Charly Ford is a Project Manager at Osprey Publishing and is hosting the BookMachine event in Oxford. Here, Charly shares her enthusiasm for publishing and tells us why you should come along and join the fun later this month.
Gin palaces, children’s hidey holes, book delivery chutes and outdoor touchscreens were just some of the ideas that sprung from last week’s Foyles Bookshop Workshops.
On Monday and Friday afternoon, representatives from the publishing industry and beyond ascended to the gallery room of Foyles flagship store to discuss the challenges and opportunities of the future.
Come Spring 2014, Foyles will relocate next door to 107-109 Charing Cross Road, the former Central St. Martin’s building, an altogether larger and more ambitious space. Amidst the flapjack, felt tips and blue sky thinking, there was a very real concern of how to make this work – Foyles have been in redundancy talks and the printed book trade is in trouble. To me it almost felt like a great call to arms, an assembly of creative minds to combat the mega-bot juggernaut of online retail – Amazon – and reinvent the high street bookshop.
Adrian Hon is the Founder and Chief Creative at Six to Start, an award-winning online games company. Working with the likes of Penguin Books, Disney and the BBC, their transmedia experiences have engaged millions of people in new ways. Adrian originally trained as a neuroscientist at Cambridge and Oxford and also writes for The Telegraph about technology. So, basically, he really knows his stuff! BookMachine has peered into Adrian’s world of augmented reality and this is what we found…
Joe Pickering is a Publicity Director at Random House UK, in charge of the Jonathan Cape and Bodley Head imprints. With a mega Twitter following (@Joethepublicist) and an enviable list of esteemed writers under his wing, we pick Joe’s brains for industry know-how and find out about the road to publicity stardom…
Ruth Warburton is a job-sharing publicity manager for the Vintage imprints Chatto & Windus and Square Peg at Random House. Having won PPC awards for her campaigns, she now mixes her role as a successful publicist with being a young adult author – The Winter Trilogy is published by Hodder Children’s Books. We catch up with Ruth to find out if variety really is the spice of life in publishing…
The Osprey Group is an international publishing group with a digital success record that many larger publishers would envy. They publish under three brands: Osprey Publishing, Shire Books and Angry Robot. FutureBook award-winning Rebecca Smart, their CEO, has been recognised for her pioneering attitude and her leadership skills – now she shares some savvy thinking with BookMachine.
Are you a bit of a know-it-all? Always impressing people with your expert opinions? Have no fear if your knowledge isn’t quite up to scratch – Laura Vile, Marketing Executive at Hodder, is here to tell us about a new combination of books and free events covering today’s hot topics. Read on to find out about All That Matters…
Nikesh Shukla is the author of the Costa First Novel Award-shortlisted novel, ‘Coconut Unlimited’ (‘…a riot of cringeworthy moments made real by Shukla’s beautifully observed characters and talent for teen banter.’ Metro) and the Channel 4 Comedy Lab ‘Kabadasses’ starring Jack Doolan, Josie Long and Shazad Latif. He also co-authored a book about the riots for Random House/The Bodley Head with Kieran Yates called ‘Generation Vexed’. His writing has featured on BBC2, Radio 4, Esquire, The Sunday Times and The Guardian. We caught up with him for 6 questions…
Andrew Turner is Marketing Executive at Nelson Croom (who are currently offering 10% off their online publishing courses for BookMachine readers) and current chair of the Society of Young Publishers. Emma Smith has 6 questions for him…
BookMachine is a drinks social for publishing folks and book lovers. Read the site for event news, views and publishing tips.