The Bookseller 150: new talent is intent on broadening reach

When Anthony Forbes Watson announced he would be stepping down from Pan Macmillan earlier this year to make way for Penguin General’s Joanna Prior, he mentioned that the company needed a “fresh pair of eyes”. There was perhaps a bit of modesty here, as Forbes Watson has guided Pan Mac through arguably the best run in the company’s 180-year history; inarguably, at least, in the past six years it has chalked up record returns through Nielsen BookScan.

But Forbes Watson perhaps touches on a larger point that is reflected in this year’s The Bookseller 150, our annual list of the most influential people in the British world of books: that year two of the pandemic has maybe been more difficult to navigate for our book trade leaders, movers and shakers than the putting-out-fires scenario of 2020. They have had to be more innovative, more nuanced, a lot more flexible with staff, and even with the tentative steps back to “normality”, reaching readers has been extremely tricky. 

That change is something Tim Dare, m.d. of executive recruitment firm Mosaic Search and Selection has seen in this “challenging” year, during which his team was “repeatedly tasked with finding leaders with experience in digital transformation and delivery”. 

Dare adds: “Even where sales have held up well, leadership teams have been grappling with many other pressures, including continuing ‘work from home’, which has an impact on communication, morale and individual mental health. We carry out a lot of international work and continue to be briefed on new roles to help clients grow in fast-developing markets. While managing the current situation, we see leaders very much looking to new opportunities and not simply battening down the hatches.”

At the very least, there are plenty of fresh eyes in the 150, with 40% of the list either new entries, or having first appeared in 2020. A lot of this is down to people stepping into new roles and a lot of those changes were in train, of course, due to the usual churn of job moves. Yet some have to be down to the pandemic, with many organisations thinking deeply about the nature of their businesses and the kind of perspectives needed going forward. 

It is interesting that those staffers are not necessarily callow ones, as the new entries include trade veterans who have embarked on new roles recently, such as former Pan Mac sales and brand director Anna Bond moving over to head up Octopus; Amanda Harris crossing the aisle from Orion to agency YMU; or long-serving Mary Cannam stepping up to take the reins at Faber. 

Interestingly, a lot of the new names are those who are also involved in expanding the books market and reaching out to previously under-served communities, like Moon Lane’s Tamara Macfarlane, Lit in Colour’s Zaahida Nabagereka, TikTokker Abby Parker and Crystal Mahey-Morgan, founder of OWN IT!

Fifty-eight per cent of the list—including Bernardine Evaristo (pictured), The Bookseller 151st and de facto person of the year—are women, a slight nudge up from last year’s 56%. The list has been over 50% female in the past two years, after men made the majority of the first 11 iterations (for its first 10 years there were 100 entries). Eighteen per cent of entries come from a Black, Asian or racialised community background, level with 2020 and the joint-highest share since the list began. As in 2020, there remain a dozen “Evergreens”, those who have been on every list. 

To see the full list of The Bookseller 150, click here. Contributors to the list include Caroline Carpenter, Kiera O’Brien, Benedicte Page, Philip Jones and Danny Arter.