The SYP Recruiters Evening

Last Thursday we participated in the Recruiters Evening, a fantastic event organised by the London Committee of the SYP. At this event, we had the opportunity and privilege to present alongside other publishing recruiters to a full house at The Phoenix Club in Soho.

The events put on by the SYP are so fantastic for those at the start of their career and are an extremely helpful tool. This evening was all about giving everyone an initial overview of the publishing recruitment and exactly what it is we do. With recruiters in different corners of the room, those in attendance were then free to both come up and ask us any question they liked or even to just mingle and socialise with their peers. For the attendees, it was a great chance for them to pick our brains about CVs, interviews and the seemingly daunting application process. For us, it was the perfect opportunity for us to offer guidance and top tips as well as reassurance that although getting a step into, or step up in, this industry is difficult, it’s such a fantastic place to be that it’s well worth the effort and we see success stories all the time.

Those in attendance were all at varying stages of their careers and included everyone from students to individuals looking to change departments as well as others looking to change from their current industry into a new career in publishing. It’s always so fantastic to be involved with events such as these and to meet such passionate and bright individuals in the nascent stages of their career, and indeed, the future of the publishing industry.

Next up on the publishing calendar is of course London Book Fair, from the 8^th – 10^th April where the SYP is presenting two seminars within the People Development Seminar Stream which yours truly, Inspired Selection, is sponsoring. This seminar stream is fantastic for publishing people at all stages of their careers and in any department to ensure your career is #Futureproof. We hope to see everyone there and look forward to working with you in the future!

Here at Inspired Selection, we are passionate about the publishing industry; we talk about publishing, read about publishing and attend all major publishing events like the one you’ve just read about. We would love to meet you at events so do feel free to come up and introduce yourselves! If you’re interested in opportunities within publishing do keep in touch and register for our Vacancy Update Service as well as keeping up to date with us on Twitter

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Byte the Book – What’s the future of book selling in the digital age?

On Monday night we attended Byte the Book at the beautiful Ivy Club in Soho where Sam Missingham (Head of Events – HarperCollins) chaired a fantastic panel consisting of Julia Kingsford (Business Development & Consumer Insight Consultant – Valobox), Jon Woolcott (Buying and Marketing Director – Stanfords) and Simon Edwards (Owner – The Little Ripon Bookshop and BIC) where they explored the future of book selling in the digital age.

Sam Missingham kicked off the evening by quoting a sobering figure – indie bookshop numbers have now dipped below 1,000 since records began and asked of the panel what was going on to influence this trend. Julia, whilst not quite answering the question, brought home the key issues facing the publishing industry and booksellers today by taking a quick audience poll – who thought Amazon is destroying business and who also thinks Amazon does a brilliant job of their business. This highlights how even though we may not support Amazon, there is a strong lesson to be learned and the publishing industry is at a real turning point where they must be able to also create an innovative business model in order to continue to compete.

Simon countered this point by describing his experience as an independent bookshop owner in a small city by extolling the value they add, which in nature tends to be more intrinsic and something that digital retailers cannot match. He explained that the success of a small independent bookshop can in large part be related to their connection with the community and remaining at the heart.

Jon built upon both these ideas by explaining the strategy at Stanfords, a specialty travel and map bookshop with two locations and an online store. By making their business so specialised, they are able to reach out to a very niche group of customers and really make sure they are taking care of them, providing a tailored service whereas larger chains such as Waterstones and Amazon can become too busy and bogged down by all their different channels.

What was perhaps most interesting was when the conversation turned to looking towards the future and making predictions for how the book selling landscape would appear in 10 years time. Will there be a Netflix or Spotify for books? Sam questioned. Will Blinkbox be able to take on Amazon? Julia brought up their imminent launch into the book consumer eco-system.

All agreed that it’s impossible to predict exactly what the future will hold, but the general consensus of the panel was that even though we are a turning point, the next 10 years will not be so dissimilar to the present. Julia was perhaps the most optimistic with a message of hope – that in the future we will be able adapt content into whatever format necessary in order to be able to reach out to as many people possible.

