Nick Barley: Northern light

She may be a big name in the book world, but Julie Wright, books category manager at W H Smith Travel, remains true to her roots, as Danuta Kean found out

If you expected Julie Wright, books category manager at W H Smith Travel, to have a power office with a fierce assistant to fend off unwanted callers, you would be wrong. She may be one of the most powerful people in the UK book trade, whose decisions can rocket a title to the top of the charts, but she works from a small desk on the crowded fourth floor of an anonymous grey office block backing onto Oxford Street. The closest Wright comes to secretarial help is Matthew Bates, non-fiction and children's buyer, who occasionally picks up her calls when she seems snowed under.

Wright is not your usual book trade power broker. A northern rock that rolled south, she has a reputation for plain speaking. "I do wear my heart on my sleeve," she concedes somewhat uncomfortably. "I have tried to be less forthright, to take my time before I say what I think. It lasts about five minutes. It isn't me."

She also has a reputation for being a tough negotiator, which, according to the sales director of one big publishing house, "is all right if you are her employer, less jolly if you have to deal with her as a supplier". Such a reputation comes as a surprise to her. However, for Chorley-born Wright it is symptomatic of the culture clash between a northern heritage and the more mannered world of London publishing--you can take the lass out of Lancashire, but not Lancashire out of the lass.

Most of those with whom she negotiates value her down-to-earth approach. "Thank goodness there are a few people like her in the trade," says Patrick Janson-Smith, joint m.d. of Transworld, and one of her many publishing admirers. "I wish there were more like her," says another, Jenny Boyce, sales manager at Serpent's Tail. Stephen Page, c.e.o. at Faber, sums up the general opinion: "Without doubt she is one of the best buyers in the business. She has strong tastes and opinions, but is persuadable because she learns. She will move on and take advantage of changes in the market."

We are in one of the many meeting rooms on the smarter of the two floors occupied by WHS Travel at 103 Wigmore Street. Wright is chic in black roll-neck sweater and tailored trousers. She looks fit and relaxed, her healthy glow set off by a holiday tan, the product of a Thai beach holiday and three months' hard training at the gym. "I have put in a concerted effort, thinking that I will try to get fitter and lose a bit of weight. And I did it. I feel quite pleased now." She sits back with a satisfied grin.

Such determination to tackle issues head on is typical of Wright. She joined WHS as a graduate trainee in September 1993, after four years at Hull University, which she left with a BA in English and History and an MA in English Literature. Though an avid reader from early childhood, she stumbled into literature as an academic pursuit. "I chose my A Levels, including economics. Halfway through my first economics lesson I realised I didn't understand what the hell was going on, so I walked out and never went back. At lunchtime, I met my friend who was doing English, and I thought I'll go along to that."

Swapping supply-demand curves for lit crit proved a good training ground for book buying. "I was reading books and getting a mark dependent on writing down a comprehensive idea of what I thought about them, with maybe a few ideas of what other people thought too. It was great."

As a graduate trainee, Wright worked across WHS before moving to books, initially as assistant buyer non-fiction in Swindon, working with Laurence Howell buying history and military titles. From there she moved to fiction, and ended up as popular fiction buyer for the newly formed W H Smith High Street division in 1996 under Graham Edmonds.

Edmonds acted as her mentor, and she frequently refers to him during the interview. "Graham is very respected, down to earth and funny. He is a nice bloke who knows his stuff. Watching the way he worked with publishers made me more comfortable about being myself rather than thinking I should act like a businesswoman in a power suit."

Early on, Edmonds explained to her that she should not prevaricate with publishers. "I want to be as honest as I can, and sometimes it may seem blunt, but when people get used to it, I hope it is helpful. I won't make promises I can't keep."

Big learning curve

The move to Travel was challenging. The two divisions have a close relationship, but operate within very different markets. Travel is much smaller than High Street, with a tighter turn around and a different store base, ranging from London railway stations to airport cubby holes. Even airside and landside shops differ widely in customer requirements. It was, she says, "quite a big, fast learning curve".

The two divisions share sales data on a daily basis, though the sales profiles of titles through them are very different: High Street tends to peak earlier and higher than Travel, which can keep a book live for much longer. "Travel has the ability to take a book like Bridget Jones, a Tony Parsons or Emily Barr and constantly find 3,000 new people a week who want to buy it. It is always able to find a new market for a title," says Kerr MacRae, Headline sales director. "People who travel through airports are not always the same people--most of us only use airports twice a year--so Travel is always finding new customers who haven't seen a particular title before."

The two sides of the business have different approaches to discounting too, with Travel preferring smaller discounts and more value for money promotions, such as two titles for £10. Wright does not expect huge changes in the way price promotion is used, and doubts that cover prices can be raised much further to accommodate retail margin without undermining readers' confidence that books offer value for money. "Prices may go up, though I haven't seen much evidence of that. What could happen if they go up too much is that even at discount they look bad value. Customers are looking at the whole package, not just the cover price when they buy."

Wright admits that she underestimated her influence with publishers when she first started, and has been forced to censor some of her throwaway comments, especially those about book jackets. "I don't want people to go away with a comment I have made and suddenly everything is changed."

