on my last blog post, and rights are still very much in my head as Julia and I prepare our Bologna documents: our list of ‘backlist’ books (those already with primary deals – ie, either in the US or UK, or both) and also our exciting list of new and upcoming projects that we’ll be pitching. Even if we know we won’t have the final manuscripts for a few months, editors love to hear what we have coming up.  Everyone is looking for the Next Big Thing – or even the next smaller thing, which could nonetheless fill a niche in their forthcoming list.

In return, we want to know how each editor/publisher/scout/film person sees the marketplace and where they feel it’s going.  Several days of those kinds of conversations add up to a lot of invaluable knowledge about the international scene, and provide clues as to where we should particularly invest our time and energies in the coming months.

So, from my last post you already know that the publishing world still divides territorial rights into chunks, even if the electronic era blurs the edges a little at times. But what other rights are covered in a publishing contract?

Everything in the contract to be exercised by the Publisher is called Primary Rights.  But suppose the Publisher can’t exercise those rights for some reason (eg,they’ve been granted audio rights but don’t have their own audio list) or suppose they see opportunities to exploit the potential of your book in more diverse ways?  In that case, they can LICENSE a range of rights to a third party – and that bunch of rights is called Subsidiary Rights.

What is included in Sub Rights? Well, I mentioned Translation Rights (or Foreign Rights) in my last post, and those are probably the biggest clump of rights within this bit of the contract – if the Publisher has been granted World rights. If they haven’t, then those rights remain reserved to the author – either directly or on the author’s behalf by their literary agency.  It’s in the exploitation of these rights that Bologna (Frankfurt / London Book Fairs too) plays such a big part.

But there’s a lot more within Sub Rights.

We’ve already mentioned audio, which is rapidly becoming a dealbreaker for many of the bigger houses due to expanding potential for electronic download etc.

Ebook has been fairly straightforward for a while, but is increasingly coming under complex negotiation due to its potential for ‘enhancement’. Some of the complications lie in specifying clearly what those enhancements may be so there’s no confusion with potential film or TV deals down the line.

Here are some of the other rights can be sold to a third party:

First Serial (publication of an extract BEFORE first book publication – for example, to a newspaper/magazine) and Second Serial (publication in a newspaper/magazine AFTER first book publication).

Textbook rights

Abridgement/condensation

Large Print

Bookclub

Graphic Novel, Comic Book

Theme Park (I always wondered about that, until the Harry Potter world/ride opened at Disney!)

Dramatic – including Motion Picture, TV, Radio; and Non-Dramatic – ie, straight reading of the text as a performance.

Merchandising and Commercial rights – these being particularly significant if Film/TV is sold and the project actually goes into production.

Are you still with me? And you thought publishing was just a matter of your words making it on to the printed page of a book!?

Each of these rights above can be sold – ‘exploited’ – separately, and each has a split of monies set out in your publishing contract – many of them 50/50 (between publisher and author) in US contracts.

As I’ve said before, the story you tell – the manuscript that spews in a clump of messy pages from your printer, or downloads from a file on to your e-reader – is much more complex than you might think. And much more full of diverse potential.

Sure, your novel is an artistic work of entertainment, but it can also be described as CONTENT. Content to be chopped and parceled and sold in myriad ways.

It is, in business terms, a portfolio of rights. And Bologna is the ultimate rights marketplace in our industry of books for young readers.

Ciao! More from me after the fair. Wish us luck!

Pix:1) Brunelleschi contemplates his masterwork - the Duomo in Florence; or maybe he’s pondering foreign rights?  2) The merry-go-round of publishing, also Florence.  3) Ostensibly Florentine pigeons in love - but actually a pic of me pitching a new storyline to an editor at the fair . . .

A good time was had by all at Southern Breeze’s Spring Mingle 2011 last weekend. At least, I’m presuming everyone else enjoyed it as much as I did!

