Saturday, July 14, 2012

International bidding war for Hannah Kent's historical novel


Adelaide author Hannah Kent
Hannah Kent, whose first book has sparked an intense bidding war, at home in the Adelaide Hills. Picture: Calum Robertson Source: Adelaide Now

LESS than a year ago, Hannah Kent called herself a "poor PhD student". Yesterday her agent closed international publishing deals worth $1 million-plus.
An intense bidding war between publishers concluded with deals that, together, are believed to have topped $1 million.
Picador, a division of Pan Macmillan, is reported to have paid A$350,000 for the Australian and New Zealand rights to the Adelaide author's works.
Little, Brown - part of the Hachette group - will publish Kent in the US in a deal put at seven figures.
A separate deal has been done with Picador in the UK, and rights have also been sold into France, Italy, Brazil and the Netherlands.
Speaking from her home in the Adelaide Hills, Kent, 27, said yesterday the past few days of negotiation had been "overwhelming".
Neither Kent nor her publisher nor agent Pippa Masson, from Curtis Brown, would comment on the sums involved.

The book, Burial Rights, is a historical novel based on Agnes Magnusdottir, a servant convicted of murder and beheaded in Iceland in 1830.
Alex Craig, who will edit the book for Picador, said that the novel was one of the most assured debut works she had seen.
"Hannah has this extraordinary ability to combine really imaginative storytelling with incredible craftsmanship," she said. Kent said that the story of Magnusdottir had haunted her since she first learned of it as a 17-year-old Rotary exchange student in a fishing village in Iceland.
She later returned to research the case for her PhD in creative writing at Flinders University.
"She was represented in unequivocal terms as a monster or a witch, the Lady Macbeth behind the murder, a very manipulative, scheming woman," Kent said. "It didn't take into consideration her experiences or the struggles that she probably suffered."
That a first-time author has won such a deal is remarkable when publishers are reeling from the effects of the GFC, declining book sales and the rise of e-books.
Lyn Tranter, a long-time literary agent in Sydney, said that in her experience, advances had halved in the past couple of years.
It's not Kent's first coup. After winning a $10,000 award last year for her unpublished manuscript, she was mentored by Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brooks.

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