Alison Baverstock

Course Leader, MA in Publishing, Kingston University

The next generation of publishers and the growth of self publishing

Alison Baverstock is Leader of Kingston University’s MA Publishing course and the author of a number of guides on writing, marketing and publishing books. In her talk at the Galley Club she gave a broad overview of publishing in the 21st century and what kind of skills and competencies publishers are likely to need in the future. She spoke about her work in training tomorrow’s publishers and asked: “In an industry that has traditionally relied on nepotism, patronage and informal recruiting, what role do universities have in education and recruitment? What are we teaching them and what do we try to turn out?  And are we any better at equipping the new generation of entrants?” Alison also talked about the opportunities for authors to enter the world of self-publishing: “Personally, I now see see self-publishing as an option for authors to exercise some self determination – and a business opportunity for publishers – rather than the abandonment of hope on both sides.”

Peter Newsom

Formerly Export Director at Headline Publishing Group, Peter is now an International Sales Consultant.

‘Exports in the digital age – new challenges for publishers and printers’

Peter’s career in publishing started in 1979 with what he says “seems now like the dream job” – Mediterranean Sales Rep for Faber. He went on to spend six years in European Sales at Michael Joseph and six years as Sales Manager for Asia and Africa at Penguin before joining Headline in its early years as Export Sales Director. There followed 18 years of direct responsibility for Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, and the US, and for the sales team in London who looked after all other markets around the world, and latterly his brief encompassed special international projects and organisation of the Frankfurt Book Fair for the wider Hachette Group. Peter currently undertakes a variety of international sales consultancy roles for small to medium sized publishers and the Frankfurt Book Fair. Peter’s talk at the Club started with an entertaining resumé of his experiences of “carrying the bag” around the world in export sales. He moved on to consider the impact that digitisation is having on export sales of the printed book, and discussed the future potential of developing markets, especially the ‘BRIC’ countries: Brazil, Russia, India and China.

Isobel Dixon

Director, the Blake Friedmann Agency

“The South African market”

South African-born literary agent Isobel Dixon gave an overview on publishing in the developing South African market, and other parts of the traditional UK & British Commonwealth territory, from the point of view of an agent representing a number of the country’s best Afrikaans writers. Isobel said she is a firm believer in the worth for authors, and local publishers, to separate rights in the different parts of the traditional Commonwealth market, and selling these individually wherever possible – in Australia and New Zealand (sometimes as ANZ, but several times separately for NZ authors), Canada, India and South Africa. She gave examples from her varied client list which can be viewed at

http://www.blakefriedmann.co.uk/agents/isobeldixon/  Isobel is also a published poet and briefly described how she juggles her poetry writing with her busy life as an agent. Her new collection, The Tempest Prognosticator, will be published by Salt in July 2011.

Photo credit: Jo Kearney

Richard Charkin

Executive Director of Bloomsbury Publishing

 Managing Director of Bloomsbury’s Adult Publishing Division

‘A non-digital personal history of publishing’

Richard Charkin, Executive Director of Bloomsbury Publishing and Managing Director of Bloomsbury’s Adult Publishing Division, gave an entertaining retrospective of his long career in publishing, flagging up his early involvement with digital initiatives. These included being one of the first publishers with a website (Secker.com) while at Reed; aggregating information with Ex.Refer.com; the BioMed.Net social network for scientists; and an encounter with a pioneering version of spell-check. Moving on to the present day, Richard spoke enthusiastically of Bloomsbury’s success with e-books, but warned of ‘issues’ “occurring almost daily”, including the ‘agency model’, library concerns, territorial rights and the EU open market. He ended on an upbeat note, praising the UK printing industry for adapting to the changing technology “better than any country in the world”, and stating his belief that publishing in general is at the beginning of a “golden age”.  During questions, he elaborated on Bloomsbury’s ‘Public Library Online’ initiative which allows full access to themed ‘digital bookshelves’, both within libraries and remotely, offering pdf versions of books rather than downloads.