Exceptionals assemble

In her opener to this week’s Marketing & Publicity Conference, HarperCollins director of marketing strategy Hannah O’Brien said publishing was “weird”. There is not enough money (compared to other entertainment sectors), the teams are too small, and everyone is expected to learn on the job. But there are positives: no one else can take credit for the successes, meaning the wins, and, when they come, can truly be owned by those who make them.

I like O’Brien’s framing. This strangeness is part of the beauty of it all, she stated at the event—it is what makes us “us”—before leading a round of applause for the marketeers and publicists in the room. I’ve long taken the same view. If publishing made sense, it wouldn’t be so much fun. Without this sense of wonkiness, many of us wouldn’t work so unusually hard trying to make things right.

Yet exceptionalism—believing that we are somehow above the normal rules—takes a toll. A panel later in the day organised by the group Female Leadership in Publishing looked at maintaining balance and boundaries; the session drew on FLIP’s big report, published earlier this year, which found that 97% of respondents had experienced burnout. We’ve been talking about this, at this particular conference, for a number of years now and, although we are now discussing ways of mitigating work pressures, it has to be a concern that it’s still a conversation that needs to take place. Having separate devices for our work and private lives is one good solution (also having separate private lives), regulating time on social media, having managers with clear expectations, and establishing an early warning system around stress levels are all important, but managing the symptoms is not the same as addressing the cause.

I used to think that the best books tended to make it through, but clearly it is hard to say that with any degree of confidence. Some books fail simply because there was not enough capacity in the system.

The fact is, we suffer from title exuberance: we can, so we do, each new book an opportunity. There are, after all, no unpublished bestsellers. But in publishing too much, we risk taking too much. As Waterstones head of books Bea Carvalho said at the same event, there are too many books being published for the high street chain to put into its main promotional slots. She cited the “alarming stat” that for the July to December period publishers presented what felt like 5,000 titles to her team. “There’s simply not space to do them all justice at that highest level.” She said publicists should not be discouraged if they have to start small. Similarly, Canongate’s communications director Anna Frame was right to argue that managing an author’s expectations early on is key to avoiding disappointment later.

I used to think that the best books tended to make it through, but clearly it is hard to say that with any degree of confidence. Some books fail simply because there was not enough capacity in the system. None of this is new, of course. The Bookseller was founded as a way of making sense of it all. And O’Brien is right, the weirdness of it all is part of the joy when the stars do align. But finding a balance between what is exceptionalism and what is acceptable is important, too.