“[Townsend] is a national treasure.” —The New York Times Book Review
“[Adrian Mole is] an achingly funny anti-hero.” —The Daily Mail
“Adrian Mole really is a brilliant comic creation.” —The Times (London)
(New York, NY — September 6, 2017) Open Road Integrated Media, a digital media company, announced today the acquisition of U.S. rights to ebook editions of the Adrian Mole Series by bestselling British author Sue Townsend, including the iconic The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4. The books will be published in January 2018.
Rights were acquired by Charlotte Greig, strategic advisor and acquisitions editor for Open Road in London. This acquisition represents OR/M’s ongoing effort to publish the best UK authors and bring their works to its growing audience of readers. “OR/M has published ebooks by over a dozen UK authors in the past two years, bringing over one hundred of their backlist books back to life for readers around the world to enjoy,” Greig said.
The Adrian Mole books, set in 1980s Leicester, England, are a hilarious look at the inner life of a teenager. Charting his daily dramas and misadventures, the series follows Adrian as he grows up and into adulthood.
“Even thirty years after the first Adrian Mole book was published, he is still heralded as one of the great comic creations of our times,” Greig said. “To publish Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole at Open Road and to introduce her comic genius to a whole new audience in a whole new format—what a pleasure what a privilege!”
A publishing phenomenon, the first book in the series, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4, has sold over twenty million copies worldwide, been translated into forty-eight languages, and was adapted for television in 1985. Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years was also made into a television series that first aired on the BBC in 2001.
The titles acquired from Jonathan Lloyd, Curtis Brown UK, include US ebook rights for:
- THE SECRET DIARY OF ADRIAN MOLE, AGED 13 3/4
- THE GROWING PAINS OF ADRIAN MOLE
- TRUE CONFESSIONS OF ADRIAN ALBERT MOLE
- ADRIAN MOLE: THE WILDERNESS YEARS
- ADRIAN MOLE: THE CAPPUCCINO YEARS
- THE LOST DIARIES OF ADRIAN MOLE: 1999–2001
- ADRIAN MOLE: THE PROSTRATE YEARS
About Sue Townsend
Sue Townsend (1943–2014) was born in Leicester, England. At the age of thirty-five, she won the Thames Television Playwright Award for her play Womberang (published in Bazaar and Rummage, 1984) and started her writing career. Other plays followed, including The Great Celestial Cow (1984), Ten Tiny Fingers, Nine Tiny Toes (1990), and most recently Are You Sitting Comfortably? She is best known for her series of books about Adrian Mole.
About Open Road Integrated Media
Open Road Integrated Media is a prestige content brand delivering digital experiences that entertain and inform readers around the world; their network of digital properties produces compelling stories that keep audiences engaged—across devices and around the world. The Open Road brands include Early Bird Books, a daily eBook deals newsletter and website; The Lineup, for fans of true crime, horror, the mysterious, and the paranormal; The Portalist, for fans of science fiction, fantasy; Murder & Mayhem, for fans of mystery and thriller; The Archive, for fans of history and non-fiction; and A Love So True, for fans of romance; and Open Road Media, a global eBook publisher whose catalog includes legendary authors such as William Styron, Alice Walker, Pat Conroy, Gloria Steinem, Octavia Butler, John Jakes, Pearl S. Buck, Walker Percy, Ruth Rendell, and Sherman Alexie.