Mr. Matthew Haslum very kindly took the time to talk to me about how he got his job, why he loves it, and gave me some sage advice about pursuing a career in Publishing.
So what do you do?
I am in charge of bringing the strategy of thinking about publishing with respect to our readers, into the business and into the marketing side of things. In a nutshell, how Faber as a brand can get to its readers. That involves thinking up new initiatives and streamlining the way we think from a marketing perspective. I come from a digital background so a lot of my thinking comes from digital response channels, peer to peer recommendations. People advocating things they love to other people is what marketing is really all about these days.
Can you tell me about a recent project you're particularly proud of that could serve as an example?
Partnerships are really interesting to think about for publishers, especially smaller publishers like Faber because we can't afford big, commercial brands or big overview brands that own lots of other brands. Our challenge is to find the next group of people outside your circle of regular readers and talk to them. You can often do this by finding people who are interested in other things which feel like a perfect match of interest areas. For example, we have a load of brilliant women writers, really influential, cutting edge, urban, strong female voices, and we wanted to find another brand out there that catered for young, educated, female consumers.
So we talked to Tatty Devine, the jewellery designers, to discuss the possibility of doing something together. They're all about making a statement with their pieces and that was a really interesting partnership, particularly for our music list, because our core readership is significantly male 35-40+ men who are really passionate music fans. These customers also buy Mojo, Q, Uncut, those sort of things. We wanted to branch out into the next set of people because they're the sort of consumers that we'll arguably have a longer relationship with. The project took the form of an event which tied up some of our authors, some people that Tatty Devine thought embodied what they were about. It was a mix of readings and performance and the crowd was a perfect fit. Admittedly it was only a small group, but its about key influences and getting people to go off and talk about the event and the brands. It helped us reach people, and those people can then hopefully forge a relationship with Faber that spans across not only across the music list, but into poetry, fiction, film etc. Doing things like the Tatty Devine event just lets them know what we're about, what we like and why we want them as customers.
The event turned into a kind of campaign, where we engaged with bloggers and did competitions online. The marketing approach was very different to your standard book poster at a train station.
How did you get your job?
I'm proud to say that I got my job entirely cold. I saw the job online. I applied, wrote a letter, handed in my CV to this agency and I got vetted through an external agency. It was a two stage interview process and I got the job.
What did you do previously?
I lived in New York when I was doing my masters degree in Publishing, but when I came back to London I had no idea what I wanted to do. When I came back, a good friend of mine put me in touch with a children's book publisher and I started doing a little bit of marketing for a company called Working Partners, which is an organization which creates bespoke fiction for publishers. So, like ghost writers, they're a weird mix between creative agency and author. They have a big stable of writers and they'll go to a children's publisher who'll say 'I want an adventure story series for nine to twelve year old girls' as a brief and then they write one for them. There is an element of purity and originality thats missing from that model but its not dissimilar to the way television works. Its actually really successful.
I moved really quickly from marketing to editorial there and became the commissioning editor, so I was creating series fiction and managing authors. I got bored with that, because I was young and book publishing seemed to take forever, going through concept to publication in that way. So I started working as a copywriter for a creative agency. I didnt really know anything about it but I was quite good at creating slogans and taglines it turned into a full time job.
That went quite well and I was doing a lot of pitch work for Betfair and online gambling companies. I was invited to become a director when we restructured and a shareholder and we grew that agency, working with Sky, Carphone Warehouse, Talk Talk, The Body Shop, Kiss Radio. It's not the most glamorous work but its good work and we really grew the agency to do some exciting stuff. We became a really good, digital, boutique agency.
I'd been doing all this work for all these big brands and that was what kind of what Faber was wanting, so when the Consumer Marketing Director position came up it seemed like a perfect fit. Plus I love Faber. I was completely confident that I could do the job. I also knew enough about publishing not to feel like I was learning a whole new trade.
In terms of building your career, do you think its beneficial to be thinking about moving every few years to gain new experience?
Yes. I've moved three or four times already and they've all been good moves. Rather than having a burning career ambition, I've followed my passions, chosen industries that I think I have a lot to offer in and work that I enjoy doing. Thats why I'm at Faber. I could just have easily ended up working in TV, but I know that I would enjoy it as much. If you're selling something, you have to like and enjoy the product you're selling. Anecdotally I suppose, there is only so much you can say about a mobile phone, but there are hundreds of things you can say about a book.
