andrew lownie literary agency

News

  • Mum's Way is no 9

    27 Feb 2013

    Congratulations to Ian Millthorpe and Lynne Barrett-Lee whose Mum’s Way has gone straight into the Sunday Times best seller list at no 9.

  • Great Booklist review for Girl With No Name

    27 Feb 2013

    Marina Chapman’s Girl With No Name has received a tremendous review in Booklist:

    “A well-paced, cliffhanger approach to telling the story makes for a riveting narrative. Chapman’s struggles, no matter how outrageous, are made relatable through the deft descriptions of her thoughts and feelings. A constant theme throughout is her strong desire to be someone. Thrilling, upsetting, and powerful, this memoir is a coming-of-age tale like no other.”

  • Terrific Kirkus review for Operation Damocles

    26 Feb 2013

    Roger Howard’s book Operation Damocles on “Mossad’s attempts to thwart the Egyptian missile program.” published in the US in May has had a terrific pre-publication review by Kirkus:

    A British investigative journalist offers an intriguing, somewhat circuitous look back at the Mossad’s attempts to thwart the Egyptian missile program. In response to Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser’s paranoid efforts to bolster his military program in the late 1950s, the equally paranoid Israeli foreign intelligence service kicked into high vigilance, planting operatives in Cairo and even carrying out intimidation and assassination attempts against the key German scientists recruited to the Egyptian missile work. Howard (The Oil Hunters: Exploration and Espionage in the Middle East, 2008, etc.) uses his expertise and research on Middle Eastern defense issues to piece together this complex, shadowy story.

    In the first part of the book, the author backtracks into the deep-seated history of Arab-Israeli hostility, focusing on the pan-Arab liberation movement led by Nasser, his mistrust of Western leaders born out by the Suez Crisis of 1956, and his resolve to build up the Egyptian military to ward off Israeli attacks and galvanize his own power base among the Arab states. The goal was to build long-range ballistic rockets, and Nasser’s trusty deputy chief of air force intelligence, Gen. Isam Khalil, was sent to Zurich and elsewhere to try to lure some “specialist engineers” to the Egyptian cause. The scientists were disgruntled Germans, specifically ex-Nazis, who were all offered sweet deals to live and work in Cairo beginning in July 1960.

    Meanwhile, Mossad, led by the legendary Isser Harel, had to find some suitable operatives to infiltrate the Egyptian-German community, such as the highly convincing Wolfgang Lotz. Ultimately, both sides erred fatally: Harel’s Operation Damocles proved clumsy and politically driven, while the Egyptian rockets lacked a guidance mechanism, which undermined their accuracy.

    A well-paced narrative as chock full of mysterious revelations as a good spy thriller.

  • Cover story in Military History Monthly

    25 Feb 2013

    Bijan Omrani has the cover story on Caesar’s invasion of Britain in the March Edition of Military History Monthly :

    http://www.military-history.org/issues/military-history-monthly-march-2013.htm

  • Mum's Way no 8 on Amazon

    23 Feb 2013

    Congratulations to Ian Milthorpe and Lynne Barrett-Lee’s Mum’s Way which has gone straight into the Amazon top ten at no 8.

  • Stewart Lansley speaks at RSA

    21 Feb 2013

    Stewart Lansley today gave a talk at The RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) on the subject of his new book The Cost of Inequality: RSA Speech Why Income Inequality Leads to Economic Collapse

  • Andrew Lownie remains top dealmaker for UK non-fiction

    15 Feb 2013

    On Publishersmarketplace Andrew Lownie continues his run as the top UK non-fiction dealmaker with 27 deals in this category in the last 12 months | 22 in the last 6 months | 95 overall | 10 six-figure+ deals.

  • Mum's Way serialised in Mail on Sunday

    15 Feb 2013

    Ian Millthorpe and Lynne Barrett-Lee’s Mum’s Way, a widower’s account of raising eight children is serialised in the Mail on Sunday this weekend.

  • Thistle Publishing launch

    15 Feb 2013

    This week’s Bookseller has a piece on the agency’s new imprint, Thistle Publishing:

    Andrew Lownie creates own e-imprint Charlotte Williams

    The Andrew Lownie Literary Agency has become the latest to set up an in-house digital and p.o.d. publishing imprint. The Thistle imprint will use Amazon publishing programme White Glove to release e-books and print-on-demand copies of titles where the e-book rights are not controlled by a publisher.

    Lownie (pictured) said publishers risked being “left behind” by the higher royalty rates authors can command through the Amazon programme, and that the move was also a reaction to publishers commissioning fewer titles.

    Meanwhile, Curtis Brown joint c.e.o. Jonny Geller said his agency was pleased with early sales through its digital self-publishing programme, Curtis Brown Creative, launched via Kindle Direct Publishing and CreateSpace in December last year. He said the agency had already seen strong sales, with Alex Gerlis’ debut novel The Best of Our Spiesselling 4,000 copies in January.

    Lownie’s fiction agent David Haviland will be overseeing Thistle, with the first title, Conclave by Mary Hollingsworth, an account of the 1559 papal election, released this week to capitalise on its newsworthiness. The White Glove programme pays 70% on receipts to authors, if the e-books are priced between £1.49 and £7.81, with the Andrew Lownie Agency to take 15% commission, paying publicists to support the titles and designing the books’ covers.

    Lownie said: “With e-book publishers and Amazon offering up to 70%, publishers will be left behind if they don’t adapt.” He added: “This is something we do in addition to our main job. There are some books that don’t fit the conventional model, where publishers don’t see the market for it, but we do - or they can’t publish it quickly enough … We are still acting as agents - but we are giving a brand, through Thistle, to these particular books. We are giving people the opportunity to earn while we showcase the works.”

    Other titles lined up for February release include Rasputin by Joseph Fuhrmann, a biography of the Russian mystic; The Soldier by Darren Moore, about the changing role of the military; and A Polar Bear Ate My Head by Paul Merrill, a memoir of setting up a lads’ magazine in the UK and Australia.

  • Cut is #8 on the New York Times bestseller list.

    14 Feb 2013

    Cathy Glass’s memoir Cut is #8 on the New York Times e book best seller list.