Fremantle Press has the right stuff for international markets

Fremantle Press is on a roll this year with foreign rights sales for Western Australian authors in Poland, North America, France, Germany, Korea, China, Romania and a worldwide sale in the Arabic language.

Foreign Rights Manager Clive Newman said that even after 20 years in international markets, it was still gratifying to help local authors reach other corners of the world.

‘We mostly work with new and emerging talent, the people who you might not know yet but who we think have the talent and potential to achieve big things. It’s fantastic when this crazy creative partnership between an author and a publishing house pays dividends by reaching new audiences nationally and internationally,’ said Newman.

One of those authors, recent Text Prize winner A.J. Betts, said she was very excited to hear that her YA novel Wavelength would be appearing in a Korean edition.

‘It’s lovely to introduce the story to a whole new audience who will have a different perspective on it,’ said Betts.

‘Because it’s got such a local WA flavour it is nice to think that such a distant audience is going to discover it as well. It has a message that all teenagers can relate to regardless of their location,’ said Betts.

Debut picture book author Sean E. Avery was stoked to hear about his worldwide Arabic rights sale for All Monkeys Love Bananas.

‘I was extremely excited to hear that my little monkey book would be making an appearance in another language!’ said Avery.

In the past few months the Press has licensed editions of The Last of the Nomads (WJ Peasley) to Poland; The Other Bears (Michael Thompson) to North America and books in the Hal Spacejock series (Simon Haynes) to France and Germany. This year The Edge of the World (Marcella Polain) will appear in Romanian and four books by Indigenous illustrator and author Ambelin Kwaymullina will be published in China later this year with Ambelin to be a part of the Australian Writers Week in Beijing in March 2013.

Fremantle Press is an independent publishing house publishing new and emerging Western Australian authors.