How we manifest? It's all about the books

This week’s issue of The Bookseller, our 6,091st, features more than 500 upcoming books. Across our lead author profile, to the spotlight on wellbeing titles, we have books ranging from the Children’s Book of the Month Huw Aaron’s Sleep Tight, Disgusting Blob to Paperback’s top highlight There Are Rivers in the Sky, by Elif Shafak. It is a lot of books. Well done all!

Since 1858, it has been The Bookseller’s job to make sense of all these new releases, to bring our independent editorial and curatorial overview to the market so that those in the business of finding readers for these talents can do so judiciously, knowing we have your back.

You may notice, then, that this week’s edition of the magazine is doing this job a little differently. A rethink in where the printed magazine adds value, led to a redesign and a reshuffle of the order of the content. This week’s magazine begins with an interview with Assembly writer Natasha Brown, and our superb writer interviews, commissioned by Alice O’Keeffe and Katie Fraser, will now open up the magazine each week, pushing authors to the fore.

There are other changes, too. Before we planned the redesign, we did some research into how booksellers use the printed version. We found that the book previews were particularly well regarded, used to select stock and make key decisions around ordering, with book buyers using the material to figure out how a new title might land, with jackets a key indicator of positioning and expected publisher support.

Since 1858, it has been The Bookseller’s job to bring our independent editorial and curatorial overview to the market

We also found that our audience wanted more information around how the market was behaving, how the trade was changing, and what was selling through bookshops. Hence a revamped features section, under Tom Tivnan and Caroline Carpenter, in the heart of the magazine, as well as an expanded charts and data area at the back – written and compiled, as if by design, by independent bookseller Alex Call.

For most of its 166 years, The Bookseller has existed in just one format, either as a monthly or weekly publication. But today we manifest in many ways: from our website, to our show dailies, to our social media, to our events. Now, there is no longer one single version of The Bookseller, and depending on where and when you encounter us we may be doing different things. That is right: most of you reading this piece – which is about our printed product – will be doing so digitally. We should not pretend otherwise. To thrive and retain its place in such an environment, the printed magazine has to be distinct, equipped to use the virtues and advantages that print still offers around display and layout to present this books and market content in the most effective way.

That books are now the lead into each issue should also provide a guide for how we do everything else. Going into this role, I was told that our job was to help sell books. At our biggest event, The British Book Awards – now open for entries in its 35th year – we view the trade through the prism of its most successful books. This books first view is not unique to us either. At Frankfurt, Simon & Schuster CEO Jonathan Karp answered almost every question put to him with the response that it was “all about the books”. He was right. We are all about the books, too. And the people behind them.

Have a happy and successful Christmas!