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The Bookseller Rising Stars: Introducing the Class of 2023
The Class of 2023 are united by a desire to grow readerships across the United Kingdom and beyond—and, perhaps more tellingly, a will to improve the industry’s duty of care to staff.
If there is a commonality to the members of our 13th outing of The Bookseller’s Rising Stars—our annual list of the book industry’s up-and-comers and leaders of the future—it is about growing audiences.
This is striking, as the list encompasses a variety of roles, from university press digital specialists to children’s rights directors; from not-for-profit social enterprise start-ups to the person responsible for generating new business partnerships for trade publishing’s biggest entity. But time and again, the Class of 2023 have demonstrated what drives them is pushing at book trade boundaries and innovating in order to expand readership.
Part of this is, of course, down to the circumstances of the past few years, with the pandemic morphing into a cost-of-living crisis that has made every sale, every sliver of market share, crucial. Keara Mickelson, for example, joined Edinburgh University Press in lockdown (not meeting colleagues in the flesh for months) and the core of her role is strategising how to increase EUP’s digital footprint when institutional budgets and student spend are so tightened.
Expanding readership is the sine qua non of Maria Garbutt-Lucero, Sceptre’s head of publicity and the 2023 Shooting Star (and the first publicist to get that nod), a person we choose to single out just a bit more than the rest of the list. Aside from the day-to-day work on Sceptre’s list, her co-founding of the East and Southeast Asian Publishing Network and its new book festival, and running pop star Florence Welch’s book club, Garbutt-Lucero makes the very valid point that acquiring authors from diverse backgrounds won’t mean a whit if there are not considered plans to publicise and market these books. Incidentally, as Shooting Star, she will get a chance to discuss expanding readership and other issues at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair; our sponsor FBF will be bringing her out to the Buchmesse to appear on seminar panels and attend networking events.
Almost one in four of the Rising Stars either originally hails from outside the UK and Ireland or spent a lot of time living abroad. That includes Bonnier Books UK’s Laura Makela, our first Finland-born Rising Star, who sprang at the chance to work in the British industry, leaving a nation that has been deemed the world’s happiest country for the past six consecutive years.
Others jumped from different professions or switched tracks—Damien Mosley ditching a high-flying international development career to launch Indie Novella; Hana Teraie-Wood sacking the Foreign Office for PRH; Sarah Mullen chucking a law career to found Bournville BookFest and The Bookshop on the Green; Tamara Sampey-Jawad leaving medical school to work in literature in translation—mainly because of their passion for books. Publishing, bookselling and agenting has long been in a privileged position of being able to attract people who will often work for pay far below their worth in order to be in the industry. But for how long? After selecting the list, we interview each Rising Star asking, as you might imagine, questions about their backgrounds and career progression. Then we ask a few more open-ended queries to gauge their thoughts on wider issues.
This year, almost every Rising Star—unbidden, unprompted—mentioned that the industry was not doing enough to retain early career professionals. This was not just about pay but other things such as work/life balance, burnout and, particularly in regards to candidates from diverse backgrounds, the fact that the same energy put into hiring candidates is not matched in ensuring they stay long-term.
This has been in the ether, particularly post-pandemic; The Bookseller has done a fair few articles around these issues, and concerns about retention have been bubbling under in the last few Rising Stars lists. But it is so starkly on the Class of 2023’s minds it needs to be underscored. I should note that those who make the Rising Stars list are not looking to coast. These are the strivers, the innovators, the leaders of tomorrow. That they have deep concerns about what is going on at the coal face, with regards to their and their colleagues’ futures, should make every current industry leader of today sit up and do something about it.