Southern Breeze is the bit of SCBWI that covers Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi, so southern accents and warm hospitality aplenty in what I thought was a brilliantly organized conference. Thanks to Heather Kolich and her team – and especially to Sharon, my Guardian Angel (yes, she was literally designated as that!), whose job it was to make my life incredibly simple and pleasant for the weekend. Wow, everyone needs a Guardian Angel Sharon in their life! I just wish I could have packed her in my suitcase and brought her home with me, where she is sorely needed . . .

One of the things I always enjoy about conferences is getting to know the other faculty members, and this faculty was small, so we spent a lot of time together. ‘We’ being Erin Clarke (Knopf), Katie Carella (Grosset/Penguin), E.B. Lewis (award-winning illustrator), and Lindsey Leavitt (Greenhouse author of PRINCESS FOR HIRE/SEAN GRISWOLD’S HEAD).  We rocked that tricky First Pages panel, didn’t we!

Anyway, I digress. Friday night, when we still had a modicum of energy left, everyone piled into the hotel bar – perfect for bookish discussion and bonding. Nursing my glass of wine, I decided to strike out and talk to random people, in the knowledge that writers get very few opportunities to talk to people in the industry, so it was time to make myself available.

I got into a conversation with a lovely group of people, and soon found myself holding forth about various aspects of the Greenhouse and the publishing world, in particular the foreign-rights scene at Bologna.

Suddenly I realized this was a one-sided conversation and that there were some very blank faces looking back at me. I stopped mid-flow, and a nice man piped up: ‘Sorry, but what exactly are rights?’

At which point I was reminded of how easy it is to make assumptions about what people know, and how very opaque this business is.  I set about explaining and, though I’ve covered it before in this blog, I shall do so again now for any of you readers who feel as lost as those new friends in the bar.

So . . .

Pick up a book and look at it. What do you see? Paper and print?

When I look at a book, I see two things.  1) A story that is also a work of art.  2) A bundle of very diverse rights.

A BUNDLE OF RIGHTS? Weird, huh!

Let’s start this week with territorial rights, which form what we might call the ‘primary deal’.  I’ll do my next post on the other rights, since the subject is too big to cover at one go.

Here goes:

The English-speaking world tends to be divided – in publishing terms – into two chunks.

1) US and Canada (ie, North America)
2) UK and Commonwealth. Here is a list of the Commonwealth countries: http://www.commonwealthfoundation.com/Aboutus/TheCommonwealth/Commonwealthcountries

In fact, Canada can be sold separately, but is generally grabbed by either the US deal or the UK deal, so it depends who gets there first; I tend to reserve it for the USA.

English-language Europe is highly contentious (you know, there are quite a few English speakers in mainland Europe and there’s a market for those readers) – both the US and UK would love to include it in their rights package! In that instance, Greenhouse tends to reserve it for the UK deal – their market is smaller, and some UK houses actually call it a ‘deal breaker’ if they can’t have it.

There are some smaller countries that float in between these North American or UK/Comm territorial bundles, depending on the deal and the houses involved, and those we call ‘Open Market’. In other words, both the US and UK publishers can sell there, though often there will be contractual restrictions on WHEN each side can sell, so one side doesn’t outstrip the other and grab all the sales.

As you can imagine, there is often some fierce discussion at contract stage about exactly which pieces of the territorial pie belong to whom (and one reason you have an agent is so you can put your feet up and have a cocktail while your agent does the rough stuff).

If you are American, your primary deal is likely to be with a US house. If you are British, your primary deal is likely to be with a UK house.  If you are a Greenhouse client, we could do both deals at the same time (depending on the book, of course). We did that with Sarwat Chadda’s DEVIL’S KISS and Megan Miranda’s FRACTURE, and were virtually simultaneous with Lindsey Leavitt’s PRINCESS FOR HIRE and Jill Hathaway’s SLIDE.

Unlike other US or UK agencies, we will take 15% commission for both deals. (Regular US agencies will take 20% for UK deals. Regular UK agencies will take 20% for US deals.)

And then there are Translation Rights. In other words, deals done in countries that are not English-speaking. These we also call Foreign Rights. A huge amount of time is invested in seeking such deals, they are frequently fiddly, and they are done for us by our sister company, Rights People. If you saw a printout of exactly where our books/manuscripts are on submission at the moment, you would be amazed.  For example, we’ve recently had one manuscript on submission to 30 publishers (always at their request) in France alone. You can imagine the volume of stuff we have out there at any one time!

