Mind your metadata: The effectiveness of a search by a producer, publisher, rights director, or scout may will depend on just how readily a search can respond to inputted keywords. Image – Getty iStockphoto: HakinMHan
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
Keywords in Helsinki
An interesting development at the Ahlback Agency in Helsinki, the “Storyfinder” digital tool, according to Elina Ahlback, is a way to filter the agency’s catalogue to see if something there meets the various criteria of what you’re looking for.
“Whether you’re a book publisher, film or television producer, studio, or other entertainment executive or scout looking for the next big mega-seller and the right intellectual property for your company,” the agency writes about the search, “we invite you to use our Storyfinder tool to help you find the perfect match.
Options include publishing rights vs. media rights (for film and television), and there are some tips for using the program here.
The trick with something like this, of course, is very good metadata. The success of the Storyfinder search, as in so many of these types of programs, is in making sure the maximum amount of keyword density is in place so that whatever idea a user has—or whatever terms that user may apply to it—can be reflected in the search. If you’re looking for stories about the “sea” but the data says only “ocean,” you may not find a perfect piece of content lying right under your nose.
One of the biggest systems operating on the same fundamental principle as this one at the 14-year-old Ahlback Agency is Wattpad’s categorization programming used to guide readers and producers and publishers to various serials being churned out on the platform. These searches rely for effectiveness of the tags “on both ends”—those attached to a property and those used in a search.
But it certainly makes sense for anyone with a deep catalogue to offer this kind of categorized access to it, and we’ll be interested after a time to know from the Ahlback team whether the approach is working in terms of helping buyers locate content they’d like to develop.
A search demonstrated in an image from the Ahlback Agency’s ‘Storyfinder’ is seen here rendering a couple of titles in response to a set of tags logged in, including ‘coming of age,’ ‘humor,’ ‘murder’ and LGBTQ. Image: Ahlback Agency
And since June is pride month for so many gay publishing industry professionals—and for the readerships they serve—we’ll start this time with Pride (Stolt) from Oslo’s Cappelen Damm, a book by psychologist Benjamin Baarli Silseth with illustrations by Kine Kjær.
As in each roundup, we use some of the sales copy supplied to us by agents and rights directors, editing that copy to give you an idea about a book’s nature and tone, but limiting the promotional elements. If you’d like to submit a deal to Publishing Perspectives, see the instructions at the end of this article.
By Benjamin Baarli Silseth
Illustrated by Kine Kjær
- Publisher: Cappelen Damm, Oslo
- Rights contact: Ingvild Haugland Blatt, Cappelen Damm Agency
- Book info: Read more here
Reported rights sales:
- Denmark: Straarup & Co. (sold at auction)
Benjamin Baarli Silseth
“Pride is a book that celebrates being gay. It is about being gay, about being a friend and an ally, about gender identity, love and sexuality, and about important people in gay history who have stood at the forefront of the fight for gay rights.
“With this book, the goal is to break taboos and to make all readers feel more safe in themselves and pride in who they are.”
The author, Benjamin Silseth, is a gay psychologist with a strong interest in the mental health of young people.
Devil’s Breath
By Jill Johnson
- Publisher: Bonnier UK/Black & White Publishing, London
- Rights contact: Anna Soler-Pont, Pontas Literary and Film Agency
- Book info: Read more here
Reported rights sales:
- Newest – French: Michel Lafon
- English (North America): Sold, publisher to be announced
- Russian: Sold, to be announced
- Czech: Grada/Metafora
Jill Johnson
“Eustacia Rose is a professor of botanical toxicology who lives alone with only her collection of poisonous plants for company.
“Her life is quiet until the day she hears a scream and the temptation to investigate is irresistible. Through her telescope, she’s drawn into the life of her beautiful neighbor, Simone, who she feels inexplicably compelled to protect.
“But when her garden is vandalized and someone is murdered with a toxin from a rare plant, Eustacia finds herself implicated in the crime.”
Jill Johnson, a Faber Academy graduate, has a BA in landscape design and has lived in Southeast Asia, Europe, and New Zealand.
