Welcome back to Book Break!
In today's episode, we are going behind the scenes in publishing.
So I am all laden up as you can see with the camera equipment, and I'm taking you all to
the Cosmo offices, where we're going to learn what it's like to work there for the books
page.
I'm here now, at Cosmopolitan HQ, very exciting, and I'm here with Catriona Innes and Dusty
Baxter-Wright.
Can you tell us a little bit about what your jobs are?
DUSTY: I'm Senior Digital Writer on the website, and I mainly look after the student section
and the books.
CATRIONA: And I'm Senior Editor, so I look after pretty much everything in the magazine
along with my colleague Amy, that is not celebrity, fashion or beauty.
And I look after all the books content.
EMMA: And I see you've brought some examples here, can we have a look at some of the books
pages?
CATRIONA: Yeah, course.
So, this was our coverage of the Big Book Awards, which was Hearst's inaugural books
awards.
We were 'Must-Reads'.
EMMA: So what were some of the best books that you had on the shortlist?
CATRIONA: The Queen of Bloody Everything, by Joanna Nadin, was all about really kind
of complicated mother-daughter relationships, and it's set in the 70s.
It's beautifully written.
EMMA: I really loved it, I just finished it this morning.
CATRIONA: Oh did you?
Wow!
EMMA: I thought it was so good!
CATRIONA: Yeah, I loved it.
EMMA: And how did you pick which books were in there?
CATRIONA: So we had a really fun day, where all the books came in.
And then I got to sit in this room and like, look at them all.
I read them all, Giovanna Fletcher, our guest judge, read them all, and Farrah read them
all.
And we kind of all came up with scores together to come up with the winner.
Shall I continue working through the pages?
This is just if we do like, we just knew we had to do holiday books.
So we did a flowchart.
EMMA: Oh fun!
CATRIONA: Which was like–
DUSTY: I love that.
I really love that.
CATRIONA: It's like going back to proper, like - when I used to want to work in magazines,
it was like, I want to do flowcharts.
DUSTY: Like Sugar magazine.
EMMA: Yeah it was like, which celebrity will be your boyfriend?
DUSTY: Yeah exactly.
CATRIONA: So this was just a themed one that was just basically introducing the idea of
superstar authors that you might not have heard of before.
Like a Japanese author who's massive in Japan, and kind of introduce them.
Oh and this was just all about, celebrities seems to be doing - I don't know if you've
noticed this - celebrities seem to be getting their own imprints.
Stormzy, just as this page was going to press, announced that he was doing an imprint.
DUSTY: Oh, I saw that, yeah!
CATRIONA: And I was like, can I pull my page back?
He wants to help authors -
DUSTY: Young people of colour, doesn't he?
CATRIONA: Yeah.
But he could have announced it before.
And then we also did, I actually noticed quite a lot of people were tweeting about this.
The celebrities that have a lot of power over the book world.
Like, you guys did one -
DUSTY: Oh Reese Witherspoon.
CATRIONA: Zoella, like she - if she gets a book, it goes massive.
EMMA: That's really cool so it's such a variety of different themes.
And how does it vary from the online content?
DUSTY: It's slightly different online because we get our traffic through search and through
social.
So a lot of the time, I am writing stories positioned at what people are googling.
A lot of our book content is theme-led.
So it will be books on mental health, books on body image...
EMMA: It's targeted to the people searching for a particular thing.
DUSTY: Exactly, exactly.
EMMA: So who - and you two will have slightly different answers to this - but who is the
Cosmo reader?
CATRIONA: I would say the Cosmo reader, no matter whether it's the website, or Snapchat,
has kind of the same ambition.
She's very very ambitious.
DUSTY: She's just like one step ahead with everything.
Fashion, beauty, like books, yeah.
You know, the things she's talking about.
Really well informed.
CATRIONA: But doesn't take herself too seriously with it.
DUSTY: Exactly.
EMMA: In your process of choosing the books that you're going to talk about, how do you
interact with the rest of the books industry?
DUSTY: So I take a lot of pitches from charities and from publishers.
You know, they'll come to me and they'll say, oh, based off this one new release, have you
considered doing a listicle on X?
CATRIONA: With me, so I go for like a lot of breakfasts and lunches with books PRs,
and kind of ask them to talk me through the catalogues.
I really really trust their opinion on what's going to be the next big thing.
EMMA: Can you give us any hints of what's coming up?
CATRIONA: Yeah, we've got nonfiction.
We're doing these big tomes.
I've called it 'These books will make you smarter'.
And tried to pick out some really interesting facts from them all.
And now I'm looking for ideas for January.
EMMA: Wow, so it's a real contrast with like how far ahead you have to work, whereas you're
more like 'what's happening now?'
DUSTY: Yeah absolutely.
The only - the furthest thing I can think in advance that I know I'm updating is my
'What's new this month?'
gallery.
That's the only thing I know I'm going to have to do by the end of August.
But other than that I kind of - I wrote something about To All The Boys I've Loved Before.
That really was, you know, Monday morning, saw it on Twitter over the weekend, it really
is reactive.
It's more kind of, I know people will be Googling this, I know people want to buy the novel,
I've got to get in there.
EMMA: I used to write for Bustle.
DUSTY: Oh did you?
EMMA: So I know all about that.
My editor would just be like 'Oh something's happening, can you have an article in 40 minutes?'
And I'd be like 'OK'.
DUSTY: Yeah, thankfully with books, lead times can be longer.
But because I do, yeah, the celebrity stuff as well, that's like - Kim Kardashian's done
this, and I'm like oh god!
EMMA: Got to do it now!
How many books do you have to read every week?
DUSTY: I probably get three a day, I try and read the first page of all of them.
CATRIONA: Yeah I think I probably get between three and six books a day.
I aim to read one book a week.
DUSTY: I read for pleasure still.
I don't feel like I force myself to read anything.
Definitely if I'm featuring it on the website I want to have read a chapter, or like you
know, skimmed through.
Or often I get colleagues or friends that have read something, if they recommend something
strongly, I trust their opinion.
EMMA: So reading still feels like a fun activity?
DUSTY AND CATRIONA: Yeah, definitely.
EMMA: A lot of our viewers are people who obviously love books, would maybe love to
work with books, but don't think that the traditional publishing routes are quite right
for them.
I think it's really exciting talking to people who work with books in a different way.
So how did you two get into your roles?
DUSTY: I think actually books is quite a good way because it's not obvious.
I think if you show an interest in something that other people - like we didn't have time
for books.
Before January it was something that we didn't have time to write about.
And then I made time, I was like I want to take this on.
And suddenly it's thriving.
I think it's actually a great like, you can shoehorn yourself into somewhere by saying
'I have this passion, why aren't you exploiting it?'
Because chances are, you can make a space for yourself with it.
EMMA: Thank you so much for talking to me both of you.
It's been really cool sitting here in this amazing room.
Seems like a really fun place to work.
And do give this video a thumbs up, and comment below if you have any questions, I'm sure
we can pass them along.
DUSTY AND CATRIONA: Yeah, definitely.
EMMA: And do subscribe to this channel, because we've got new videos every Thursday.
Next week, we're going to be diving into the gorgeous world of Kate Morton and her new
book The Clockmaker's Daughter.
See you next time!