Book deals 2005

I have the impression that quite a lot of the people who read this blog are writers who are in search of an agent or a publisher. Other readers, I know, actually are agents and publishers. Well, I hesitate to mention this (you'll see why in a minute) but there is a new book out which will certainly be of value to as-yet-unpublished writers, and may well be equally if not more valuable to agents and publishers who are looking to sell rights.

Published by Publishers Marketplace, and entitled Book Deals 2005, the book is a summary of 'over 3,500 US deals from last year in a single oversized 300-page volume, organizing them and indexing them to provide at-a-glance and in-depth windows on the deal world that you can't get from electronic searching.' In other words, you get to know who is buying what and (within broad bands) how much they are paying.

The snag is that the volume costs $125. On the other hand... one sale would more than cover it. If you want to take a look, it's on the Publishers Marketplace web site. There are links to sample pages. And it's worth noting that, if you subscribe to the Publishers Lunch newsletter (more or less daily), you get the latest deal information delivered on a weekly basis.

One interesting (and possibly encouraging, provided you put it in perspective) piece of information is that 14% of all fiction sales were for six figures or more.