The Bookseller
Register Subscribe Sign In About

The Marketing & Publicity Conference 2019, Save The Date:

 

THURSDAY 27TH JUNE 2019
MILTON COURT | BARBICAN | LONDON

The theme for 2019 is 'Changing Gears' -  whether that means gearing up a notch, to fight for a cause or champion a beloved title, or down a notch, to make space for creative thinking and keep ourselves sane.

TICKETS ON SALE NOW
 

Keynote Speakers:

  • Keynote Speaker

    Kajal Odedra

    Kajal Odedra is the UK director of change.org, the world's largest petition platform with 17 million users in the UK alone. She has helped strategise movements such as the petition to end tampon tax and the New Era Housing campaign, and her first book, DO SOMETHING, is published this year by Hodder.

  • Keynote Speaker

    Alex Clough

    Alex is Creative Strategy Director at Splendid Communications, an award-winning communications agency with a ‘People-First’ approach to creativity. He has developed communications strategies for its wide variety of clients, delivering talkable ideas that connect with real people in their lives. During his career Alex has delivered landmark campaigns for iconic brands, including Jack Daniel’s, Hendrick's Gin, Smirnoff, Greggs and Tesco.

    @Alex_Clough

  • Keynote Speaker

    Elizabeth Day

    Elizabeth Day is the author of four novels. Her acclaimed debut Scissors, Paper, Stone won a Betty Trask Award and Home Fires was an Observer book of the year. Her third, Paradise City, was named one of the best novels of 2015 in the Evening Standard, and The Party was a Richard & Judy bookclub pick. She is also an award-winning journalist and has written extensively for The Times, the Telegraph, the Guardian, the Observer, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and ELLE. She is currently a columnist for YOU Magazine. Elizabeth is also the host of the hugely successful How To Fail With Elizabeth Day podcast.

Recently Confirmed Speakers:

  • Ruth Barnes

    Ruth Barnes set up a podcast production company in 2016 after presenting, reporting and producing for the BBC for a decade. Chalk & Blade are making shows for the BBC, Audible, the UN and have recently partnered with Malcolm Gladwell's new production company Pushkin Industries on a number of shows. They produced the first series of The Rough Guide to Everywhere for Penguin/Random House as well as series for The Guardian and The FT.

    @ruthbarnesmusic

  • Ross Caveille

    Formerly General Manager of the Amazon DSP for Europe, having spent 5 years in leadership roles across Amazon, Ross has more than 15 years experience in connecting brands with consumers via digital and traditional channels.  As Co-Founder of Acorn Intelligence, Ross continues to deliver results for partners and build the next generation technology and services organisation for e-commerce.

    @acorni1

  • Claire Leon

    A former Agency Development Lead at Amazon, supporting Search, Display and Voice Advertising growth with leading partners, Claire has spent the last 6 years at Amazon focusing on driving the knowledge and understanding of Amazon’s advertising tools and services.  She now works closely with brands helping them maximise their return on investment in e-commerce, sharing her in-depth knowledge to guarantee strong sales performance and profitability.

    @acorni1

  • Sandeep Parmar

    Sandeep Parmar is a poet, critic and Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool. Her essays and reviews have appeared in the Guardian, The Los Angeles Review of Books, the Financial Times and the Times Literary Supplement. She is a 2015 BBC New Generation Thinker and co-founder of the Ledbury Emerging Poetry Critics scheme for BAME reviewers.

     @sandeepkparmar @LedburyCritics

  • James Spackman

    James book career started glamorously, in the postroom of Bloomsbury Publishing, then developed via sales and marketing roles there, at John Murray and at Hodder. He was MD of Watkins (then part of Osprey Group) before setting up on his own.

    He now commissions books about cycling for Profile Books under the imprint Pursuit. In 2018 he set up The bks Agency with two ex Hodder colleagues. He coaches publishers and agents in presentation skills as The Book Pitch Doctor and he is also founder of The Spare Room Project (sponsored by Penguin Random House) which finds free accommodation for interns in London.

    @Blackpooltower @BookPitchDoctor @SpareRoomProj @PursuitBooks  

  • Harriet Venn

    Harriet Venn has worked in book publicity for over seven years at Penguin Random House Children’s. Harriet has been shortlisted for a PPC Annual Award six times and won twice, and has twice been nominated for the British Book Awards’ PR Campaign of the Year for La Belle Sauvage: The Book of Dust Volume One and Feminists Don’t Wear Pink And Other Lies.

