Jan 2, 2019
Will Atkinson is Managing Director of Atlantic Books, U.K. Prior to this he was, for many years, with Faber & Faber, serving as Director of Sales & Marketing from 2006 to 2014. During this time he spearheaded the Independent Alliance, a very successful sales organization that comprises some of the U.K.'s leading independent publishers, including Granta and Canongate.
I met with Will at his offices in Bloomsbury, London. We talk here, among other things, about the Alliance (Faber, Canongate, Granta, Querus, Profile, Atlantic, Short Books, & Icon), access to book buyers, Steig Larsen, must-have books, faith and trust, selling books abroad, being misquoted, brands, car-dealerships, Waterstones' golden era, Michael Joseph, grounding, classic sales people, enthusiasm, libraries, T.S. Eliot, catalogues, book wholesalers, Gardners Books, Amazon, Call me by Your Name, the Net Book Agreement, Harry Potter, best-sellers and over-publishing, big data, the law of threes, publishing popular people, social media, Rome by Matthew Neale and fluff.