S&S Strikes New Le Clezio Deal

By Rachel Deahl -- Publishers Weekly, 11/3/2008 8:27:00 AM

Thus far, three small presses have benefitted from last month's news that French novelist Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio won the Nobel Prize in Literature. While David Godine, University of Nebraska Press and Curbstone Press all upped or rushed copies of their single backlist Le Clezio titles, Anne-Solange Noble, foreign rights director at  Le Clezio's French publisher Gallimard, has been working feverishly to get more of the author's titles on American bookshelves. And, although there were seven Le Clezio titles which were published by Atheneum in the 1970's, bringing those books back into print has proven complicated.

At Simon & Schuster, where Atheneum (no longer an active adult imprint) is housed, a deal has just been finalized to bring Le Clezio's first book published in the U.S., the 1965-released The Interrogation, back into print. Simon & Schuster president David Rosenthal said that the house is aiming to release the book before the end of the year, in hardcover, with a 15,000 to 20,000 first printing. As for the other six titles Atheneum once published, Rosenthal said S&S is considering re-acquiring them as well, thought it may take some time.

Because the Le Clezio books Atheneum published have fallen out of print, the task of securing the rights to them has, as Rosenthal noted, been difficult. On Interrogation, for example, Rosenthal said Gallimard did not own the translation rights, so S&S had to re-acquire the book and then strike a separate deal for the translation. "No one is entirely sure who owns what, because these [books] are so old," Rosenthal elaborated. "These [books], now 40 years old, were published by an imprint that no longer exists within a company that no longer exists that was taken over by another company."

While Noble has the freedom to take the Atheneum books to any U.S. publisher, Rosenthal said she approached S&S first because "there is a history there." At Frankfurt, Noble said her goal is to get Le Clezio's other books out in the States quickly, while the author's Nobel win is still fresh. "I am trying to make the most of the momentum now," she said in an email after the Fair. Noble is also hoping the author's other books can appear before Le Clezio makes his Nobel speech in Stockholm on December 10.