THERE ARE still some astonishingly big deals to be had in book publishing, as proved yesterday by the news that RTÉ reporter Kathleen MacMahon has received £500,000 (€569,453) for her first novel, This Is How It Ends.
It is part of a two-book contract negotiated by agent Marianne Gunn O’Connor, who concluded the deal on Friday last, after the London Book Fair.
“The publishing industry is limping along, so it’s a very big deal for a first-time author with no proven track record,” Ms Gunn O’Connor said. “It doesn’t happen very often. It was the biggest deal out of this year’s London Book Fair.”
She described the novel as “literary commercial fiction”. Set in contemporary Ireland, it’s a love story between an American man who’s exchanged his country’s recession for ours, and an unemployed Irish architect.
“You close the book, you want to bawl your eyes out, and then you want to tell everyone about it,” Ms Gunn O’Connor said.
The novel will be published in hardback by Little, Brown in Britain sometime next year, and by Grand Central in the United States. Should film rights be sold, and the novel make the bestseller list, MacMahon will earn an additional bonus of £100,000.
A number of foreign publishing rights are currently being negotiated. MacMahon's grandmother was Mary Lavin, the short story writer, and her aunt is Caroline Walsh, the literary editor of The Irish Times.