     @HarrietVenn

     

  • Alesha Bonser

    Alesha Bonser has worked in publishing for over six years with roles at Penguin Random House Children’s, Usborne, and OUP. During her career, Alesha has executed campaigns for international bestselling authors John Green and Rick Riordan, launched industry-first partnerships with brands including Google and New Look and has been nominated for the British Book Award’s Marketing Strategy of the Year for her work on Feminists Don’t Wear Pink.

    @aleshabonser

  • Maura Wilding

    Maura Wilding has worked in the book world for over 12 years, first at Bloomsbury, Headline and Riot Communications, before founding her PR agency, Maura PR & Communications, in 2015. Named one of PR Week’s 30 Under 30, a Bookseller Rising Star and twice nominated for the British Book Awards’ PR Campaign of the Year, Wilding joined Orion Books in April 2019 as Communications Director.

    @MauraWilding

  • Wade Lucas

    As of summer 2018, Wade Lucas is the international account manager at BookBub, where he works with publishers in the UK, Canada and Australia to promote great books and get new authors discovered. Before BookBub, Wade worked for both the HarperCollins and Penguin Random House speakers’ bureaus, helping authors reach new live audiences around the world. Among many others, he arranged speaking engagements for Gillian Flynn, Andy Weir, Wally Lamb, Mary Karr, and Marina Abramovic. After nine years in New York City, Wade currently lives in Boston, MA.

  • The FLIP Panel

    Polly Osborn

    Polly Osborn joined the board of Simon & Schuster UK in December as Marketing and Publicity Director. A multi-award winning publicist, she has worked on campaigns for big brands and debuts; from Sophie Kinsella to Gill Sim’s Why Mummy Drinks series. She has worked with a varied range of non-fiction authors from Bear Grylls to Professor Stephen Hawking, via Amy Schumer.

    @pollyosborn

  • The FLIP Panel

    Zoe Puckering

    Zoe's background is in Employee Wellbeing and Employee Benefits consultancy. She was a Premiership Rugby player, so physical wellbeing has always been in her life but it wasn't until her own struggles with depression that she became proactive towards her mental wellbeing. She is an Active Role Model for LBTQWomen, a global network for lesbian, bi, trans and queer women in leadership. 

  • The FLIP Panel

    Rose Poole

    Rose Poole has worked at Penguin Random House for the last six years, with roles in the Audiences and Audio team and then Penguin General, where she is now Senior Campaigns Manager. Leading marketing campaigns for authors Dolly Alderton, Ben Macintyre, Zadie Smith and Robert Macfarlane, she recently worked on the campaign for Michelle Obama’s no.1 bestselling memoir Becoming, for which she and the team won a BMS award.
    @rosiedora

  • The FLIP Panel Chair

    Anita Sethi

    Anita Sethi is a journalist, writer and critic who has written for publications including The Guardian, Observer, Granta, TLS, and appeared on BBC radio. She is a Judge of the British Book Awards 2019 and has been a Judge of the Costa Book Awards.  She has been published in several anthologies including the Seasons nature writing anthology and Common People. She was born and grew up in Manchester.

    Twitter: @anitasethi. Website: www.anitasethi.com
     

  • Simon Heafield

    Simon joined the Granta team in March 2018 and oversees marketing across the whole list and the magazine. He was previously Head of Marketing at Foyles, where he worked for 10 years. He enjoys making things.

  • Pru Rowlandson

    Pru Rowlandson has been the publicity director at Granta Publications since 2006.  Before Granta, she was the publicity manager at Canongate (1999 – 2004) and Random House (2005 – 2006). She lives in London with her husband and two children.

  • Abbie Salter

    Abbie has worked at HarperCollins since February 2018. Recent campaigns she has worked on include Three Things About Elsie by Joanna Cannon, All That’s Dead by Stuart MacBride, Roar by Cecelia Ahern and The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley.

    @abbieEsalter

  • Emilie Chambeyron

    Emilie is Press Officer for HarperFiction, which she joined as Junior Press Officer in 2016. She began her career in publishing in 2015 as Sales Assistant for William Collins and 4th Estate, also imprints of HarperCollins UK. Emilie manages her own campaigns for a range of commercial fiction titles, and has assisted with a number of high profile campaigns for authors such as Karin Slaughter, Dawn O’Porter and Fern Britton.

