Hachette’s Northern outposts take root under the leadership of Layfield

Earlier this month, Hachette UK revealed plans to open new offices in Edinburgh, Newcastle, Sheffield and Bristol over the next year, in addition to the new Manchester office it announced at the end of last year. Hachette Children’s Group’s (HCG) Emma Layfield (pictured) has been spearheading the move to Manchester after 20 years working for Hachette in London; she took on the role of picture book development director, North, in January.

Layfield’s remit is to build relationships and look for business opportunities for HCG in the North of England and Scotland, as well as acquiring picture book talent in those areas. Her first six months in her new role have been spent networking and reaching out to the area’s existing creative organisations, as well as finding key areas to talent scout. In the three months before lockdown, this saw her travelling almost non-stop to meet with organisations and individuals such as agents, university staff, independent publishers and those running illustration and writing courses, in an effort to get “plugged into everything that’s going on in Scotland and the North”.

Another initiative she has undertaken is co-founding the Children’s Books North network with Tilda Johnson, Golden Egg North programme leader and freelance children’s editor, and freelance children’s book publicist Liz Scott. She says: “When I first came to Manchester, I realised that you have to work harder to meet everyone [in the book trade] here as there aren’t as many publisher events. The group was set up to connect published children’s authors, illustrators and publishing professionals, to give them peer support and enable them to be able to access industry connections without having to travel to London.”

The co-founders have been “blown away” by the response to the network. Since launching with a party in Manchester in February, attended by 60 people, membership has now grown to more than 250 people. Children’s Books North has continued its activity throughout lockdown via its social media channels and a blog, where it shares weekly interviews with its members. Moving forward, it aims to tour its quarterly meetings around the North and Scotland to make it more accessible, and to continue reaching out to children’s authors and illustrators to ensure the group is “as inclusive and diverse as it can be”.

Left: A Children's Books North meet up; Right: Children's Books North co-founders, from left Tilda Johnson, Emma Layfield and Liz Scott

The lockdown has given Layfield time to reflect on the work she has done so far, and to plan for the next six months. Her focus will now be on cementing the relation- ships she has already built, as well as on bringing new Northern and Scottish talent to HCG’s picture book list. As part of this, the publisher is hosting two virtual open days in October to discover picture book writers and illustrators from the North of England and Scotland. “We’re going to give participants the opportunity to get one-to-one feedback from an editor or a designer, and we’re hoping to really nurture the talent here. And of course, eventually we want to be able to publish some of the people that we’ve found at the Open Days as well,” says Layfield. Next up, she will be looking to acquire work from authors “with different voices and coming from different backgrounds” and she is, in fact, just about to make the list’s first offer to an “exciting local début picture book writer”, with details to be revealed soon.

The wider plan
More broadly, Nick Davies—who is m.d. at Hachette division John Murray Press and the project lead for its regional offices—says that the company’s ambitions in Manchester are the same as they are for the four other new sites. He explains: “In the short-term, it’s about finding office space and really engaging with the existing communities that are already in place.” It was Davies who approached Hachette UK c.e.o. David Shelley a couple of years ago with the idea for creating offices outside London, and he has been working on it with a small group at the publisher over the past 18 months. He has a “personal interest, as well as a business interest” in life beyond London, referencing his time studying in Sheffield and five years spent working at Canongate’s Edinburgh office. He adds: “I think it could make a real difference for Hachette, but also the industry as a whole to be making this step.”

Davies says the process of choosing where the new bases are located was “pretty staff-led”. The working group began by creating a longlist of potential sites, drawing up a cultural map of those cities, which were then shared with staff via a survey. Staff were also asked for their suggestions, then the five new locations were picked. Hachette representatives spent time in those cities getting to know people “who were already on the ground doing great things in this space”, including independent publishers and organisations such as Publishing Scotland and the Bristol Short Story Prize.

Davies makes it clear that connecting with existing networks in the new areas is a priority in order to embed Hachette within these communities. Both he and Layfield highlight New Writing North as a particularly useful source of advice and support. The publisher plans to either rent office space from regional bodies as a starting point, or to be based near them so that staff are working with like-minded creatives and able to get involved with local literary festivals, courses and other projects. Davies says that, as many of the staff members who have volunteered to relocate are returning to their hometown or moving closer to family (although some are simply “looking for a new adventure, or want to get out of London”), there is “a natural level of commitment and engagement there that we can draw on”.

The cost of living
Once the new offices are established and staff have relocated, Hachette’s next aim is to start recruiting locally, and to provide local traineeships. Davies says: “That’s quite a conscious part of this. We’re not, as an industry, necessarily attracting as diverse and inclusive a talent pool because we are in these big offices in London, and London rents are so unaffordable.”

He believes that employees in the regional offices will continue to work “very closely” with the London office, and is confident this can work smoothly as lockdown has already offered the publisher a “brilliant opportunity to test our remote working”. Looking ahead, Davies believes a “big win” to come out of the regional bases will be local publishing and “finding authors who we might not have otherwise managed to bring into the business”.

For Layfield personally, some of the upsides to her move back to Lancashire have been “less commuting and cheaper cost of living”. She is also full of praise for the welcome that the local “thriving” independent publishing scene has given her, and the amount of cultural activity going on in Manchester, which she has already immersed herself in. Alongside plans to attend the National Creative Writing Industry Day (organised by Comma Press in partnership with The Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University) and the Northern Publishers’ Fair, she has been building strong relationships with local universities and writing squads. She says: “There’s so much going on in the creative and literary scene, so I think it’s the perfect time for us to be here.” 

HCG and New Writing North have just revealed that the winner of this year’s Hachette Children’s Novel Award, part of the Northern Writers’ Awards, is Leeds-based writer Hannah Durkan, who receives an advance of £5,000 as part of a publishing contract with Hachette Children’s Books.