DEAL OF THE WEEK
DEALS
By Rachel Deahl■ Evanovich Moves in Blockbuster Deal
In an eight-figure deal, Janet Evanovich moved to Simon & Schuster. Evanovich,
who is arguably among the top 15 bestselling novelists in the world, signed a
four-book world rights agreement with Atria Books. Her agent, Shane Salerno
at the Story Factory, brokered the agreement, which will cover two new titles in
Evanovich’s popular Stephanie Plum series. The deal marks Evanovich’s third
publisher switch in recent years. She made headlines in 2010 when she left
St. Martin’s Press, her longtime publisher, and signed with Random House’s
Ballantine Bantam Dell imprint. Before she made that move, Deadline reported
that she was looking for a $50 million multibook contract. The first book under
Evanovich’s deal with Atria, where Peter Borland will be
her editor, is titled Fortune and Glory; it will be the 27th
entry in the Stephanie Plum series and is set for a November
10 release. The third book in the agreement will launch a
spin-off series, while the fourth, The Bounty, continues her
Fox & O’Hare series. According to S&S, Evanovich has sold
nearly 100 million books. For this deal, Atria senior v-p and
publisher Libby McGuire, Borland, and Atria’s legal team
negotiated terms with Salerno and attorneys Richard Heller
and Mark Merriman.■ Kwan’s ‘Sex’ Lures Doubleday
In a world English rights agreement, Doubleday bought
Kevin Kwan’s novel Sex and Vanity. The author’s Crazy Rich
Asians trilogy, launched in 2013, has, per the publisher,
sold more than four million copies in the U.S. Doubleday
said the new book, which is getting an announced first
printing of 500,000 copies, is “a glittering tale of love and
longing as a young woman finds herself torn between... the
WASP establishment of her father’s family and George Zao,
a man she is desperately trying to avoid falling in love with.”
Jenny Jackson acquired the title from Alexandra Machinist at ICM Partners.
The book is slated for July 2020.■ Putnam Nabs Sweeney-Baird’s ‘Men’
With a preempt, Mark Tavani and Danielle Dieterich at G.P.
Putnam’s Sons bought Christina Sweeney-Baird’s debut
novel, The End of Men. Alexandra Machinist at ICM Part-
ners sold U.S. rights to the work of speculative fiction, which is
slated for spring 2021. Putnam said the near-future-set work,
which is reminiscent of The Power and World War Z, “explores
what our world would look like without men, as a virus stalks
the male population and women deal with its consequences
in society.” The author is a lawyer and freelance journalist
who has written for, among others, the Independent and the Huffington Post.
Machinist brokered the Putnam agreement on behalf of Felicity Blunt at CurtisCOURTESYOFJANETEVANOVICH© RAENBADUA© MARGARITASWEENEY- BAIRD
EvanovichKwanSweeney-Baird6 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ MARCH 9, 2020
News
disrupted air travel just before LBF.
“The official word worldwide is that no
one should be doing nonessential
travel, so many of my appointments
are canceling.”
Reed’s change of heart about the fate
of LBF on March 4 seemed to be spurred
by reports that a number of U.K. houses,
both large and small, dropped plans to
send reps to Olympia Hall, where the
fair was set to be held. Shortly after
Reed announced it was going ahead
with LBF, Hachette said it was not
sending any U.K. employees to the fair,
and other publishers soon echoed that
sentiment. Indeed, Reed’s decision to
call off the fair came shortly after
HarperCollins announced it had decided
to not send any local staff to the show.
A statement released by Reed cited
growing public concern over the corona-
virus as the key factor in not going
ahead with LBF. “The effects, actual and
projected, of Coronavirus are becoming
evident across all aspects of our lives
here in the UK and across the world,
with many of our participants facing
travel restrictions,” the statement read.
“We have been following UK govern-
ment guidelines and working with the
rolling advice from the public health
authorities and other organisations,
and so it is with reluctance that we have
taken the decision not to go ahead with
this year’s event.”
LBF was far from the only book fair
to be canceled due to the virus. Prior
to Reed’s announcement, the Paris
Book Fair was called off. The French
government had said that it is banning
gatherings of more than 5,000 people
in any enclosed space for the foresee-
able future. The event was to be held
March 20–23.
Germany’s primary consumer-facing
book fair, the Leipzig Book Fair, was also
canceled. The event, scheduled for
March 12–15, was expected to attract
continued on p. 8