In terms of a career in book publishing. I would recommend moving, and not just from big publishing house to little publishing house and visa versa. I recommend people work client side of things and in house. Be a supplier, feel the heat of someone on your back, depending on you to get something done, because it teaches you a different way of working things and interacting with people too. Laterally thinking about experiences you've had in different companies can only help you solve problems in your future jobs.
How flexible are your job hours?
Lets just say that this job takes up a lot of my time.
Does your current job pay well enough to fund the life that you wanted?
I receive a good, competitive salary for what I do. Its not TV money but I have the kind of job that my friends (who are lawyers earning twice as much as I do stuck in the same place for fifteen years) moan about being jealous of when we're out. That's my choice though. I've never been miserable in my job and I've always enjoyed everything I've done. Thats really important.
What was your first ever job?
I worked at Blockbuster video when I was nineteen and studying at uni in Exmouth in Devon, funny enough with Michael Underwood of the Children's BBC fame.
If you had to offer one piece of sage advice about working in a creative office, what would it be?
If you're going to have a brainstorming session, do it in the morning, because afternoons are absolute killers. Also, even if its really intense, really productive, limit yourself to an hour throwing ideas around. Any longer and you'll fine it will meander into nothing, even if its really good, you will lose focus after a while. Do good work, step away and then come back to it.
What is it about your job which makes it really work for you?
I have a very close relationship with the senior team and I have a great relationship with my team. We're very collaborative, we work more like an agency, and as someone who has worked at an agency, I think its very important to think like that, bring that competitive edge to your work. We think about books like client projects, very hands on and in depth.
What aspect(s) of your job do you find challenging?
I think that book publishing sometimes suffers from thinking about the budget first, because we are a budget constricted business, right across the board. Whether you're Random House or a little indie, money is tight. I think what you have to do though, and what we do successfully as a company, is think ideas first and budget second, because you'll never have any good ideas if you're just thinking about money. The challenge is then scaling that idea to fit the budget.
What is the most important quality in a manager?
Collaboration. I think its important to understand what motivates your team and who you work under and try and fuel their passion. You need to give guidance where it is needed, but not all of the time, you also need to let people grow and evolve as and when they see fit. Obviously if you anticipate someone is going to make a mistake, dont just wait for them to slip up, but at the same time a manager should understand that it can sometimes be really helpful long term to let people make a mistake and learn from it.
In my previous job, it was a part of a pretty flat structure so this is the first time I'm technically above eight or nine people. I guess I just try and put the hours in, be visible, approchable and there if people need me. I think if you're a manager you have to have a strong work ethic, because that translates to the rest of your team. If you want to them to work hard then you have to work hard.
What do you want from your employer?
Flexibility, autonomy. I want to be able to influence what happens here with passion, but also with expertise brought in from other sectors. I worked a lot outside of book publishing and I think that grounded me to make some interesting decisions here. I get that with Faber.
Do you think that London is the place to follow a career in publishing?
I think that for my career, London is really strong. For book publishing, London is the place to be. As a marketeer it doesnt really matter, you could end up in America, Boston, the west coast, wherever. Its just about the skills that you bring to a team. I enjoy living in London, I loved living in America, but things get a bit different when you start having a family. Your life becomes less transient.
The reason that there is publishing is so London centric is historical. In the same way that all the big newspapers used to operate out of Fleet Street, book publishing was based in Bloomsbury. Certain industries ended up coming from certain areas. What was the first meaningful move the BBC made in their entire history? The move to Manchester, and look at the disruption that caused in terms of programming and employees' lives, people relocating, or jumping ship. Thats the problem, to fracture a massive media unit like the BBC takes a lot of effort and a lot of money. There is a lot of money in London and people want to stay.
Truthfully though, if you want some advice, just be brilliant at what you do because that's what it comes down to at the end of the day. If you want to start a small press, doing some cool letter press pamphlets and stuff. Just do it, from wherever you are. Do record it though, share it, get it out there. Aside from just being a good creative thing, someone who is working at a bigger house in London could be looking for a person with fire in there belly and want to speak to you for your passion and ideas. Who knows where your pacould lead
So what do you do?
