Who are you, and what is your job title?

Hello!  I’m Katie and I work in UK Sales at Headline Publishing.  My job title is Digital Sales Executive and I’m responsible for the day to day running of some of our key digital and audio customer accounts, as well as assisting with online and high street customer accounts too.

Describe an average day

An average day for me would include running reports to see how many books we’ve sold, preparing presentations and sales materials for forthcoming customer meetings, corresponding with customers about new titles and possible promotions, processing orders and checking that our books are displaying correctly on retailer websites.

It’s really exciting working in digital sales as it’s a growing and changing area, and it’s brilliant to see how many different ways people can now read books – from print, to ebooks and audio downloads too.

One of my favourite parts about my job is presenting new titles to our customers and being able to talk about all the fantastic books we will be publishing!  We generally present titles about 3-4 months in advance, so right now we are talking about summer books but are also just starting our Christmas highlights too.

We make sure our customers have as much information as possible about our books in advance of publication – in meetings we’ll describe the books to our customers and tell them about any significant information such as publicity and marketing, as well as details about the author too, and will give proof copies of the books we present to our customers to read.

Between the whole sales team we sell our books to all of the major UK high street bookshops, supermarkets, online and digital retailers, as well as independent bookshops, wholesalers and international customers too.

Pick your favourite YA book

My favourite YA read is actually a Headline book that hasn’t been published yet – Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock (which is out in August, and available for pre order).  It opens on Leonard’s 18^th birthday and he has five presents to give away – four are for people who have been influential in Leonard’s life and the fifth is a present for himself – his grandfather’s WWII gun.  He plans on giving all of the presents away before shooting his former best friend, and then himself.  I won’t give the rest of the story away but this is a really special book with an amazing character in Leonard Peacock – it’s a brilliant read that stays with you long after you’ve finished reading.   I also loved Heart Shaped Bruise by Tanya Byrne as it was a really compelling read that left me guessing right to end, and I’ve just started reading Wonder by RJ Palacio and am totally absorbed by August’s story already.