MAILING MONKEY Episode 5

Spring in the air, as The Marvelettes once sang, and sap rising all over the shop. I positively capered into work this morning, reeling only slightly when I saw the pile of filing I’d blithely left on my desk on Thursday before I skipped off for a mini-break in Whitstable with my boyfriend. Don’t we have a temp or work experience person in soon? While pondering this, I turn my attention to the Easter round-up in the papers – always a good way to ease oneself in to the morning. I am, of course, rifling for reviews of our books (good ones to be circulated to the company and a copy to be sent out to the author and illustrator; bad ones to be cut out of every copy, burned, and never mentioned again) but if a choice bit of gossip about some unfortunate celebrity catches my eye, I’m not above a quick gander, shielded from Simon’s beady eye by an artfully placed copy of the Bookseller.

I am thus employed when I sense a wall of steely purpose forging its way towards me and look up to see, Jim, a senior editor, striding in my direction. I mentally flick through anything I may recently have done to incur his displeasure. Missed him off a group email? Not enough sugar in his coffee in that meeting with Michelle? I cringe guiltily as he approaches, but he heads straight past and towards Simon’s office. The door is closed, but rather than his usual hopeful hover at the window, Jim pulls the handle and goes straight in. Well! This is unusual – his sap must be right up. My desk is in prime eavesdropping position. I quickly open a random spreadsheet on my computer and stare at the screen with an expression of intense concentration and preoccupation, ears pricked. A quick sideways glance tells me Simon hasn’t looked up from his work – a little intimidation tactic that always works on me; but Jim launches straight in – he’s clearly psyched himself up and nothing’s going to stop him.

“Now Simon – I need to talk to you about Jelly.”
Many conversations in children’s publishing sound a bit like this. Board execs in suits sitting round discussing how Tinky-Winky and Dipsy are doing. Temps always find it amusing but the rest of us have been here far too long.
“O-kaaaay” (chewing lip and frowning in “I’m taking you very seriously” manner that means he’s not really listening).
“The thing is…I want to know why the launch dinner’s been cancelled?”
“Wee-ell, it’s complicated–”
“… because we really all do think it’s a MARvellous book, and we’re all comPLETely behind it and you know we just think it’s such a SHAME. The illustrator is the daughter of a friend of Paul’s you know – she’s done some stuff for BBC gardening magazine - and really we CAN’t go back to them and say…’
Simon nods and listens patiently. I almost feel bit sorry for him – none of the editors and designers seem to understand that he has a budget for marketing activity, and can’t possibly support every single book we publish. Decisions are made by choosing books that we think will produce revenue, and these aren’t always the ones we love and WANT to work. Anyway, ultimately it’s not Simon’s decision - Michelle, the Sales and Marketing Director has the final say, and so half the ideas we come up with in Marketing Planning meetings are axed. Simon is constantly having to juggle appeasing authors, illustrators, editors and designers with his already rather massive workload. I tune in again.
“The thing is …” begins Simon, but Jim’s on a roll.
“ I mean really it should have had a whole campaign thrown at it – the problem with these launch dinners anyway is just how effective are they?”
Another contentious issue. So much of marketing and PR has rather nebulous, unquantifiable – though often invaluable – results. You can’t pop a ‘buzz’ into your accounts. Even if a book has great reviews or sells well, it’s almost impossible to trace that directly back to a specific piece of marketing activity. Simon has to spend an awful lot of time defending his corner to old-school editors and directors who have a faint mistrust of anything to do with PR and ‘spin’. He has to justify every penny spent to so many different people, and if his campaigns don’t translate into hard sales, he comes in for heavy criticism.

Still, he seems to thrive on the cut and thrust of this sort of exchange – and I imagine he gets paid a fair whack to put up with it. Unlike me and this blumming filing. Honestly, when will the industry realise that publishing is no longer the playground of hobbyist debutantes called Mimi and Fi but ordinary folk without large inheritances who are passionate about books and so prepared to dedicate their lives to their promulgation despite the pathetic salaries? My pay-rise this year didn’t even match inflation. Hmph.
Ooh – look, Beckham’s got a new haircut.