I am in charge of bringing the strategy of thinking about publishing with respect to our readers, into the business and into the marketing side of things. In a nutshell, how Faber as a brand can get to its readers. That involves thinking up new initiatives and streamlining the way we think from a marketing perspective. I come from a digital background so a lot of my thinking comes from digital response channels, peer to peer recommendations. People advocating things they love to other people is what marketing is really all about these days.
Can you tell me about a recent project you're particularly proud of that could serve as an example?
Partnerships are really interesting to think about for publishers, especially smaller publishers like Faber because we can't afford big, commercial brands or big overview brands that own lots of other brands. Our challenge is to find the next group of people outside your circle of regular readers and talk to them. You can often do this by finding people who are interested in other things which feel like a perfect match of interest areas. For example, we have a load of brilliant women writers, really influential, cutting edge, urban, strong female voices, and we wanted to find another brand out there that catered for young, educated, female consumers.
So we talked to Tatty Devine, the jewellery designers, to discuss the possibility of doing something together. They're all about making a statement with their pieces and that was a really interesting partnership, particularly for our music list, because our core readership is significantly male 35-40+ men who are really passionate music fans. These customers also buy Mojo, Q, Uncut, those sort of things. We wanted to branch out into the next set of people because they're the sort of consumers that we'll arguably have a longer relationship with. The project took the form of an event which tied up some of our authors, some people that Tatty Devine thought embodied what they were about. It was a mix of readings and performance and the crowd was a perfect fit. Admittedly it was only a small group, but its about key influences and getting people to go off and talk about the event and the brands. It helped us reach people, and those people can then hopefully forge a relationship with Faber that spans across not only across the music list, but into poetry, fiction, film etc. Doing things like the Tatty Devine event just lets them know what we're about, what we like and why we want them as customers.
The event turned into a kind of campaign, where we engaged with bloggers and did competitions online. The marketing approach was very different to your standard book poster at a train station.
How did you get your job?
I'm proud to say that I got my job entirely cold. I saw the job online. I applied, wrote a letter, handed in my CV to this agency and I got vetted through an external agency. It was a two stage interview process and I got the job.
What did you do previously?
I lived in New York when I was doing my masters degree in Publishing, but when I came back to London I had no idea what I wanted to do. When I came back, a good friend of mine put me in touch with a children's book publisher and I started doing a little bit of marketing for a company called Working Partners, which is an organization which creates bespoke fiction for publishers. So, like ghost writers, they're a weird mix between creative agency and author. They have a big stable of writers and they'll go to a children's publisher who'll say 'I want an adventure story series for nine to twelve year old girls' as a brief and then they write one for them. There is an element of purity and originality thats missing from that model but its not dissimilar to the way television works. Its actually really successful.
I moved really quickly from marketing to editorial there and became the commissioning editor, so I was creating series fiction and managing authors. I got bored with that, because I was young and book publishing seemed to take forever, going through concept to publication in that way. So I started working as a copywriter for a creative agency. I didnt really know anything about it but I was quite good at creating slogans and taglines it turned into a full time job.
That went quite well and I was doing a lot of pitch work for Betfair and online gambling companies. I was invited to become a director when we restructured and a shareholder and we grew that agency, working with Sky, Carphone Warehouse, Talk Talk, The Body Shop, Kiss Radio. It's not the most glamorous work but its good work and we really grew the agency to do some exciting stuff. We became a really good, digital, boutique agency.
I'd been doing all this work for all these big brands and that was what kind of what Faber was wanting, so when the Consumer Marketing Director position came up it seemed like a perfect fit. Plus I love Faber. I was completely confident that I could do the job. I also knew enough about publishing not to feel like I was learning a whole new trade.
In terms of building your career, do you think its beneficial to be thinking about moving every few years to gain new experience?
Yes. I've moved three or four times already and they've all been good moves. Rather than having a burning career ambition, I've followed my passions, chosen industries that I think I have a lot to offer in and work that I enjoy doing. Thats why I'm at Faber. I could just have easily ended up working in TV, but I know that I would enjoy it as much. If you're selling something, you have to like and enjoy the product you're selling. Anecdotally I suppose, there is only so much you can say about a mobile phone, but there are hundreds of things you can say about a book.
