The Bookseller Rising Stars: Introducing the Class of 2022

This is the 12th edition of The Bookseller Rising Stars, our annual list of the book industry’s up-and-comers and leaders of the future. In the early years I used to write a lot in these intros of the difficult trading conditions the honorees faced: the ructions from ongoing digitisation, deep discounting, conglomeratisation and the continuing ripples of the financial crisis. Doesn’t that all seem rather quaint now? At least in comparision to what 2022’s cohort have been through in the past couple of years. It is not just huge difficulties engendered by the pandemic, but wider and disparate societal shifts and geopolitical flashpoints—including rising racial and class tensions, the energy crisis, culture wars online, shooting wars in Europe— which have made their working lives (and undoubtedly personal ones) far more complex.

And yet, the 2022 Rising Stars have not been held back by these challenges. Far from it; they have found creative, positive and entrepreneurial ways of making their businesses better and expanding readership. Hachette Children’s production controller Farzana Khan freely and almost cheerily admits the current printing, shipping and supply problems have made her day-to-day “a nightmare” but she has implemented clever workarounds. Jenn Thompson launched the queer-centric Cipher Press in the very teeth of the pandemic but the indie has used the restrictions to creatively engage more deeply with the LGBTQ community. There is a similar story at Seren, where Sarah Johnson ramped up the firm’s online and virtual marketing and, in doing so, transformed the Wales-based list. Covid actually convinced Catherine Cho to open her own agency, as the shift in working practices made her realise things that were previously seen as essential to go out on one’s own—like a fancy London office—were no longer applicable.

Indeed, some of this year’s list were nominated primarily because they have proactively decided to engage directly with current challenges. The academic Sofia Akel launched the Free Books Campaign in part as a result of George Floyd’s tragic murder by the police and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests. Carolynn Bann, too, was impelled to open Brighton’s Afrori Books by Floyd’s death—and decades of not seeing characters that resembled her represented in books. Natasha Carthew set up the Working Class Writers’ Festival because she had tired of going to book events and seeing few other working-class writers on the stages.

There is a downside to this. Personally, I did a little over half of the interviews and six of them told me (unprompted, but in the course of our conversation on career progression) that they have contemplated leaving the book trade because they simply struggle to make ends meet

As always when we do these lists, commonalities and themes emerge, and one of the things that struck me is how tenacious the Rising Stars have been en masse in clawing their way into the industry, but also in having to fight for the place at the table once they get there. Not least our Shooting Star—the member of our list each year who we give a little bit of extra notice—Kaiya Shang. First, in growing up below the poverty line, winning scholarships to King’s College and Cambridge to get into publishing. But secondly, once Shang got into the trade, in elbowing her way up to be able to commission her beloved literary fiction. Or take 404 Ink co-founders Laura Jones and Heather McDaid, who both have “portfolio careers” in other parts of the trade in addition to running the Scottish indie. These Rising Stars, as my dad used to say, bust their freakin’ asses.

There is a downside to this. Personally, I did a little over half of the interviews and six of them told me (unprompted, but in the course of our conversation on career progression) that they have contemplated leaving the book trade because they simply struggle to make ends meet. I know this will not come as a shock to anyone who of late has happened to stumble into social media discussion threads on younger staffers’ pay. But shockingly—actually, I’m not shocked, just irritated—most of those who said they were struggling come from conglomerates whose profits have ballooned in the pandemic. In fairness, staff retention has been an industry focus for some time, and some groups have commendably started giving more back to staff. But on the ground, it seems solutions are not happening quickly enough; perhaps it needs to be immediately addressed before the trade sees talent it can’t afford to lose depart to other industries.