Will Atkinson, Sales and Marketing Director – Faber and Faber
In a time of great changes in the book industry, being a medium-sized publisher with flexibility, resources and a well-known brand – and the ability to exploit this happy combination effectively – puts you in a strong position. Which is exactly where Faber and Faber is. “What’s happening in the industry is extremely interesting,” says Will Atkinson, the company’s Sales and Marketing Director. “And in this particular environment, given our particular characteristics, we are thriving.”
Luck, some great copyrights, the aspiration to be culturally relevant and yet pragmatic enough to always have ongoing projects that pay the wages – these have also helped Faber to thrive and to retain its independent status. A great bonus is Cats, which allowed T.S. Eliot’s widow to buy half the company in 1973. “Having a wealthy shareholder owning half the business makes us very secure,” Will notes. “If you have a bad year, it’s not the end of the world.”
Will joined Faber from Waterstones in 1994 as Paperback Product Manager, a sales and marketing position, and has remained on the commercial side of the business ever since. Over the past decade he’s been heavily involved in setting up brand-based service businesses, such as the Independent Alliance and Faber Factory, which have been about Faber taking on a leadership role in the independent sector as the gap between corporate and independent publishing widened. “What independent publishers do is publish books, and if they’re published well enough the money looks after itself. We deliver diversity and surprises. With corporate publishing, though, the money has to work and books have to serve that money. So a large swathe of what they publish is low-risk genre publishing.”
Faber has moved quickly on the digital front, not only in digitising titles and developing apps, but also in offering digital services to other independents. Will sees eBook and hardback formats soon working well side by side, with the middle eventually disappearing. “Initially, eBooks ate into hardback sales, but now it’s paperback sales, which makes more sense. If you’re a genre reader – crime, science fiction, etc. – eBooks are wonderful. But the print books you want to keep and cherish, the classics, are here to stay and are bound to start looking nicer.” In collaboration with Bloomsbury, Faber Digital has just soft launched Drama Online, a database of the world’s finest drama from the past two and half thousand years; it is also developing a game app based on The Thirty-Nine Steps. “We try to make our digital products as good as they possibly can be. It is important to be seen as experts in the digital arena.”
Faber Factory, whose services include working in partnership with Firsty to offer direct-to-consumer (D2C) websites, is part of the drive to provide leadership in digital publishing. “Out of the 110 publishers in the Factory currently, there are some who are in good niches where direct business is their life’s blood – for them, having a D2C solution is essential.” Faber’s newest service business, Faber Factory Plus, focuses on selling physical books into bookshops and now serves 20 publishers. “We’re expanding into Europe, then it’s the Middle and Far East – and then watch this space on other territories. The idea for our services is to be a one-stop shop – for print and eBooks – globally!”
Given Faber’s favourable position in terms of size, resources and profile and its proven agility in responding to industry changes, there can be little doubt that it will soon turn this idea into reality.
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