Trade shadowing scheme picks up pace

07.02.12 | Lisa Campbell - The Bookseller

Random House, Canongate and Macmillan Children’s Books are the latest publishers to send staff to work in bookshops as a cross-industry shadowing scheme picks up pace.
The initiative, run jointly by the Publishers Association and the Booksellers Association, allows publishers and booksellers to offer work placements to one another in order to encourage more understanding and awareness between the two industries.
Announced in November last year, the work placements of a day or more began last month and the scheme has since further recruited publishers Canonagate, Macmillan Children’s Books, Harlequin Mills & Boon, Random House and booksellers Kenilworth Books, Dulwich Books and the Children’s Bookshop. Canongate has signed a third of its workforce up to the scheme.
Those companies already enlisted when the scheme was announced include publishers Little, Brown, Penguin, Dorling Kindersley, Profile and Simon & Schuster, and booksellers Mabecron Books, Jaffé and Neale, The New Bookshop in Cockermouth, Cumbria, and Victoria Park Books in London.
Editorial assistant at Picador, Sophie Jonathan, who recently worked at Jaffé and Neale bookshop, said: “It’s important that that conversation can happen across publishing – no department or sector need be distant from another. Talking to (owners) Patrick and Polly about their relationships with publishers was invaluable, and gave me plenty to feedback on, and we’ll certainly be in touch in the future.”