Headline to expand Rooftop Book Club

Headline put on a second sell-out Rooftop Book Club last night, featuring authors Monica Wood and Maggie O'Farrell, as part of its direct-to-consumer strategy and to represent its online communities.

Both authors were interviewed by author and journalist Hannah Beckerman at the top of Carmelite House on Victoria Embankment, where Headline moved in July.

Headline said the event, which sold 90 tickets, showed the investment into its book blogger community - started by Ben Willis' "Bookbridgr" - was "paying off", with bloggers "out in force" on the night. It promoted the event solely through its social media channels, using Headline and Tinder Press Facebook and Twitter accounts and Bookends.

The publisher plans to increase the number of Rooftop Book Club events it holds from two to seven times a year, to "represent" and "tap into" its online communities, it said.

Headline first launched the Rooftop Book Club in August last year, featuring authors Tasmina Perry, Stella Newman and Jo Thomas in conversation with Heat magazine’s Isabelle Broom, which revolved around food and travel. It hopes to put together future events for its "H for History" and crime communities. The next Rooftop Book Club event is anticipated to take place at the end of spring or early summer.

Headline publicity director Georgine Moore said: "We will do more. We have for a plan for that through the year and we're going to do a variety of themes. 

"It's been a real example of publicity and marketing working together. It's the ideal preview event to get that early buzz and for getting important influencers talking, as well as pre-orders and spreading word of mouth. We sold 90 tickets, which is amazing, especially since we did it solely through our social media channels."

Wood's first novel in the UK with Headline will be released in hardback on 5th April, building on her career as a novelist, short-story writer and playwright in the US. In a relaxed interview with Beckerman, Wood shared her journey to publish One-in-a-Million Boy, describing it as "a 'don't give up' story" penned after she was "dumped" by her long term US publisher Ballantine in 2008, sending her to "writerly despair". Wood said she revisited the work after her husband read it back to her some years later and convinced her of its merits.

"Things have their time and 2008 was not the time for this book," Wood said. Her story, about extreme old age, is informed by her own crisis of grief, having lost both parents at an early age. She added: "I do think that loss in childhood shapes you, for sure. I don't know if I would have become a writer if I hadn't lost my father at the age of nine. I think in a way it has fuelled my creative life." Her tips for aspiring writers was to "just imagine yourself as deeply as you can in someone else's life", adding "writing is just a work of empathy". The Rooftop Book Club was Wood's first event in London.

O'Farrell, the Rooftop Book Club's second guest, is a Costa Novel award-winning author, six novels into her career in the UK. The wife of fellow author William Sutcliffe, she revealed they are both one another's "first readers". Her upcoming novel, This Must be the Place, due to be released in May, is described as "different" to her other works, owing to multilayered narratives including complexities with time zones. O'Farrell told the audience she used post-it notes to help her structure the book.

O'Farrell, a mother-of-three, also spoke about the difficulties of juggling parenthood - a theme prevalent in her work. O'Farrell said parenthood had made her "a better writer", making her more focussed because you have "less headspace".

"It's a lot tougher to write when you have children, in a way that is good for you," she said.