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State Award for Information Publication to Marcus Rosenlund!

What a wonderful autumn to HLA’s authors! It was announced today that one of our nonfiction highlights, The Weather that Changed the World by Marcus Rosenlund will be honoured with the State Award for Information Publication.

The award is given yearly since 1968. The number of recipients varies every year and nominations are primarily given to fiction and nonfiction books, radio and TV programmes and newspapers articles that had the most significant contribution to the information publication during the previous year. The amount of each award is 15,000 euros, except for the lifelong award (20,000 euros).

The Weather that Changed the World is a true masterpiece of narrative nonfiction. It explains not so much about  how we changed the weather, but rather, how the weather has changed us. Binding connections to our time, Rosenlund shows how the climate has always had impact on historical events – even the ones we thought we were well familiar with. As the author himself has commented: “I wanted to write a book about things people didn’t know they wanted to know”. The result is as informative as it is entertaining, and beloved among the readers: the fourth edition of the book has just reached the Finnish readers, and rights have been sold to four territories: Estonia, (Ühinenud Ajakirjad), Hungary (Cser Kiadó), World Spanish (Elefanta) and most recently, Turkey (Kaplumbaa).

Last year the award was given to another HLA’s writer, Joonas Pörsti for his nonfiction The Enchantment of Propaganda.

Congratulations to the author!

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More rights sales in September!

Autumn season has started off… well, quite amazingly for us. In addition to the sales of Piia Leino’s novel Heaven and Juhani Karila’s Fishing for the Little Pike earlier this month, we are now happy to announce two more.

Minna Rytisalo’s awarded bestseller Lempi has been sold to Jumava, one of the biggest publishers in Latvia. The novel has recently won the public vote in Helmet – Helsinki Metropolitan Library – Literature Prize competition. The prize is given yearly to a future classic of Finnish literature. In addition to that, it was shortlisted as the favourite book by German-speaking booksellers in Switzerland, also for the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize, the Runeberg Prize and the Lappi Literature Prize. It won the Blogistania Finlandia Prize, voted by Finnish bloggers as the best novel of 2016, the Thank You for the Book Prize awarded by the Finnish Booksellers’, Librarians’ and Libraries Associations, and the Botnia Prize. The novel has sold over 25,000 copies so far, and it is the fourth foreign rights sale for it.

Matti Airola’s cheerful and inventive Dads’ and Daughters’ Braiding Book has been sold to Fragment, an imprint of Albatros, the biggest publisher in Czech Republic. It is the sixth foreign rights sale for the book, which was a huge commercial success in Finland upon its release.

Congratulations to the authors!

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World French rights for Juhani Karila’s autumn sensation!

Before even being published in Finland, Juhani Karila’s new novel Fishing for the Little Pike caused quite a sensation among foreign publishers. And we are so thrilled to announce that the World French rights has now been sold to La Peuplade in Canada.

La Peuplade has made its name as a youthful and passionate publisher with ‘assertive, recognizable and necessary’ contemporary titles on its list. It has previously published such Finnish authors as Tove Jansson and Aki Ollikainen, as well as internationally famous, outstanding writers Niviaq Korneliussen, Anne Cathrine Bomann, Dagur Hjartarson and others.

Le Peuplade’s imprint Fictions du Nord has a lot of success both in France and in Canada, and the books are distributed everywhere in the French World by CDE (Gallimard) and Dimedia (in Canada).

As the publisher stated about Karila’s book: “Fishing for the Little Pike takes the reader to an incredible fishing journey through the Laplandish folklore full of imps, monsters and mysterious creatures – a world that strongly reminds the one of the Moomins Valley and Arto Paasilinna works. It’s funny and dark, witty and poetic. The kind of book, full of marvels, that francophone readers need.”

Karila’s publisher in Finland is Siltala, and the book is due to be published in a couple of weeks. Congratulations!

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Autumn 2019 Rights Lists have arrived!

Finally, they are here! Autumn adults’ and children’s catalogues are ready and can be now easily found on our website, under the Catalogues tab.

Autumn list is big and colourful, for we try to provide something for each reader and taste: from commercial chick-lit and crime to almost experimental literary fiction; from entertaining narrative nonfiction to powerful and rather dark auto-fiction. And we are truly happy to see that catalogues have already received a lot of positive feedback.

In addition to some titles we already added in spring, such as enthralling narratives from the Finnish periphery by Niina Miettinen and Johanna Laitila, we also have a lot of exciting news: two Finlandia Prize winners (Mikko Rimminen and Riikka Pelo), a spectacular novelty in Arto Paasilinna’s spirit by the young Juhani Karila, which already raised an overwhelming attention from abroad, as well as one of the most talked-about debuts in Finland this autumn, Antti Rönkä. The non-fiction list is complemented with the new book by one of the most popular Finnish historians Teemu Keskisarja, and the children’s list shines with gorgeous illustrated fiction and non-fiction by Alexandra Salmela & Linda Bondestam, Tomi Kontio & Elina Warsta, Malin Klingenberg & Sanna Mander, Virpi Kaarina Talvitie et al. and others. You can find more information about our autumn highlights here.

We hope you will enjoy the browsing, and don’t hesitate to contact us (urte@helsinkiagency.fi) if you wish to see the materials. We are starting the season with Gothenburg this week, and will then continue with Frankfurt, Helsinki, Sharjah and Moscow international book fairs and Crossing Border Festival in Hague. If you’re there, let us know and come say hello! We wish you all a great start of this Autumn, and let the fun begin!

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Gummerus bought by the audiobook giant Storytel

One of the four stakeholders of Helsinki Literary Agency, Gummerus Publishing, has been acquired by Swedish company Storytel, focusing on selling audiobooks and e-books. Gummerus is the third largest, as well as one of the oldest Finnish publishers. Gummerus releases ca. 200 Finnish and translated titles a year; among the most renown of its authors are Minna Rytisalo, Sisko Savonlahti, Pauliina Rauhala (all represented by HLA), Jojo Moyes, Clare Macintosh, Nora Roberts and Michael Connelly.

Gummerus continues running as an independent member of Storytel under the leadership of the current CEO Anna Baijars.

Storytel is a leading audiobooks service in the Nordics, and it also operates in several countries in Europe, Asia and South America. In addition to Gummerus, Storytel owns several other significant nordic publishers; in 2016, the company drew attention by buying Nordstedts, the oldest publishing house in Sweden.