Here at Inspired Selection, we are passionate about the publishing industry; we talk about publishing, read about publishing and attend all major publishing events like the one you’ve just read about. We would love to meet you at events so do feel free to come up and introduce yourselves! If you’re interested in opportunities within publishing do keep in touch and register for our Vacancy Update Service as well as keeping up to date with us on Twitter

Congratulations to all the 2014 Bookseller Awards Nominees!

This morning heralded the announcement of The Bookseller Awards shortlist. As sponsors of the event, this has been an exciting morning for us all at Inspired Selection as we find out which of our clients have been nominated and discover the talent and innovation that has impacted and impressed the industry this year.

From the most creative marketing campaign, imprint of the year, editor of the year to best independent bookshop, library of the year and literary agent of the year, every aspect of the industry is covered. In a constantly shifting and forward-thinking publishing world, those who are moving with the times yet staying true to traditional publishing priorities – good content, engaging content – can be recognised and show-cased.

At Inspired Selection, we spend our days talking about content with both our clients and our candidates so many of those on the list were no surprise to us!

With an excellent range of nominees across the award categories, it will be interesting to see who comes out on top. To get this far, even, is such a fantastic achievement and everyone on the shortlist should be very proud; a great start to the weekend for all involved…Happy Friday!

Here at Inspired Selection, we are passionate about the publishing industry; we talk about publishing, read about publishing and attend all major publishing events like the one you’ve just read about. We would love to meet you at events so do feel free to come up and introduce yourselves! If you’re interested in opportunities within publishing do keep in touch and register for our Vacancy Update Service as well as keeping up to date with us on Twitter

Bookseller Awards 2014

With less than 24 hours to go before the Bookseller Awards shortlist is announced for 2014, we are all incredibly excited here at Inspired Towers.

Inspired Search & Selection is dedicated to supporting the best talent in the industry and so it is a real privilege for us to be sponsoring the Bookseller Awards this year, an event devoted to just that. We are constantly meeting with fantastic people of the publishing industry who are looking to develop their creativity and innovation in new environments and this event shines the spotlight on the very best creators and the top innovators in the market.

It’s our mission to fuel the industry with talent, introducing publishing professionals to each other resulting in new roles for people which are going to both personally develop the individual and also develop the organisation with the ideas, skills and imagination of that individual. Celebrating the success of such innovators and creators in the upcoming shortlist will be a great moment for us all as we recognise the individuals’ achievements and take a step back in admiration for our industry and its evolution.

At this point, while we wait in anticipation for the shortlist to be revealed, we would like to raise our thanks to the Bookseller Awards Judging Panel. It’s a dream team of publishing professionals, well placed to review the nominations coming from great success within the industry themselves. They’ll have made numerous tough calls, judging the wealth of talent nominated for the various categories will have been no easy task and it takes great experience to be in that position.

So for now, we sit with congratulations at the ready for those shortlisted, with gratitude to the judges and with pride for being part of this fantastic event.

The IPG Conference – Spring 2014

Well, that was a conference to beat all others for news!

Yes, many of the usual fine features of previous conferences, including some outstanding winners of the IPG awards (more later) however, the BIG news came a few days later when the incoming Chair – Rebecca Smart, CEO of Osprey Publishing Group – had to vacate the position as she has been appointed as the new MD at Ebury Press, part of Penguin Random House. A great loss for the IPG but a major coup for PRH!

The introductory key note speech by Faber CEO, Stephen Page got the conference off to a cracking start with a speech designed to make us think, particularly about building fan bases and doing things ‘faster’ (reminiscent of Rebecca Smart’s speech at Futurebook).

This was followed by an interesting session with James Daunt, defending business with Waterstones and a claim that Waterstones adds to ‘discoverability’. Not too worried about Amazon, amazingly!

John Dyer, Domino Records gave an amusing talk on the parallels with the music industry with a particular reference to the issue of ‘who owns the rights’! Totally forthright but an enjoyable speaker who talked from experience – not from notes.

There followed several useful workshops covering trends in the growth of social media usage, Nielsen sales data and an important move forward in D2C sales potential through a workshop with the Osprey team of Richard Sullivan and Mike Ramalho.

