As this edition of The Hot Sheet is written, the full upshot of the UK’s “Brexit” referendum is far from known. And with all respect to President Obama, who has just told NPR that “there’s been a little bit of hysteria” around the vote, the Brexit scenario is prompting the best-earned hysteria in the British Isles for many decades.
We teed this one up in our last edition, at a time when many thought there wasn’t a chance that referendum voters would opt to leave the European Union. If you need a quick review of where things are now in this complex series of political events, the New York Times’s most recent article captures it: “Britain Hopes to Stay in the EU Market.” That sounds counterintuitive, but much is being done to try to stall and/or prevent the effects of the vote.
Potential effects on publishing and authors in the UK: Remembering that all is yet to play out, it’s a time for UK authors to look to their US and other offshore sales—dollars translate into more pounds than before.
This could be especially helpful because UK retailers have said for weeks that they fear a fall in business at home. Belts are rapidly tightening. The Bookseller’s Lisa Campbell in London reports that Waterstones commercial manager Andy Rowe is exhorting his booksellers in the UK’s largest dedicated bookstore chain to take extraordinary steps in upbeat, supportive service to worried customers. London’s Big Green Bookshop owner Simon Key warns, “It hasn’t affected people financially yet, but it will. In future [it] will have an effect. I’m still in shock; I don’t know what to do with myself. We won’t be affected straight away, but that’s not the main worry. Our stupid country is self-imploding. I’m not thinking about myself, other people will have it harder.”
The Bookseller editor Philip Jones in London writes: “Longer term the entire infrastructure of the book business could be put under scrutiny, from how our copyright laws and the rules around VAT may differ from Europe, through to what type of regulatory framework we impose on the tech giants such as Amazon, Google, and Facebook. Investment in science (much of which comes direct from Europe) and therefore science publishing could be undermined; while for trade publishers and agents Europe could now become a distinct territory again, making the UK an inevitably smaller territory (as the world itself, and English within it, expands).”
Orna Ross of the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) tells us she’ll discuss Brexit in her upcoming First Monday post. The Society of Authors (for trade writers) is pledging “to react to the changing circumstances positively, continuing the fight for authors’ rights and interests.”
Potential effects on publishing and authors in the US: Literary agent Ginger Clark, who specializes in rights for young readers’ books with the Curtis Brown agency, has worked hard to help US publishing people grasp some of the implications of the Brexit scenario. Quoting a few comments from her Twitter feed is instructive, since she commands a seat in the world’s major trade show rights centers annually:
- “How #brexit affects publishing? We got a wire from the UK Thursday that would be worth about 10 percent less if we got it today.”
- “Whenever the UK does leave, British publishers have less leverage to demand exclusive Europe English-language rights.”
- “If you have steady income from previous UK deals, guess what—the £ is at $1.33. Usually it’s well over $1.60. Your steady income shrinks.”
- “Here are other ways [Brexit can affect publishing]: an economy in crisis buys fewer books and does fewer rights deals. So already hard-to-get British sales will be harder.”
Of special interest to authors in the trade, Michael Cader at Publishers Lunch (subscription required) has written of how British publishers enjoy certain advantages of rights exclusivity with European countries that may be lost post-Brexit. And he points out that the multinational nature of so many major publishers means that “effects will be widespread across the industry…. HarperCollins and John Wiley are the biggest publicly traded US-based publishers that transact significant sales in the UK, and they are likely to feel the weight of a cheaper pound plus higher UK operating costs the most.” He predicts that Penguin Random House will be hardest hit because it’s the largest of the UK’s trade publishers. Hachette also has a major unit in London and faces “declining equity prices in Europe” as a French company.
Bottom line: Analysts warn that the real fallout of Brexit won’t be known for weeks and months because of the intricacy of the UK’s decades of EU relationships and the uncertainty as to whether the UK’s exit from the Union will even go forward. For now, understanding your exposure to the UK market is important, as Clark suggests. We’ll update, of course, as warranted.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