Many translation-rights deals are small - $5000 or less. But you can do better financially in some markets – like Germany – than with your primary deal. And those deals can really mount up in value, if you have a sought-after property to sell.

Still with me?

OK, so those are the rights parcels. But suppose you DON’T parcel up the rights. Suppose you sell all territories at one fell swoop?

That is called World Rights.

There are rare occasions when the Greenhouse sells World Rights to publishers (perhaps we’ve been made an offer so good that it’s hard to recommend to our author that they turn it down). But in the main, we parcel up those rights and sell them separately on a territory by territory basis.

Why? Because we can generally make our author more money that way. 

If Greenhouse sells Translation Rights for you, you will keep 75% of the monies.  If your publisher sells those rights for you (under a World Rights model), you will keep 70/75% (depending on the publisher’s customary split) minus your agent’s regular commission of 15%. In other words, you will actually take home 55% or 60% of the deal money.

Hah, you say. So obviously that means I don’t need an agent!!!!!!!

Yeah, well. You have to see this issue in the round. There are many questions to ask yourself. Like . . .

Are you able to get a deal on your own, in a timely way, without an agent’s help - given it’s almost impossible to get your manuscript into the hands of a publisher?

Are you able to negotiate optimum terms for yourself?  In the obvious question of Advance, but also royalties and all the other terms, splits, safeguards, out-of-print/ remainder etc etc etc clauses that will determine your long-term writing destiny.

Are you able to liaise knowledgeably and confidently with your publisher on all issues regarding the process and management of your book(s) and career?

Having been in this industry for 30 years, on both sides of the desk – and having worked with countless authors, both bestselling and debut – I can honestly say that a good agent at your side will be an investment you are very unlikely to regret. And I know quite a few authors who did decide to go it alone, and ended up in a bit of a mess!

Your book is like a pie; a pie of potential slices. And we love to carve up that pie and market those slices.  Give us a great book and the slicing can be really lucrative for you!

But talking of pies, I’m reminded that it’s Sunday night and I deserve a good dinner, a pair of slippers and a little zoning out before the Monday Madness starts.

Ta-ta for now.

Pix:  1) My example of selling rights in parcels! Del Ray Market, Northern Virginia. 2) My example of selling world rights - all territories in one go. Also Del Ray.  3) Spring Mingle: Me, with Greenhouse authors Lindsey Leavitt and Megan Miranda

It has been a silent time in blog-land. Sorry about that, but I’ve always taken the view that blogging/social networking has to take second place to the obligations of client representation. How can one justify musing and pontificating in cyberspace when a client’s waiting for editorial notes or progress on their deal? Doesn’t seem right to me.  But hey, I’ve missed the musing and pontificating,so Sarah the Blogger is back in town!

What have we been up to? 2011 has begun at a cracking pace and Julia and I are really excited about how the agency’s developing as it enters its third year (ONLY THREE YEARS!?  I hear you say. HAVEN’T THOSE PEOPLE BEEN AROUND FOREVER???) Yes, it’s coming up to three years in March that Greenhouse did its very first deal, for Sarwat Chadda’s DEVIL’S KISS, and now the green shoots can be seen all over the place. Not least for Sarwat himself as we’ve just announced the sale to HarperCollins – at auction – of UK/Commonwealth rights in his epic new Indian adventure series, THE ASH MISTRY CHRONICLES, mixing a contemporary Indian setting with the vast mythology of that great country which, as far as we know, has never been done in children’s fiction before.  Think Percy Jackson meets Indiana Jones on the Indian sub-continent! And good news about North American rights is on the horizon . . .

Another storming piece of news is that one of my favourite authors has just joined the Greenhouse and we are very honoured to have her with us.

Scotland-based Julie Bertagna is the author of a number of books for children and Young Adults, in particular her award-winning, critically acclaimed EXODUS trilogy (see the jacket image), published by Macmillan in the UK and Walker in the USA. The third book, AURORA, publishes in the UK this coming June.

