Simon Trewin - GalleyCat

PFD Agents Says No to Outside Sale

Sarah — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 07:21:42 +0000

The Bookseller reports that the senior managers of PFD, a literary agency based in London with offices in New York, have told their parent company CSS Stellar that they will not support the sale of the firm to a third party. CSS is reported to be in negotiations over an 8m pound sale of the rights arm to licensing company Chorion, as part of a range of measures aimed at addressing investor concerns, and what galls the PFD brass so much is that CSS never told shareholders that PFD’s 14-strong management team – which is believed to include literary agents Caroline Dawnay, Simon Trewin, Robert Kirby, Charles Walker and Rosemary Cantor – is trying to launch a 4 million pound buyout of the firm.

St John Donald and Maureen Vincent, joint chairs of PFD, said in a statement: “We have had confirmation that one of the companies reported to be interested in PFD will not proceed in talks with CSS Stellar unless PFD’s management and all principal agents support its approach. We have made it clear to CSS Stellar that our board and all principal agents are committed to the management buy-out of the firm.”

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Dateline LBF: More Ego-tastic Guesses

Sarah — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 08:15:52 +0000

I swear, after this post I’ll stop because repeat after me: this book will not sell outside of London, New York and possibly LA. But since I threw out a guess yesterday that – should Ali Gunn be working the deal on her own behalf – Brian Freeman might be the American author in question, it’s only fair to publish his response. “Glad you think it’s me, but a satirical novel set in London doesn’t really sound like me, does it?” wrote Freeman yesterday evening by email. Instead, he’s deep into the fourth crime novel featuring Minnesota-based police detective Jonathan Stride (while #3, STALKED, will be out in the UK in September and in the US early next year.)

Otherwise, Author Amanda Lees submitted her guess to Publishing News: “Having read the piece on Ego…I am pretty certain that the agent concerned is Simon Trewin – a certain intriguing clue in the name of his victim underpins my suspicions! As for the author involved, it’s probably his client, Jon Fasman.” An interesting guess as Fasman’s only novel to date, THE GEOGRAPHER’S LIBRARY, was published back in 2005. If Lees is right, Gunn has promised dinner at The Ivy. And if she isn’t, that another guess out there to fan the flames for a book that, well, why bother repeating myself, right?

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Dateline LBF: Industry and Blogosphere Reactions

Sarah — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 08:08:49 +0000

Simon Trewin: “After the terrible experiences of the 2006 London Book Fair at ExCel in Docklands where nothing seemed to go right at all it was a joy to return to West London for what many attendees agree was the best fair ever.”
Macmillan president Richard Charkin‘s two dispatches are colorful and detail-laden but most notable for the following observation: “. My back-of-an-envelope calculations suggest that the elimination of all trade book fairs (LBF, BEA, Bologna, Delhi, Guadalajara, Tokyo, Cape Town etc) might reduce total industry costs by several billion dollars.” Makes more that “just a boy” think…
Ali Karim describes the peculiar sensation of meeting Dean Koontz via the LongPen. Karim also provided the video at the top of this post (along with other video captures of John Banville‘s noir panel.)

continued…

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