From a distance, the only thing that separates Donald Trump from the fake-tan smeared impersonator posing at London book fair is that this one is holding a book. The Trump-a-like has been brought in by Penguin Random House to promote The President Is Missing, a thriller co-written by James Patterson and former US president Bill Clinton. Holding up a fake copy of the book – it isn’t due until June – in the middle of a fake Oval Office (complete with Russian dolls on the table and Diet Coke in the drinks globe), the similarities between Trump and his doppelganger stop at pout and paunch alone; everyone is pleased to see him, and stretch for selfies.
Clinton and Patterson’s thriller is possibly the starriest book at the fair, despite being announced months ago. But this publicity stunt is emblematic of the cash and publicity pizazz on display at London book fair each year. A lot of what we end up reading coming through the fair 18 months before, to be snapped up by publishers and eyed by film and TV studios for possible adaptations. And Trump-a-like aside, it seems politics was never far away from anyone’s mind this year, with many of the biggest deals going to feminist fiction: novels starring female leads, navigating dangerous worlds with agency, off the back of the huge success of the TV adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale and conversations born of #TimesUp and #MeToo.
There’s Chandler Baker’s The Whisper Network, about four women scheming to take down a sleazy colleague before he becomes CEO; The Illness Lesson by Clare Beams, a novel set in a 19th-century Massachusetts girls’ school, where the students develop strange, shared symptoms; and Joanne Ramos’s The Farm, where women conceive the children of an elite, receiving payment if they follow strict rules. Joining those is After the Flood, Kassandra Montag’s postapocalyptic novel about a mother searching for her daughter; Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows, Balli Kaur Jaswal’s novel exploring “honour” killings in the UK; and Vardø, the adult debut of children’s author Kiran Millwood Hargrave, a historical novel about the 1621 Norwegian witch trials.
All were subject to intense bidding wars: particularly Millwood Hargrave’s Vardø, which, after a 13-publisher fight, went to Picador for a “significant six-figure sum” and is due in early 2020. Afterwards, Millwood Hargrave likens the process to speed-dating: “For me, I looked at publishers who are publishing a lot of women and picked out the ones who do it well. We’re at a time when women’s stories are getting noticed and selling really well. I hate to look at things in trends, but there is currently a push for female-lead narrative. Just look at Naomi Alderman’s The Power – it won the Bailey’s and it has just exploded.”
Alderman herself landed a four book deal at the fair: a collection of short stories, a non-fiction book and two novels, the first of which is due in 2019. A three book deal for Caitlin Moran was also announced, as were new novels from Jonathan Coe, Marilynne Robinson and Jeanette Winterson, whose Frankissstein will be a modern reimagining of Mary Shelley’s novel, grappling with technology and sexuality.
“As the world fixes its eye on these issues, so does fiction,” says Suzie Dooré, publishing director of Borough Press, an imprint of Harper Collins, which snapped up Montag’s After the Flood and In at the Deep End by Kate Davies, a debut billed as “a lesbian Bridget Jones”. “There are some things that are too current, that don’t appeal to readers because it is a bit too much – it’s happening in the real world, so why would they want to read about it? But we know people are interested in gender politics because of The Handmaid’s Tale, and after The Essex Serpent, a big lush historical novel with a female lead is always popular – but while we watch trends, we’re always after the best written book.”
While publishers seem buoyant, some agents are slightly disappointed with the direction of their attentions, saying that such intense bidding over a select few titles had left others in the dark. The potential sale of Waterstones to a private equity firm in the UK, and bookshop chain Barnes and Nobel underperforming in the US, were mentioned as possible reasons why publishers seem particularly risk-averse this year.
Jonny Geller, agent at Curtis Brown, says that it appeared that publishers “have room for one big debut, one literary book to win them a prize and everything else is genre.”
“These auctions you see where 10 or 12 publishers compete for one book just shows how fixated they can be on trends,” Geller says. “A sky-high advance for a book can actually not be good for the author, publisher or reader, it can put pressure on its success.”
