The novel plays around with our preconceived notion of good and evil, and turns it on its head. “I immediately got a sense of who Nathan is. “It grabbed me the minute I began reading it,” he recalled. He started reading the manuscript on his iPhone while riding in a water taxi en route to his hotel, and was instantly hooked. Wright was on the way to Bologna via Venice when he received the Half Bad submission by e-mail. publishers that she conducted an auction for North American rights to Half Bad during the book fair, and Ken Wright, v-p and publisher of Viking, was top bidder. rights director, submitted the project to foreign publishers and within four days had offers from houses in France and Germany. The following day, Zosia Knopp, Puffin U.K. Two days after receiving the submission, he bought world rights to the trilogy in a pre-empt. as editorial director just weeks earlier, acted quickly. Days before the convention, Green’s London-based agent, Claire Wilson of Rogers, Coleridge & White, submitted the book project to publishers. The whirlwind acquisitions of Half Bad took place at and around last year’s Bologna Book Fair. and Penguin Australia will publish it simultaneously. Viking will release the book on March 4 with a 200,000-copy first printing, and Puffin U.K. White witches are good, black witches are evil, and 16-year-old Nathan – who is half and half – is caught in the middle and hunted by both sides. The trilogy is set in an alternate modern-day England where witches live alongside humans. To date, the book has been sold to publishers in 42 countries. Her novel, Half Bad, book one of a trilogy, was snatched up by publishers in several countries within days of submission, and she scored a movie deal not long thereafter. After a career in finance and a stint as full-time mother, she took a stab at writing and seems to have hit the mark.

British novelist Sally Green’s publishing saga will inspire veteran and aspiring authors alike.

Half bad novel