The London Book Fair’s residency at the Olympia has had its share of challenges in recent years, but organizers have hope that things will be different this time around. The rights center has moved to roomier wings of the Olympia, the National Hall Gallery and Central Hall, which AALA president Regina Brooks says will help prevent bottlenecks. And, despite anyone’s reservations about it, fair director Emma Lowe confirms: the IRC is still sold out.

Insiders, who are looking to LBF to set the tone for the rest of the year, expect familiar fiction and nonfiction trends to lead the way—with a few notable caveats.

Coming out of another bleak year of global events, agents say feel-good fiction remains strong. Dealmakers are betting on books that evoke Virginia Evans’s The Correspondent and Allen Levi’s Theo of Golden, with their focus on the sentimental contours of everyday life and a “clear pitch, a strong voice, and great characters,” in the words of literary scout Bettina Schrewe, who adds that “people are looking for inspiring stories, books they can get lost in.”

But insiders across the board also say people are in the mood to be surprised. Over at United Talent Agency, cohead of media rights Jason Richman says he is putting his money on a slate of “plot-driven literary fiction” like The Names of the New World by Kawai Strong Washburn (MCD, Oct.), a climate drama about a superstorm hitting Minnesota, and titles with vivid, high-concept settings—among them Frankie Zwick’s One Trick Pony, a Wild West yarn, and True Blood writer Raelle Tucker’s debut Obscura (Crown, Feb. 2027), a new mythology set in Ibiza.

There are even some grotesque titles pulling ahead. Mariia Niskavaara’s Ester the Butcher—a slim novel from Finnish publisher Kosmos that has sold rights to Grand Central in the U.S. and 19 other territories just in the past few weeks—is one of this year’s hottest translation items, Schrewe says. Over at the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency, president Jennifer Weltz is campaigning for Mark D. Freeman’s Ravenous, a debut eco-horror thriller about a town besieged by polar bears, which was also sold to Grand Central in March.

Nonfiction dealmakers, many of whom still have self-help front of mind, are also courting a more shadowy market. Schrewe sees titles on “consciousness and death and life after death” multiplying. Richman, for his money, is feeling more bullish on memoir, particularly titles that offer “inspiration and escape,” he says.

Though the genre is strong, selling some self-help internationally can be tricky, Weltz says, since readers often prefer authors with “boots on the ground.” Apparently the same does not hold for titles on child-rearing—she adds that “parenting titles done well” have proved to be more reliably transnational.

Agents and scouts also shared a whole range of forecasts about romantasy, a market that has been teetering on the brink of oversaturation for several years. Though its escapist appeal remains strong, Weltz predicts people might be “looking for something new and different” this time around.

The way money moves is, of course, about more than just taste. Dealmakers will surely be working the page-to-screen pipeline, particularly given this year’s main-stage event with Netflix and Tribeca execs. And while the once-meteoric rise of the audiobook market has leveled off, most still see a lot of growth potential. Book scout Liz Gately is keeping an eye on litRPGs, where audio sales have soared since Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl series thrust the genre into the mainstream. Gately sums up its appeal in a screen-addled age: “If you can’t play video games because you’re driving a car, Matt has a solution for you.”

For those less initiated into the business of dealmaking, one of the more inscrutable developments has to do with foreign-language publishers—particularly in Germany, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia—buying up English-language rights. Insiders diverge on why this is happening. Weltz theorizes that readers around the globe are encountering books in English-speaking online communities and want to read the version hawked by influencers. One scout, however, says the root cause is American agents’ reluctance to sell to U.K. publishers, who typically export to European markets, due to inadequate export royalties. Regardless of the reason, all are expecting to see more deals in this vein.

Of course, some agents will wait until closer to the fair to show their cards. There’s still time for surprises before prognostication and business mechanics collide at the Olympia—where, hopefully, the dealmaking will be the most colorful thing on the floor.

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