Agent's Advice to British Authors in France

Dawn Cooper forwards me the following interesting item :

A few weeks ago I visited Paris to talk to my literary agent. An agent whose family have operated from the same office and with the same vast knowledge of French and worldwide publishing for over one hundred years.

Our conversation covered the Frankfurt Book fair – ‘a great disappointment’ to my agent, who felt that no one there was interested in publishing good, readable books, but only in making money. To his dismay he sees bookshelves full of look-alike plots and bad English. The idea of ‘pile ‘em high and sell ’em cheap’ is not quite there but talent and good writing is not going to be in the ascendancy.

His advice to English writers living in France was that, in his experience, French publishing houses would not publish anything that has not already been published in the writer’s own first language. His advice is to accept that UK publishing houses are not the preserve of gentlemen publishers any longer and if you want your book published here then you have to look, for now, to the small but elite publishers in the USA or university publishing houses who are prepared to take the risk to publish in English first. This may account for the number of foreign writers receiving French literary prizes.

Dawn Cooper

dfpcantab@yahoo.co.uk