16: Rights, Italian style, with guest agent Kathleen Ortiz

3/10/2018

Every year in Spring, children's agents descend on a small city in Italy for the largest international children's-only book fair in the world. But it's not all gelato-nomming and prosecco-swilling! I give a crash course in what translation rights even are, and then superagent Kathleen Ortiz from New Leaf Literary joins me to talk about what exactly goes on at the Bologna Children's Book Fair. (Though, off the record, if you want to talk to me about gelato, I do also have a lot of opinions on that subject.) Plus, we talk about some upcoming titles in self-promotion corner, and as always, share our current obsessions.

Show Notes:

* The Literaticast has a Patreon!

* Me on Twitter! Guest agent Kathleen Ortiz on Twitter!

* New Leaf Literary Agency Submission Guidelines

The books we discussed:

Pics from Bologna:

The white walls of the Bologna Children's Book Fair, slowly filling with art.... this is after the first day.

This is after day two... IT GETS EVEN FULLER!

4 Comments

Peter Taylor link

3/11/2018 06:04:45 pm

Thanks so much for this podcast, Jennifer and Kathleen.

I live in Australia and visited the Bologna and the London Book Fairs in 2010 as an author and occasional illustrator (particularly of how-to calligraphy and craft books, non-fiction science and with a published picture book and more in progress). There are many publishers worldwide whose books never appear in our physical stores, so it was valuable to discover the ‘house styles’ of these businesses and their current tastes.

While both fairs are organized for agents selling rights and with publishers’ people committed to half-hourly appointments, as you described, I arrived well-dressed at many publishers’ displays when appointments finished, so I was usually asked if I was their next appointee. My line was, “I am an author just checking to see if you have any books that are likely to compete with my new one that is about to be released, and to see if you have any gaps in your list that I may be able to fill.” They were all willing to chat and eager to find out what might compete with one of their books.

My book at that time was Practical Calligraphy, pub. Hinkler Books, and a Canadian publisher at Bologna also had a new calligraphy book on their stand. They said, “…but we didn’t really want a calligraphy book. What we actually wanted a book on drawing borders, but we didn’t find anyone to write it.” While pitching fiction at the fairs may not be possible, I also found publishers wanting books written on papermaking, recipes that children can cook, the sea shore, baby elephants, fungi, kangaroos, small furry animals, and more. At the LBF, I suggested to one publisher that I could write a ‘Fun Lettering for Children’ book for them, but they said, “What we’d really like is a book for adults on ‘Calligraphy for Greetings Cards and Scrapbooking’...”—which I created over two years and didn’t follow up on other leads. Hmm—I wonder if any of the publishers still needs a book written on the topics they wanted back then. I’ve kept their business cards!

Of course, I’d dearly love to work in partnership with an agent to help write proposals and bring works to submission standard, and to choose the most appropriate publishers, negotiate deals, etc., but I did find that visiting the fairs can be worthwhile to creators who are not represented.

Jennifer Laugrhan

3/11/2018 06:17:07 pm

Oh totally! While this podcast is really only covering what happens in the agents centre -- for obvious reasons, like, I am an agent and I can only speak to that experience -- there is *for sure* value in attending the fair for others. We agents, in fact, rarely get to even LEAVE the agents centre, so we see a fraction of what goes down, and creators rarely if ever see US. But there are LOTS of good reasons to attend, if you are in the right part of the world. Well worth the time!

Jennifer Laughran

3/11/2018 06:18:18 pm

(and um... the previous comment was from me. And I spelled MY OWN NAME incorrectly. Sigh!)

Marty Lapointe-Malchik link

4/2/2018 12:04:01 pm

This is an amazing podcast, Jennifer and Kathleen. Thank you for all the details, the notes afterwards, and the time spent sharing so much of what you do and know to do.