In terms of a career in book publishing. I would recommend moving, and not just from big publishing house to little publishing house and visa versa. I recommend people work client side of things and in house. Be a supplier, feel the heat of someone on your back, depending on you to get something done, because it teaches you a different way of working things and interacting with people too. Laterally thinking about experiences you've had in different companies can only help you solve problems in your future jobs.
How flexible are your job hours?
Lets just say that this job takes up a lot of my time.
Does your current job pay well enough to fund the life that you wanted?
I receive a good, competitive salary for what I do. Its not TV money but I have the kind of job that my friends (who are lawyers earning twice as much as I do stuck in the same place for fifteen years) moan about being jealous of when we're out. That's my choice though. I've never been miserable in my job and I've always enjoyed everything I've done. Thats really important.
What was your first ever job?
I worked at Blockbuster video when I was nineteen and studying at uni in Exmouth in Devon, funny enough with Michael Underwood of the Children's BBC fame.
If you had to offer one piece of sage advice about working in a creative office, what would it be?
If you're going to have a brainstorming session, do it in the morning, because afternoons are absolute killers. Also, even if its really intense, really productive, limit yourself to an hour throwing ideas around. Any longer and you'll fine it will meander into nothing, even if its really good, you will lose focus after a while. Do good work, step away and then come back to it.
What is it about your job which makes it really work for you?
I have a very close relationship with the senior team and I have a great relationship with my team. We're very collaborative, we work more like an agency, and as someone who has worked at an agency, I think its very important to think like that, bring that competitive edge to your work. We think about books like client projects, very hands on and in depth.
What aspect(s) of your job do you find challenging?
I think that book publishing sometimes suffers from thinking about the budget first, because we are a budget constricted business, right across the board. Whether you're Random House or a little indie, money is tight. I think what you have to do though, and what we do successfully as a company, is think ideas first and budget second, because you'll never have any good ideas if you're just thinking about money. The challenge is then scaling that idea to fit the budget.
What is the most important quality in a manager?
Collaboration. I think its important to understand what motivates your team and who you work under and try and fuel their passion. You need to give guidance where it is needed, but not all of the time, you also need to let people grow and evolve as and when they see fit. Obviously if you anticipate someone is going to make a mistake, dont just wait for them to slip up, but at the same time a manager should understand that it can sometimes be really helpful long term to let people make a mistake and learn from it.
In my previous job, it was a part of a pretty flat structure so this is the first time I'm technically above eight or nine people. I guess I just try and put the hours in, be visible, approchable and there if people need me. I think if you're a manager you have to have a strong work ethic, because that translates to the rest of your team. If you want to them to work hard then you have to work hard.
What do you want from your employer?
Flexibility, autonomy. I want to be able to influence what happens here with passion, but also with expertise brought in from other sectors. I worked a lot outside of book publishing and I think that grounded me to make some interesting decisions here. I get that with Faber.
Do you think that London is the place to follow a career in publishing?
I think that for my career, London is really strong. For book publishing, London is the place to be. As a marketeer it doesnt really matter, you could end up in America, Boston, the west coast, wherever. Its just about the skills that you bring to a team. I enjoy living in London, I loved living in America, but things get a bit different when you start having a family. Your life becomes less transient.
The reason that there is publishing is so London centric is historical. In the same way that all the big newspapers used to operate out of Fleet Street, book publishing was based in Bloomsbury. Certain industries ended up coming from certain areas. What was the first meaningful move the BBC made in their entire history? The move to Manchester, and look at the disruption that caused in terms of programming and employees' lives, people relocating, or jumping ship. Thats the problem, to fracture a massive media unit like the BBC takes a lot of effort and a lot of money. There is a lot of money in London and people want to stay.
Truthfully though, if you want some advice, just be brilliant at what you do because that's what it comes down to at the end of the day. If you want to start a small press, doing some cool letter press pamphlets and stuff. Just do it, from wherever you are. Do record it though, share it, get it out there. Aside from just being a good creative thing, someone who is working at a bigger house in London could be looking for a person with fire in there belly and want to speak to you for your passion and ideas. Who knows where your pacould lead