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People no longer go to the Frankfurt Book Fair to learn about important books, so they announce ones already signed up. Last week these included Cliff Richard’s memoirs, two history books by Dan Snow, and some comic writing by Woody Allen. The novel exciting publishers was Les Bienveillantes (The Furies), a Second World War epic by Jonathan Littell. There was one big signing: Faber bought The Joy of Opera by Plácido Domingo.

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Vikram Chandra’s 900-page Sacred Games is “the longest piece of crime fiction I have yet recommended”, Marcel Berlins wrote here last month. Imagine its scale in German, where translations are usually about a third longer. Aufbau is publishing it in two volumes. Volume one is 800 pages; volume two, out by the end of the year, another 550.

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There is a philosophy behind Andrew “The Jackal” Wylie’s demands for huge advances for authors such as Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie. Publishers need to earn them back by selling a lot of copies. But it doesn’t work every time, Wylie tells Le Monde. “I once sold a book for $2m that the editor entirely abandoned,” he said. At least he got the money.

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