    @emiliechambs

  • Tom Noble

    Tom Noble joined Orion as Head of Marketing in January 2018, and since then has worked on a broad range of campaigns for authors and brands such as Ian Rankin, The Hairy Bikers, Malala Yousafzai and The Ordnance Survey Puzzle Book. He previously worked at Headline and Pan Macmillan, and was named as a Bookseller Rising Star in 2017.

  • Poppy Stimpson

    Poppy Stimpson has worked in Publishing for just over five years. Before becoming Senior Publicity Manager at Orion, she worked at Transworld (PRH) and before that, Little, Brown Book Group. She recently launched the No.1 bestselling debut thriller hardback published in 2019, The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides and she works across all imprints within Orion Publishing Group, with a specific interest in commercial fiction brands.

  • Juta Pīrāga

    Juta Pīrāga is one of the co-creators of the Latvian Literature platform, which was established to promote Latvian literature abroad. With its multi-award-winning publicity campaign #Iamintrovert, Latvia took the literary world by storm at the 2018 London Book Fair, creating a new standard for how countries can raise the profile of their literature.  She specializes in cultural diplomacy and international management.

Watch this space as we add more speakers...

For a taste of 2018's conference, see below:

  • Keynote Speaker

    Anna Chapman

    Anna is a senior strategist at Contagious where she combines her passion for brands and marketing with a love of editorial. She started out as a journalist, writing about youth culture and editing the books page of The Face. Since then she’s headed up a website in Ibiza and a content studio for Unilever (around brand purpose). Recently she’s worked on trends projects for Facebook, Spotify and Heineken. A sometime yoga teacher, she tries to balance her digital addiction by standing on her head.

    @annachap

     

  • Keynote Speaker

    Andrew Tuck

    Andrew Tuck is the founding editor of global magazine Monocle. In addition he’s the editor of The Monocle Book Collection, including The Monocle Guide to Better Living and the ever-expanding Travel Guide Series, as well as Monocle’s weekly newspaper series for spring, summer and winter. He is also the host of The Urbanist, the Monocle 24 radio show that’s dedicated to making better cities.

recently confirmed speakers

  • Valerie Brandes

    Founder & Publisher, Jacaranda Books

  • Videl Bar-Kar

    New Business Director, UK & Ireland, Bookwire

  • Leena Normington

    Social Media Producer, Vintage Books

  • Ryan Dilley

    Managing Producer, Panoply

WHY ATTEND:
 

Hear a variety of case studies with both thrifty budgets to blowout
 

Explore the growth and impact of experiential content and live events
 

Be inspired by innovative campaigns from outside the industry
 

Swap notes with over 300 of your fellow marketers and publicists
 

Discuss how literary prizes continue to have an impact on sales
 

Leave the day with a clear set of tools to help with future campaigns

An overview on the themes for 2018

This year’s theme is "grabbing attention for books”. The conference will look at the campaigns that soared and books that roared, and how today’s marketers and publicists use every trick in the, ahem, book to maximise exposure for individual titles and authors.

In a crowded media market, where publishers lack the financial muscle to outperform rivals, we’ll be looking to highlight those David and Goliath moments where publishers have punched above their weight and books have defied the odds to become headline-makers.

While smaller publishers are challenged to create campaigns with limited budgets, the pressure is on larger publishers to deliver for heir brand authors as well as break-out new names.

We’ll be looking at how publishers are creating imaginative and effective campaigns to sell more books, and doing things differently to grab attention where they can.

We’ll be hearing about the relaunch of one of publishing’s boldest brands, the reinvention of a national newspaper, how to manage crisis during an election, how clever experiential can launch campaigns, how literary prizes continue to have an impact on sales, how smart integrated PR and marketing campaigns still successfully have impact and many, many more examples to help publishers get more books into the hands of readers.

 

For event queries please contact joanna.williams@thebookseller.com and for sponsorship enquiries please contact emma.lowe@thebookseller.com. 

The Marketing and Publicity conference is run by The Bookseller, Westminster Tower, 3 Albert Embankment, London, SE1 7SP.