From the Wednesday evening informal dinner with guest star – Chinese Elvis (a surprisingly entertaining and musically gravelly performance, only interrupted by a Jolly flame throwing exhibition! Ask me about that later) we moved on to a star studded (well Suzy Astbury and Donald Smith were there!) evening of the IPG Award winners 2014.

Everyone a deserved winner but no doubt at all that it was an evening of celebration for the children’s publishing world with Nosy Crow scooping the LBF International Achievement Award and the Nielsen Digital Marketing Award while Usborne Publishing swept up the IPG Children’s Publisher of the Year and the star prize of IPG Independent Publisher of the Year. Usborne’s founder, Peter Usborne, gave us a short, but heartfelt thank you speech and was very proud of the fact that in 40 years publishing, no one has ever been made redundant from the company. Good enough for an award itself.

With many networking – or coffee breaks – the IPG conference is one of the very useful places where likeminded publishers can talk fairly openly together and is a real opportunity to build profile in this industry. Movers & shakers were plentiful!

We can look forward to IPG 2015 – but who will be Chair?

Full list of IPG Award winners:

IPG Independent Publisher of the Year – Usborne Publishing

IPG Trade Publisher of the Year – Summersdale


IPG Children’s Publisher of the Year – Usborne Publishing

Frankfurt Book Fair Academic & Professional Publisher of the Year – Edward Elgar Publishing
　

Librios Education Publisher of the Year – Crown House Publishing
　


PrintOnDemand Worldwide Specialist Consumer Publisher of the Year – Absolute Press

The Nick Robinson Newcomer Award – Critical Publishing


The London Book Fair International Achievement Award – Nosy Crow

 Ingram Content Group Digital Publishing Award – Faber & Faber


Nielsen Digital Marketing Award – Nosy Crow


IPG Diversity Award
 – Accent Press


IPG Young Independent Publisher of the Year – David Henderson, Top That! Publishing
GBS Services to Independent Publishers Award – Compass Independent Publishing Services

Here at Inspired Selection, we are passionate about the publishing industry; we talk about publishing, read about publishing and attend all major publishing events like the one you’ve just read about. We would love to meet you at events so do feel free to come up and introduce yourselves! If you’re interested in opportunities within publishing do keep in touch and register for our Vacancy Update Service as well as keeping up to date with us on Twitter

Sponsoring London Book Fair 2014 #futureproofyourcareer

Every year, we look forward to London Book Fair; we attend on each day and meet with our very important clients to understand what their strategies are for the year ahead and how this impacts their needs in terms of the talent they are looking for. This year, however, we are even more excited than usual…because this year, Inspired Selection are official sponsors of the People Development Seminar Stream, taking place throughout the 3 day event!

The series of seminars range in topic and panel format but all follow the theme of working in the publishing industry, including an examination of the ever-changing landscape in “Making Change Happen: From Treacle to Continuous Innovation”, Wednesday, April 9^th at 4pm, and “Editing, Indexing and Translating – the Added-value Activities Behind Publishing” on Tuesday at 10am. The collection of seminars provide an opportunity for all those in the industry, right though from entry-level to those immersed in the industry for years now, to find out more about challenges and changes in the world of publishing.

Inspired Selection are proud to be adding our own seminar to this batch on Thursday, April 10^th, where we will be hosting a panel of selected Heads of Talent from a variety of our top publishing clients and asking them to discuss the issues, challenges and opportunities we face as an industry when it comes to hiring new talent and developing existing talent.  Our panel includes John Athanasiou (Director of People at Harper Collins), Harriet McArthur (Human Resources Director, Europe – Wolters Kluwer, Health) and Anna Tomlinson (Head of HR for Publishing – Random House Group).

The seminar, “Futureproof Your Career”, will examine the traditional verses the “futureproof” skillset and will allow our panel to discuss the types of roles they are most frequently recruiting for at the moment and the type of talent they are looking for to fill those roles. They will be asked to discuss what the biggest challenges are when looking for this talent; the roles they struggle to fill, the skillsets that are harder to find, the main mistakes that candidates make in applications and interviews, and also describe the best application/interview they have had so far in their careers – what made that candidate stand out from the rest?

