11 Jul Talking Movie, TV and Podcast Adaptations with Maÿlis Vauterin (Podcast #14)

Talking Movie, TV and Podcast Adaptations with Maÿlis Vauterin

By Marleen Seegers, Co-Founder of 2 Seas Agency and Host of The Make Books Travel Podcast

July 11, 2020

^{Maÿlis Vauterin © Thomas Guillaume}

Today I’m speaking with Maÿlis Vauterin, Rights Director at Editions Stock in France.

I’ve previously interviewed various rights sellers about one specific type of subsidiary rights sales: the sale of translation rights. This means that a book is translated in another language and published in the local market of that language.

In this episode however, Maylis and I discuss another type of subsidiary rights sales – and therefore a different potential income stream for authors – which is the licensing of audiovisual rights. We specifically cover movie and TV adaptations, as well as a relative newcomer in the book licensing world: podcast adaptations.

Here are some of the questions I asked Maÿlis:

• Has the French book market started to recover from the complete shutdown due to the pandemic? are people buying books again?
• What are your thoughts on big international streaming platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime who are buying and even producing ‘local’ shows such as La casa de papel from Spain and Le bureau des légendes from France?
• Have you seen an increase in such licenses for your portfolio?
• Do you specifically pitch titles with such international projects in mind?
• Do you always communicate with the local (French) offices of such international companies or do you also reach out directly to Hollywood?
• Podcast adaptations: how do these work?
• Have any international movie/tv deals lead to (further) translation rights deals for a specific title, and/or vice versa?
• You recently participated in a virtual event called Pitch the Book, as an alternative to in-person meetings with international producers at the Cannes film festival. What was that like?

Show notes

Maÿlis recommends the following three books:

• The Wall by Marlen Haushoffer (US paperback edition with Quartet Books; translated from the German: Die Wand, Claassen/Ullstein)
• Resilience: How Your Inner Strength Can Set You Free from Your Past by Boris Cyrulnik (US paperback edition with TarcherPerigee; translated from the French: Résilience, connaissances de bases, Odile Jacob)
• La coquille Saint Jacques, sentinelle de l’Océan by Laurent Chauvaud (Les Equateurs; no English translation available at the time of recording)

Thank you for listening, and enjoy!

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