Sheila Crowley, sales director at Hodder, says that Wright has a good eye for covers, and her opinion is valued. But asked what works, Wright's usual forthright opinions desert her, and she becomes vague. "I'm not a designer," she says, looking embarrassed.

She is more confident giving her opinion of the role jackets play in selling a title to customers with little time to browse; she feels strongly that the jacket should reflect the content. "It may be a nice jacket, but it might be completely inappropriate for the content. That is the most important thing really, that the cover gives an accurate feeling of the content. If you are faced with a wall of books and you don't have much time, as is the case with our customers, then you need to be able to scan and think, that is the sort of book I like."

Publishers, who have canvassed opinion among buyers at rival chains, can accept or reject Wright's suggestions, and she will respect their decision. But on one title, her passion for the book and conviction that the paperback cover would limit its potential through WHS Travel, made her stand her ground with the publisher. The book was Trezza Azzapardi's Booker-shortlisted first novel The Hiding Place (Picador).

She pushed for a special edition of the Azzapardi paperback for Travel. "I don't get like this very often, but I really cared what happened to that book. I basically told Macmillan that it was perfect Read of the Week material, but I did not think that enough people were going to pick it up and read it, and this was a book that deserved to be bought in huge quantities." Her judgement appears to have been sound: Travel has sold 25,000 copies and taken a substantial market share for the title.

Commercial judgement

Colleagues attest that passion rarely clouds Wright's commercial judgement. "She has more integrity than anyone I have ever worked with," says one. "She can love a book, but if it isn't right for us, then she will not do anything with it."

This is especially true when it comes to Travel's Read of the Week. This front-of-store promotion can lift sales of a title by as much as 200%, though at a price: about £5,000 plus margin of almost 60%.

The paid-for promotions issue has been well aired in the trade press and beyond, and Wright is genuinely nonplussed by the ferocity of its critics. What stings most is the accusation that bungs matter more than books. "When I read the various bits and pieces in the press about paid-for promotions I was unsure why they thought that. I honestly didn't understand."

Wright is a conviction retailer, and it is a matter of integrity that her RoW choices are seen as sound and do not undermine the WHS brand. "The publishers I work with know that if it is a good book, it has a good chance of being chosen, because it would affect me personally and it would affect the brand if it wasn't right.We have people going into our shops every day; if they choose a book on the basis of it being a Read of the Week and it isn't very good, the chances are they won't trust that recommendation again. We wouldn't recommend something that was bad."

Much of the debate about "bungs" has focused on the cultural impact, and though Wright avoids passing comment, there is a note of irritation in her voice when talking about the literary merit of books she chooses. In February, she points out, RoW featured titles as diverse as Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang (Faber) and Sabine Durrant's Having It and Eating It (Time Warner). "Those are two very different books, both catering exactly for what a section of our customers want, and they enjoyed huge success for us. Customers aren't daft. They can make a quick decision about whether something is the sort of book that will interest them."

No snob

Wright's own taste is reassuringly catholic, though her time in Swindon has left her with a reputation, deserved or otherwise, as a populist. What she is not is a snob, and she is dismayed at the way commercial women's fiction has been castigated in certain parts of the media. "I think chick lit has had a bad press, which is unfair. I haven't seen any sign that it has peaked. There are still as many books published in that area and many are huge successes. It is one area where a brand new author can come from nowhere and still sell a decent number of books."

Chick lit gets bad copy in part because of its homogenised packaging, she says. "This is not helping customers choose, because all the books look the same. Just because there is a huge demand and there are all these authors with books aimed at the same reader does not mean the books are the same. It is really unfair. They are very different, with individual styles."

Wright is well-placed to spot the Next Big Thing, which, she believes, will be upmarket historical fiction, epitomised by Tracy Chevalier's Girl With a Pearl Earing (HarperCollins), Anita Diamant's biblical epic The Red Tent (Macmillan) and even Matthew Kneale's English Passengers (Penguin). "I would like to see more titles in this market, because when something does come along it seems to do very well and I feel there is more demand for it."

The genre has benefited from the commercialisation of non-fiction history publishing, she adds. "Publishers started publishing history in a way that was more accessible, sexier, that looked like a good story rather than an academic text. It seems to have forced a change in the publishing of historical fiction, so books look like a really good read rather than a dry story or bodice ripper."

While talking about Tracy Chevalier she lets slip that she would "love to write like her". Is that a sign that she harbours dreams of swapping her office for a writer's garret? She blushes. Well, yes, she admits, it would be nice to walk into Smith's and see a wall of books with her name on the cover. "It would be a complete mess if I were to write a book--a mixture of historical fiction, crime, all sorts of different books. Call it magical realism!" She leans back and chuckles. Nice idea, "but I can't be doin' with that". n

danuta.kean@bookseller.co.uk

Julie Wright factfile

Born: 21st May 1971 in Chorley, Lancashire

Education

1982-1987: Wellfield High School, Leyland

1987-1989: Runshaw College, Leyland

1989-1993 : Hull University: BA English and History, MA English Literature

Employment

September 1993 to November 1994: W H Smith graduate recruitment scheme

December 1994 to June 1995: assistant buyer, non-fiction

July 1995 to May 1996: assistant buyer, fiction

June 1996 to July 1999: popular fiction buyer, W H Smith High Street

August 1999 to present: books category manager, W H Smith Travel