The popular event series is back, covering key industry topics – Production, Editorial, Tech, Marcomms, Audio and Design. This year there will be 6 Unplugged events, with 6 hosts, more than 18 confirmed speakers, 1 brand new venue and an awards ceremony.
Claire Maxwell is an experienced publicist and former journalist. Having worked at some of the UK’s leading publishing houses including Canongate Books, Claire has implemented PR campaigns that have seen titles rocket up the bestsellers charts. She was the publicist behind the campaign for the Sunday Times Bestselling How to Stop Time by Matt Haig, and has worked on a huge variety of books and projects. She co-programmed BookMachine Unplugged 2018: Talking Marcomms, which takes place this Wednesday evening [SOLD OUT] and sits on the BookMachine Editorial Board.
Neil Gardner is the managing director of leading UK audiobook production house Ladbroke Audio, and independent audiobook publisher Spokenworld Audio. He is an international award-winning producer/director/writer and an Earphones Award-winning audiobook narrator, as well as a sound designer and author. In summer 2018 he founded the Audiobook Creators Alliance.
Rosamund Saunders is a lifelong book designer. London-based, she began her publishing career with HarperCollins and moved on to work freelance, specialising in illustrated non-fiction books. She has designed food, crafts and lifestyle books for the co-editions market and art-directed photography for cookery, health and fitness titles. Find out more at https://rosamundsaunders.co.uk.
Francesca Zunino Harper is a linguist, translator, and publishing professional. She worked in the British and international academia researching on comparative literatures, translation, and women’s and environmental humanities for several years. She now works in the Humanities and Social Sciences area of publishing. You can follow her @ZuninoFrancesca.
Sara O’Connor worked in children’s publishing for 13 years and is now a full-time web developer. Frustrated with the cost and creative limitations of outsourcing good digital ideas (check out this article), she decided to retrain as a programmer. She now works with Emma Barnes at Consonance (the new name for Bibliocloud), helping to build the software she wished she had when she worked in publishing. Sara will be joining our panel at BookMachine Unplugged 2018: Talking Tech.
“A publishing house is a fragile organism, dear sir,” he says. “If at any point something goes askew, then the disorder spreads, chaos opens beneath our feet. Forgive me, won’t you? When I think about it I have an attack of vertigo.” And he covers his eyes, as if pursued by the sight of billions of pages, lines, words, whirling in a dust storm.”
Italo Calvino, If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller
Starting her interview with this great quote as she’s a passionate Calvino devotee, Maria Giovanna Brauzzi is Assistant Editor on the Education list at Bloomsbury Academic. Francesca Zunino Harper asked her some questions to know more about what working at an academic publisher involves on a day to day basis.
Emma Barnes taught herself to code after founding her own independent publisher, Snowbooks. She went on to build Bibliocloud, the next-generation publishing system. Now she’s on a mission to promote tech skills within the publishing industry and beyond.
As a former author, publisher, publicist and marketer, Kate Nash has seen every side of publishing and set up her own literary agency so she could do “the best job in publishing”. Kate’s reading tastes – from romance to thrillers – are highly commercial. Kate is listed at #20 in UK Fiction by Publishers Marketplace, based on number of deals made (Feb 2017). You can find Kate on Twitter @katenashagent.
SPCK/IVP, winner of the IPG Specialist Consumer Publisher of the year for 2018 and 2017 and shortlisted for the recent Bookseller Independent Publisher of the Year is looking for a highly motivated and enthusiastic Ecommerce Executive to join our busy Publicity and Marketing Department and help us increase our audience share and consumer reach.
This is a guest post by Anne Nolan. Anne is a freelance publishing consultant, working with small independent and scholarly publishers. She is a board member of the Reading-based arts, history and poetry publisher Two Rivers Press, and consultant Marketing Director for Arc Humanities Press.
Location: Woking, United Kingdom
Reports To: Senior Marking Manager, Marketing and Communications – Nielsen Entertainment
In two weeks’ time, a group of BookMachine-goers will be joining the TLS in London for an event which focuses on small, independent presses and the current trend which has seen a 79% increase in sales by sixty of the UK’s smallest publishers. Here Norah Myers interviews the event host Thea Lenarduzz. Thea is commissioning editor at the TLS and the co-host of Freedom, Books, Flowers and the Moon, the TLS’s weekly podcast. She is also a freelance writer and, slightly sporadically, the literary editor at Five Books.
This is a guest post by Anna Cunnane. Anna is Senior Data Executive at Abrams & Chronicle Books. Anna was winner of the Trailblazer Awards 2018, she is part of BookMachine Team Unplugged and was Chair of the Society of Young Publishers (2015-16). Here she reviews a panel she was asked to speak on at The London Book Fair 2018.
A version of this blog post first appeared on the Digital Book World site. Bradley Metrock produced the iBooks Author Conference from 2015 through 2017, before Score Publishing acquired Digital Book World, and has authored many articles on the state of the publishing industry and recent trends.
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