Talent beyond the M25

After 20-plus years working in publishing in London with Hachette UK, I moved back home in 2019 to continue my career with Hachette Children’s Group and to help set up Hachette UK’s new Manchester office.

I discovered that accessing the industry is much harder if you’re physically distanced from the main publishing hub, so in 2020 I co-founded Children’s Books North (CBN) with Liz Scott and Tilda Johnson to help build connections for northern publishing professionals, authors and illustrators. There is huge talent up here, beyond the M25, and I wanted to shine a light on that.

CBN now has more than 400 members, and I’ve recently moved there full-time to develop the growing the organisation and build more plans for the future, including discovering and nurturing new northern talent. I’m firmly embedded back in the north and committed to championing northern voices, promoting regional diversity in children’s books and the wider industry.

Being a part of a network like CBN is vital to help authors, illustrators and publishing professionals build contacts that can be crucial for support, career development, success and longevity in the industry. It also helps bridge the gap to talent in the north and shows that you don’t need to be in London to be part of a thriving literary community.

London networking opportunities, such as publishing parties, are limited to people who can physically make the journey south. There are cost, time and accessibility issues too, so local meet-ups are a great way to connect northern publishing creatives.

CBN holds networking socials across the north. We’ve held them in Manchester and Leeds, and next week we are hosting one in Newcastle. There, our members will be joined by other local literary networks, including Seven Stories, New Writing North, Youth Libraries Group NorthEast, as well as a number of wonderful independent booksellers, which all add to the northern literary ecosystem enormously.

You don’t need to be in London to be part of a thriving literary community

The growth of networks outside London has been one of the key successes of the northern literary “renaissance” in recent times. On top of that, it has been great to see some of the Big Five publishers like Hachette UK and HarperNorth setting up offices in the north and joining the thriving independent publishers already there. But more publishers need to break out of the M25 and employ staff from more diverse backgrounds, and in turn diversify the books they publish and the authors they work with. This will mean that their books will reach the widest possible audience.

There is a compelling business case for ensuring regional diversity in the workforce and, therefore, in the books being commissioned. By appealing to a wider readership who are more likely to engage with books if, in them, they can see their own lives reflected, this will allow publishers to grow the market. Having boots on the ground and face-to-face meetings locally makes all the difference when building new author/illustrator and publisher/agent relationships.

Alongside publishers, we need to see more agents breaking out of the London bubble. Some agents have made the move, such as Clare Coombes, who set up the Liverpool Literary Agency, but bigger agencies need to commit to a presence outside London too.

Other industries have long recognised the importance of having national hubs away from the capital—the BBC has been in Manchester since 2012 and Channel 4 moved some of its programming to Leeds in 2021. So I am particularly thrilled to see that BookTrust has moved its head office to Leeds and has key events planned in the north. And it is great that some of the UK’s biggest book festivals are already based in our towns and cities—Manchester Literature Festival, Harrogate Literature Festival and Durham Book Festival are all successful examples.

For me, the main reason for companies to move outside London is to have access to a wider pool of talent and to diversify their workforce. I think we also need to recognise that the UK has changed in recent years—there are a lot of creatives who don’t want (or can’t afford) to be based in London and want to stay here in the north, and there are other creatives who want to move beyond the M25 for a lifestyle change. It’s important that creative industries move north so that we can help develop and retain the amazing talent we have here.

Other positive changes in recent times have included the growth of regional writing groups and agencies, such as New Writing North, Commonword, The Writing Squad and Muslim Writers North that offer amazing grassroots support to writers.

It has also been great to see the growth of MAs in publishing across the north at Northumbria University, Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Central Lancashire. Not to mention the much-needed new independent bookshops opening up and thriving, such as The House of Books and Friends and Queer Lit in Manchester, West Kirby Bookshop in Wirral, and The Little Bookshop in Leeds.

These are all really positive changes that are benefiting the industry enormously, but we still need a less London-centric literary ecosystem. But change is happening, and I am delighted to be a part of it with Children’s Books North.