Publisher snaps up debut novel with £600,000 advance

This article is more than 8 years old
So This Is How It Ends by Kathleen MacMahon bought by Little, Brown in one of this year's biggest publishing deals
Kathleen MacMahon
Kathleen MacMahon: 'The money thing is so unreal'

Bookshops are beleaguered and publishers are struggling, but it appears that the money is still there for the right books: Irish debut novelist Kathleen MacMahon has just landed a £600,000 advance from a publisher in one of the biggest book deals so far this year.

A love story between an American banker and an out-of-work Irish architect, MacMahon's novel, So This Is How It Ends, has just been snapped up by Little, Brown for publication next year. The publisher was so keen to secure the book that it offered a pre-emptive bid of £600,000 for world English rights in the book and a follow-up, said MacMahon's agent Marianne Gunn O'Connor.

"[That amount of money] is out of the ordinary today. Advances are very, very low, but sometimes you have to take a punt and say 'listen, we're going to go with this'," she said. "At this time, when publishers are being cautious about saying they love things, Little, Brown have really put their heart on the line."

A television reporter for Irish broadcaster RTE and a mother of two, MacMahon said the deal was "unbelievable ... a total dream".

"The money thing is so unreal," she said. "I didn't even ask what currency it was in, until someone asked me and I felt like such an idiot. So that bit is very unreal. But not to dampen the money thing, for me the excitement is getting the book published, and with such a reputable publisher. The money is great drama [but] when I was sitting down writing the book, I was working through self-doubt and fear, trying to stamp them down all the time, so it's just like a dream come true to have editors at Little, Brown saying how much they love it. That's the pinch-yourself thing for me."

Last month, American writer Karen Thompson Walker netted £500,000 from Simon & Schuster for her debut The Age of Miracles, in which the Earth is knocked off its axis by a huge earthquake, but these days advances of this size are rare.

Little, Brown senior editor Rebecca Saunders said that books like MacMahon's, "which have such huge reach and emotional power, are like gold dust for editors ... I stayed up reading it all night after Marianne, the agent, gave it to me at the [London Book Fair] in the afternoon and sent her an email just before midnight saying that I'd been weeping the last 45 minutes. It's a huge Irish love story – an intelligent weepie if you like. I started sending it to my colleagues in Australia and Ireland and overnight the reactions I got back were tremendous. Unfortunately, we were not the only publishers to think so, as Marianne started receiving similar reactions from other publishers, so we moved quickly to get the novel off the table before other publishers could finish reading and start bidding."

MacMahon, speaking from RTE's newsroom, said her novel was "a love story very much of our time". "It's about our tumultuous world, and the real things in life. I very much wanted to write about walks on the beach, swimming in the sea, a dog with a beautiful heart, Bruce Springsteen," she said.

"It's set in September 2008. The book starts with an American who's about to turn 50, who's lost his job in Lehman Brothers, who's worried about the elections and wants Obama to win. He decides he will move to Ireland to trace his family tree. He arrives in Dublin and makes a pact: if Obama wins, he will go home. If McCain wins, he will stay in Ireland. He starts looking up his family, and meets a distant cousin, an out-of-work architect who's at a low ebb in life. Together they discover joy and the good things in life again."
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/apr/20/publisher-debut-novel-600000
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