An irregular series of posts letting you know where I will be travelling to, the customers I will be visiting and the key titles I will be promoting. I hope that these posts will give you a good idea of how our export business works in some of our key territories around the world.
I would be really interested to hear back from you with any and all comments – be they suggestions of things to do, places to visit, restaurants to dine in, food to try and may be the odd amazing bar or tipple to be tempted by.
If you are involved in the book industry, as a wholesaler, retailer or book commentator and would like to meet with me when I visit your country please do get in contact.
My next trip is a quick one to North America, December 7th to Toronto returning the 11th from New York.
In Canada the Little, Brown part of our list is exclusively imported, marketed, and distributed by Penguin Group Canada. They have three sales conferences each year that coincide with the release of their seasonal catalogues that feature our titles and I will be there to present our titles for the Summer 2008 schedule. The range of our books that are available for sale in Canada is much smaller than in the UK or other export territories as Canadian rights will in most cases be held by the American publisher but we still have some great titles to sell there.
Highlights of this conference will be A Bit of a Blur, Death Message, Daphne du Maurier’s Hungry Hill which has been unavailble for more than 10 years, Jane Gardam’s The People on Privilege Hill, her previous title Old Filth was a huge hit with Canadian readers, and some classics titles will be now be available there for the first time in a while The Friendly Young Ladies and Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness – a title that was banned on original publication in 1928.
I will also be meeting for the first time the local distributor of our Piatkus list, Georgetown and although I won’t be there for their conference it is always great to meet new customers.
On Friday night I’m flying down to New York for the weekend sales conference of our US distributor Trafalgar Square Publishing part of the Independent Publishers Group. The conference will give me a chance to talk to their sales team about the key titles appearing in their Spring 2008 catalogue.
Again, we have a smaller number of titles available for the US market but I am expecting a good reaction to the key titles in my 08.30 Sunday morning presentation (an early night for me on Saturday then) Blood on the Strand, Cave of the Yellow Dog, Desert Children, Dirty Bits for Girls, Vogue Covers and Last Orders at Harrods.
On Monday morning I will be having meetings with Brooke O’Donnell, Publishing Director for TSP and my main point of contact, and also popping in to see Tony Lutkus, International Director of Marketing at our US sister company Hachette Book Group US for a chat about our shared customers around and any opportunities that either of us might be missing out on.
Over the weekend I will also hopefully be able to find a couple of hours to take advantage of the cheap dollar to do a bit of Christmas shopping. The big stores around 5th Avenue and Chelsea Market have been recommended as places to go. But if you have any other suggestions please let me know.
I have had a tip that The Burger Joint tucked away at the back of Le Meridien Hotel is well worth a visit and I would be delighted to see some other suggestions of lesser known but not to be missed eateries and watering holes – Tips for brunch especially welcome.
I’ll let you know the trip went before the end of the year.
Happy travels
Posted 30/11/2007 12:25:11 by Simon McArt, Export Sales Manager with 0 comments.