The London Book Fair 2011 took place in Earls Court on April 11th, 12th and 13th. Pontas had once again a table at the International Rights Center and a full schedule of interesting meetings with publishers and producers was handled by Anna Soler-Pont. Despite the effect of digital on physical sales of books in the English language market and the reduction of the number of titles in many international catalogues, which were two of the most discussed issues, the fair was full of optimism and the International Rights Center was very busy. It is always impressive to think that many of those half an hour conversations will mean a new book published (and probably translated or adapted) somewhere in the world!
Fabio Muzi (from Feltrinelli) and Alexandra Pringle (from Bloomsbury) discussed about their editions of Susan Abulhawa’s Mornings in Jenin (a great success in many languages and ready to be published in Italy next May and to be launched at the Torino Book Fair). And Patrick Binet and Romain Brémond(producers at TF1) were looking for new content and good stories for their next films.
Hans Christian Rohr was showing to everybody his new catalogue and his bag promoting the next publication by C.Bertelsmann of the German translation of The Centenarian Who Climbed Through the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson. The buzz around this novel is increasing: besides its more than 800,000 copies sold in Sweden and 27 translation rights sold so far, the four translations already published (French, Italian, Dutch and Danish) are also becoming bestsellers very quickly!