This seminar will benefit both the panel and the audience, allowing the panel to paint the picture of their ideal candidate for particular roles and the audience to know the skills and experience required in this ever-changing industry.

Here at Inspired Selection, we are passionate about the publishing industry; we talk about publishing, read about publishing and attend all major publishing events like the one you’ve just read about. We would love to meet you at events so do feel free to come up and introduce yourselves! If you’re interested in opportunities within publishing do keep in touch and register for our Vacancy Update Service as well as keeping up to date with us on Twitter

Brookes University, Oxford – Working In Publishing Day

This week saw the return of the annual Brookes Working In Publishing Day for around 70 post graduate and third year undergraduate students, many of whom are about to complete their studies on the Masters  in Publishing course as a precursor to gaining employment with publishing companies.

There were also in attendance around 35 publishing and publishing related companies there to answer questions and give some guidance on how to get a job in publishing as well as to talk about the various entry level positions which will be available.

Inspired Selection was on hand to field many of these questions and to talk knowledgeably about careers available in the industry.

The day was comfortably spilt into bite sized chunks covering several skills sessions for CV tips, interview tips …. etc followed by  a number of speed dating sessions in the afternoon.

For these, the students were broken down into small groups or individuals and then had the opportunity to spend 15 minutes with a publishing company or with a recruitment expert for more individual attention and Q & A’s.

These sessions were extremely invigorating and always a delight to be able to talk about the industry and all of the opportunities which a career in publishing can provide, with a significant group of really interested students.
The students showed enthusiasm, had sometimes interesting questions and really got into the spirit of networking. Something which will stand them all well in the future!

Over an excellent buffet lunch there was plenty of opportunity to network both with students and company representatives.

At the end of the day there was a brief talk by the well known and popular, Joanna Prior of Penguin Books as well as a further opportunity to network over drinks provided by the Brookes team.

The day was managed very efficiently by Beverley Tarquini, Senior Lecturer in Publishing Studies at Brookes, with a team of willing volunteers!

Inspired Selection welcomes this regular opportunity to meet the new talent coming into our industry.  THEY ARE THE FUTURE OF THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY!

Here at Inspired Selection, we are passionate about the publishing industry; we talk about publishing, read about publishing and attend all major publishing events like the one you’ve just read about. We would love to meet you at events so do feel free to come up and introduce yourselves!

Inspired Selection Go to The Farm!

Following the buzz of our previous volunteering experience, we decided to don our gardening gloves once again and get involved with the local community. We spent the day helping out at the Surrey Docks Farm, organised by Team London Bridge, who arrange projects and events that benefit businesses and employees located in the London Bridge area.

Set against the beautiful backdrop of the Thames and London’s high rise skyline, the Surrey Docks Farm offers a unique experience for visitors and volunteers alike providing a variety of opportunities for people to learn about farming and food production.

  

From hosting school visits to running projects for adults with learning disabilities, the farm is well and truly at the heart of the community. The Surrey Docks is also grounded in history, literally, set on the site of an old ship yard which once provided docking for water ambulances during the outbreak of smallpox and the river fire station.

Immersed in the history is where our day began, as we were assigned the task to excavate and dig a plot for a new display cabinet housing artefacts that had been discovered washed up along the Thames shoreline. Most of our day was spent digging the foundation holes for the cabinet, and when they were deep enough that we almost disappeared into them, we were able to help set the cabinet in the ground.

  

It was a delight to see the finished project at the end of the day and so lovely to see such well cared for animals. We all wished we could bring them back with us to the office, especially the piglets!

  

We thoroughly enjoyed our day volunteering and it was such a pleasure to work alongside such enthusiastic staff who have a real passion for farming in the heart of London.

Here at Inspired Selection, we are passionate about the publishing industry; we talk about publishing, read about publishing and attend all major publishing events like the one you’ve just read about. We would love to meet you at events so do feel free to come up and introduce yourselves! If you’re interested in opportunities within publishing do keep in touch and register for our Vacancy Update Service as well as keeping up to date with us on Twitter