Use the 'great power' of comms to reach more readers, industry PRs advise

The publishing industry should trust and listen to its communications teams to see greater change and audience growth, PR professionals said at The Bookseller's FutureBook conference on Tuesday (17th November).

The conference, hosted by The Bookseller's marketing and publicity programme director Miriam Robinson, focused on how marketing and publicity can shape the future of companies and capture new readers.

Marketing and PR specialist Rik Ubhi said the communications department in publishing houses is "so well positioned to created changes in the system" and this should be harnessed to create "positive feedback loops", feeding customer insight back to the company. 

"We can think about creating multiple consumer profiles, and multi-platform (marketing) campaigns," he said, adding that the consumer is increasingly "time-poor" and "fickle", and that teams should lead on product development, investigating streaming and subscription services, in addition to "community-led experiences". He suggested marketing and publicity could lead the way in "changing perceptions in terms of what is mainstream", and should seek to "target grassroots organisations, and people on Twitter and Instagram [to] create a groundswell".

Cait Davies, head of marketing at Orion Books, said companies should "foster a strong sense of collaboration in marketing", and she encouraged conference attendees to be "comfortable questioning preconceptions" and "unconscious bias". She added that departments needed to move towards interrogating digital advertising and customer data "much more rigorously" to plan campaigns. She also urged the industry to "continue having the hard conversations" to build "better and more representative publishing", and for publicists to " be authentic and honest in your messaging, because that is what will ultimately sell the book".

Sabah Khan, head of PR at Avon Books, said the role of comms is "more powerful than ever" and this power should be used to push change in representation and "hold the media landscape to greater accountability". Commenting on the industry's competitors, she said it is "important to remember we are trying to reach new readers" and being open to learning from the success of Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney Plus subscriptions. "We need to think about what they're doing differently," she said. "A reader is not just a reader. We are all consumers. We must think about how we reach that income, why are they spending money on other things but not books?"

She urged delegates to be "clear and strategic" about their audience messaging, and to have faith in their ability to grow an audience, adding that book PRs should be pushing for "events, panels and festivals to be more inclusive. The inclusivity box is never something that's going to be ticked, because that's the point, it's ongoing," she said.

Sarah Cleave, publishing manager at Manchester-based Comma Press, advised publishers to "collaborate more" to increase regional diversity, and "talk to different audiences simultaneously". Commenting on the Northern Fiction Alliance, she said: "The collaboration is key to our model — we can make more noise if we are working together with other organisations" which generates "hype around our collective".

"Bringing publishers together isn't something that is done quite as often [as authors] — it's an  opportunity for people to hear from publishers," she added.