so for anyone that wants to get into marketing and publicity in publishing or just
interested in the kind of meetings that i have i'm gonna just run through what i have the purpose
of them and how often i have them so first of all like a lot of people have in any industry
i have a catch-up so i have one-on-one with my manager and we talk through what i've been doing
that week any questions i have any updates to go through any training opportunities anything to
flag anything that's going on that week so i have that on a monday afternoon so we can kind of cover
the previous week and talk about what's coming up that week now because i work across marketing and
publicity and my manager is a senior marketing manager i also have a pr catch up which is kind
of like a manager one to one as well with our publicity manager to talk about what's happening
on the publicity side as well catching up on what's been happening that's less frequent that's
once every fortnight so at the start of the week on a tuesday morning we have our team meeting this
used to be on a monday morning to talk about like welcome to the new week what's coming up this week
but we were doing it virtually and we're in the office on a tuesday morning and we tried it one
time on a tuesday morning and we're like actually this is so much nicer doing it in person so we've
decided to switch and do it on a tuesday morning so that we're in person and we can see each other
in person so a team meeting self-explanatory it's what's been going on everything's flagged
so i'm having a bit more of a strict agenda so we're doing minutes from the previous week any
action points that should have been uh actioned by this week we go through our schedule for the title
is coming up and we say what should have been happened by this week and if it is on track or not
if there's any delays and why we then go for our coverage update so that's any press coverage
reviews any amazing marketing stats from the previous week so that can be circulated at
the end of the day uh to the wider company to basically say yes we're featured in the guardian
we're featured in cosmo whatever and then any other business really if there's anything else
to flag obviously we're a very we're a very small team we're very collaborative if there's anything
that we want to bring to that meeting that's where it happens so an acquisitions meeting a lot of the
departments in publishing attend this is normally led by editorial and they basically come to us
with a new idea a new title they present and suggest a new title that we should acquire so
the aim is to get a general consensus of what it's about so editorial present the author more
about them the book more about them potentially they would have circulated a extract before this
meeting and all the teams will basically feed in and say how they think it might work where
it might fit in the market and basically get a general consensus on whether or not we should
proceed or not i work across five kids imprints so depending on the imprint it's usually once a week
or once a fortnight on an ad talk basis as well sometimes editorial might cancel the meeting and
say we've got nothing to bring this week but that is what acquisitions are it happens all across
publishing and a lot of the teams are involved in that meeting we then have campaigns meetings
so this is run by marketing and pr which is where i work we used to kind of present the plans what
happening for that title whereas now we kind of have it all written out circulated beforehand
and use that space to answer any questions that the teams might have suggest any new ideas and
discuss the plans so sales might pitch in and say they want more support for their bookshop
editorial might pitch in and say the author wants x y and z that is more of a marketing
and publicity focus meeting one of my favorite meetings to attend is covers this normally on a
wednesday it's self-explanatory is when the design team present us the update on a cover the briefing
first of all happens so if it's a briefing covers meeting this is where editorial will
come and say this is what i want for the book this is what the author wants this is how i'm vigilant
in visiting oh my god can't say it this is how i'm picturing it again the other teams will feed in
sailors might say what's working for that market and that won't be accepted by a
particular retailer we might say it needs more color so it can work well on social media it's
a collaborative thing but essentially design hosts that meeting and show us the progress
after the design team have gone away and have a bit of a try they come to us with a few drafts
they might suggest some illustrators they might have a few different options and we get a vote
it's a really interactive really fun meeting to go to we then have what's called a launch
meeting which used to be called a positioning meeting this is essentially where editorial will
represent a title that we have now acquired following an acquisitions meeting and a chat with
the author and agent and editorial will re-pitch it to us and we position it within the market we
decide where the main market focus is going to be draft any ideas that the authors had for marketing
and publicity and we focus on the metadata as well so we update any keywords we might write the blurb
anything like that we then have a production whip which stands for work in progress and
this is where production will run through the schedule and ask if everything is on track to
go to print so editorial feed in if there's any delays if the author hasn't quite sent around
their last edits and it's good for other teams as well to see if we're on track of this if we
can expect any delays what's happening in the world at the moment means there's
a lot of supply chain demands which basically means it's taking a lot longer to print things
so if there are any delays that's where we'd find out then we have our key titles meeting every
other thursday prior to this we would have decided what our key titles are for the year so these are
the ones with the bigger budget the ones with the bigger named authors the ones where we're going
to need a lot more focus because we're expecting a lot more sales from it so every other thursday
we have this key titles meeting every team will be involved and we basically just update what
progress is each team will take in turns to say what's happening and then in their team then we'll
brainstorm any new ideas then more of a specific company meeting we have what's called the digital
brown bag sessions these are essentially internal training sessions so if someone is recognized to
be an expert in a particular field then they'll be invited to a digital brand bag session such as
my manager who runs our hotkey tick-tock account she did a tick-tock brown bag session these are
normally every friday depending on capacity and people from any department can go along and learn
some new things two new meetings that have been set up as well is our pr meeting and our marketing
meeting it's very self-explanatory but on our pr meeting the pr people just be involved and talk
about what's happening with any titles a marketing meeting saying that also marketing meetings we
might have discussions on like external media partners how ads are running at the moment
um yeah speaking of media partners on an ad hoc basis we might invite our media partners
in or have zoom with them to discuss how we're going to work with in the future we also might
have offer and agent meetings depending on what's needed for that campaign but in
marketing and publicity we might have a chat with them to say what we've been doing so far
what are our upcoming plans and see if they have any new ideas so those are our kind of
general scheduled regular meetings and i'm pretty sure that i've missed out loads that are on an ad
hoc basis but they're the kind of key ones that we have i actually really like going to
these meetings especially the ones where lots of teams are involved in titles and the covers
meetings there are more meetings that obviously go on throughout the business but that's what
i attend as a martin and pr employee at bonnie books uk i hope you found this useful um if you
have any questions on any of these meetings what happens how regular they are whatever
then let me know in the comment section down below and yeah hopefully see you next time bye