As well as being far ahead of the pack in writing a dystopian epic - years before anyone else thought it was remotely cool or interesting - in this trilogy Julie has crafted three beautifully written, heart-wrenching stories of courage, adventure and survival, so if you haven’t read them go and do so forthwith! As well as being shortlisted for the prestigious Whitbread Award (now the Costa), EXODUS achieved a slew of shortlistings and some stellar reviews. How’s this one from the Guardian: ‘A miracle of a novel . . . a book you will remember for the rest of your life’. Click through this link to see lots more reviews.  http://www.juliebertagna.com/start.html. We can’t wait to see where Julie goes from here and are thrilled to join her on this new phase of her journey.

We continue to love discovering new debut authors (and are receiving record numbers of submissions), but it’s also very exciting to see existing clients starting to build a track record and achieve new deals for the future.

In the past week Tricia Springstubb (author of multi-star-reviewed WHAT HAPPENED ON FOX STREET) has confirmed a new 2-book deal with Candlewick – publishers of her younger work – for a sweet, funny, wise young chapter-book series provisionally titled CODY.  And Anne-Marie Conway (author of STARMAKERS series about a drama club) has achieved a second deal with Usborne for an intriguing new standalone novel, BUTTERFLY SUMMER.

Outside my window the weather is balmy and we’re temporarily thinking SPRINGTIME! And springtime means one very big event – the Bologna Book Fair, happening in Italy at the end of March. A lot of prep goes into Bologna, and Julia and I have been very busy sorting out our back-to-back schedule of appointments, where for three solid days we network, pitch and tantalize UK, US and European publishers with our feast of wares – both existing clients and, very importantly, new work just coming on to our map. This is the place where scouts, editors, film people – and everyone and anyone with an interest in the children’s/YA books industry around the world – gathers to see what’s coming up that might be hot. Julia and I have a lot of visitors coming to our humble table this year, and that makes us very happy. These people don’t waste their time – we don’t only want Greenhouse to be hot, we want to be the hottest of the hot!

Oh, and did I also mention that Bologna is one of the great gastronomic capitals of Italy (if not the world)?  Did I mention the prosecco? The midnight walks over medieval cobblestones in unsuitable heels?  The heady overload of talking, air-kissing, pasta, ancient beauty, Blackberry-checking? The falling into bed much too late/early only to lie there with head spinning as the sounds and light of Italy filter through the shutters?  Every year the Bologna Book Fair refreshes and reinvigorates our vision of this extraordinary international business.

It also reminds us very forcibly of the value of a great pitch to your work. I wish you could watch as Julia and I start each appointment because you would learn some interesting things about fiction and the marketplace.

An editor – usually very senior, since only senior people get to travel – sits down opposite us. We exchange greetings, catch up on news, and then we dive in. As we pitch a story we watch – close up – as the editor reacts. We see the eyes light up – or close down. We see the surreptitious glance at the watch under the table (time to move on), the distracted flick of the eyes (boring), the barely concealed snort (we’ve been pitched an identical story 10 times today already) – but also the great moment when our visitor laughs and sits up taller or leans across the table and scribbles notes. 

This, my friends, is where the pedal is put to the metal! While stories are obviously so much about the writing, the fact is a unique pitch, a fresh concept, a great title are crucial in grabbing the attention of these inundated industry professionals. The Bologna experience is an intensifying of the process we go through all the time as we select, hone and then present your work to the trade.  It’s got to have a Unique Selling Point, a hook – as well as the quality of writing to support all that.

Three years on, the Greenhouse is blooming – and we’re thrilled to be off to Italy next month for the greatest show in town. And we’ll tell you more about that after the fair.

Meanwhile, take care and enjoy those first buds of spring if they’re springing anywhere near you!

Pix:  1) Macmillan UK’s stunning rejacket of Julie Bertagna’s EXODUS 2) marking the height of flood waters in Florence, Italy (or possibly an apt comment on the level of Greenhouse submissions) 3) The fanciest Easter eggs you ever will see, Florence