Syd
By “Sääf Ekstedt” (Katarina Ekstedt and Anna Winberg Sääf)
- Publisher: Bookmark Förlag, Stockholm
- Rights contact: Julia Angelin, Salomonsson Agency
- Book info: Read more here
Reported rights sales:
- Newest – Germany: HarperCollins
- Croatia: Fraktura
- Czech Republic: Zlin
- Serbia: Laguna
- Ukraine: Anetta Antonenko Publishers
Katarina Ekstedt and Anna Winberg Sääf
“After the nightmare of working at the world-famous restaurant Nord, Alex and Sofi have started afresh. Trying to forget Nord’s owner Alice’s threats, they’ve opened a bistro of their own. But it soon becomes clear that managing your own restaurant is hard work. Not least when secrets that threaten to destroy everything are uncovered.
“Alex is also unable to let go of his fear that Alice will come out of the woodwork to exact her revenge.
“Is it just paranoia, or is there truly reason to worry?”
The Age of Seeds: How Plants Hacked Time and Why Our Future Depends On It
By Fiona McMillan-Webster
- Publisher: Thames & Hudson Australia, Melbourne
- Rights contact: Sharon Galant, Zeitgeist Agency
- Book info: Read more here
Reported rights sales:
- China: Translation and Publishing House
This book focuses on what the agency says is “the captivating story of seed longevity, and what this means for biodiversity and our future foods.
Fiona McMillan-Webster
“When a 2000-year-old extinct date palm seed was discovered, no one expected it to still be alive. But it sprouted a healthy young date palm.
“Bringing history and science to life, The Age of Seeds is a journey backward and forward through time in an examination of seeds and their impact on humans, from the miraculous germination of a 2000-year-old extinct date palm named Methuselah to the so-called Doomsday Vault.”
Fiona McMillan-Webster is a science writer based in Brisbane. She has written for National Geographic, Forbes, COSMOS magazine, Australian Geographic, and other publications.
Shadows of Tomorrow
By Noëlle Michel
- Publisher: Le bruit du monde, Marseille
- Rights contact: Marleen Seegers, 2 Seas Agency
- Book info: Read more here
Reported rights sales:
- Newest – World English: Simon & Schuster (US)
- Netherlands: Standaard
“A clan of humans. They hunt and gather; they are born and die. They live in tents made of hide; they paint on the walls of their caves. They pass on the legends of their goddesses, and dance around the fire on festival nights.
Noëlle Michel
“Their world is the forest which feeds them, and, aside from the fierce cold and illness, the only thing they have to fear is the Beast who prowls the impassable Bounds. They do not know that beyond it an entirely different world exists.
“This other world is our world, more or less, located in a not too distant future. The Neanderthal race has been recreated from fragments of DNA and reintroduced in a reservation where they have been observed and studied for several generations. But there are Sapiens coming, and they will soon break through the Bounds…”
Noëlle Michel, born in Dijon, lives now in Gand, Belgium, and is an engineer by training. She works as a translator of novels, essays, and children’s literature from Dutch.
A Conversation
By Annie Ernaux and Marie-Rose Lagrave
- Publisher: École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Paris
- Rights contact: Iulian Miron, EHESS Press, Paris
- Book info: Read more here
Reported rights sales:
- Newest – Greece: Daedalus
- China; Shanghai People’s Press
- South Korea: Maumsanchaek
- India/Hindi: Des Plumes
- India/Tamil: Her Press
“An intellectual and intimate dialogue between the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature winner Annie Ernaux and the sociologist Rose-Marie Lagrave.
“[It’s] a reflection on their social trajectories and a critical outlook on France and Western societies over the last 60 years, from a Bourdieu-influenced, feminist perspective.
“Accessible at 140 pages, this is a book that’s militant, contemporary, with rich references to Virginia Woolf, Marguerite Duras, Richard Hoggart, Raymond Aron, Simone de Beauvoir.”
“Before meeting at the École normale supérieure in Paris, they had read each other’s writings. Ernaux had followed with interest Lagrave’s articles in the journal founded by Pierre Bourdieu, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales. Lagrave eagerly awaited each of Ernaux’s novels, carried by that rare feeling of identification between two fields of thought long considered opposed.”
Submitting Rights Deals to Publishing Perspectives
Do you have rights deals to report? Agents and publishing-house rights directors can use our rights deal submission form to send us the information we need. If you have questions, please send them to Porter@PublishingPerspectives.com
We look forward to hearing from you.
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