Notes from the PPC Panel at London Book Fair March 2026
Chair: Eve Wersocki-Morris, Director | EWM PR
Panellists: Cynthia Hamilton, Head of PR & Marketing | The History Press
Polly Osborn, Associate Managing Director | Simon & Schuster UK
Sriya Varadharajan, Senior Publicity Manager | Penguin Michael Joseph
Javerya Iqbal, Senior Marketing Manager | Orion Books
How do you define marketing and publicity and how do they work together?
The primary role of a publicist is events and media whereas the primary role of a
marketer is paid for activity. These roles have merged slightly as we need to work
together to understand messages and audiences
Sales is the silent partner in promoting books
Social media is an area that crosses over both M&P. It helps to establish key words
and audiences that can help both teams
Book clubs also sit in the middle – whilst it is events which is more PR lead, they now
have a social presence so it’s important for M&P to work together with them
Changes in PR
The way people come to books has diversified so the ways of working have changed
Whilst in PR, you can see an immediate hit, success in publishing is about layering
every piece together from all of the teams
Changes in Marketing:
A big change in marketing is how they look into their audiences. They spend a lot of
time looking into data and the data itself has drastically changed. They also look into
how people engage with books
Do we still need separate roles?
Trust is hugely important in a campaign and sometimes that means the publisher
getting out of the way. It’s key to centre the promotion around the author’s voice –
this means not only doing things that they feel comfortable with, but also making sure
that we are representing them in way they want to be represented. Ensuring their
voice, their words, are shown in a way that is authentic to both the author and to the
book
For example, try writing a copy line for Bob Mortimer that is funnier than what Bob
could write himself
Timing to crucial to working cohesively as M&P. For example, getting an author on:
The One Show or a Sunday Times review, then quickly following up with a flurry of
meta advertising
Top tip for both marketeers and publicists is to fundamentally understand the
business we’re in
The benefit of financial literacy cannot be understated, for example understanding
what a P&L looks like, because then the importance of what we do comes down to
the micro decisions that we make on a daily basis. Understanding the relationship
between what you do, what money you spend and treating your time as a unit of
economic labour – ensures that you are spending it wisely
The dream for any campaign is that it gains legs so people do the talking on your
behalf without needing prompting from M&P
The quality of decision making is what turns a good publicist and marketer into a
great one
The M&P colleagues are the ones talking to consumers so we need to listen to them
more for decision making internally
M&P both work side by side as they both know the audiences and how to reach them
but they have separate skills that are necessary
Case Study: The Names by Florence Knapp
One of the biggest debuts of 2025
The work on this book started two years before publication
They spent months getting everyone in the industry onside
PR did huge profile slots which gave them great pull quotes for marketing which they
used to push the book even further
Any big hit on the PR side was used for marketing assets and the timing of these was
key
PR secured a Hay Festival panel so the marketers set up an ice cream partnership to
appear at the festival based around the book
Sales sent handwritten notes to booksellers to get them on side
Case Study: Chemically Imbalanced by Joanna Moncrieff
This was a non-fiction book about anti-depressants which is a contentious subject
The author had previously written an article about the topic and received backlash so
they knew they needed to come up with their key messages early on
They only had a 3 month lead time to work on the book and no budget for either
marketing or publicity
They secured a national exclusive with Sunday Times – which was the lead story in
their magazine
They also secured appearances on This Morning and Channel 4 – the PR required the
author to really debate her side so preparation was key
The book is published by a small imprint within an indie publisher that doesn’t have a
huge social presence but the author did so they leaned on her social media presence
for the marketing
Case Study: Alchemised by SenLinYu
Fastest selling debut on record
The author had a fanfiction presence so there were potential legal risks around this
A key concern was having control over the narrative, whilst still reaching the core
audience and exploding beyond it
Early endorsements were a key part of the campaign but they were selective with the
proofs – they hand wrote names and numbers in 700 proofs to ensure they only went
to trusted people
They hand selected the media outlets that were most trustworthy to work with on this
– Bookseller and Guardian being the main ones
Influencers were also important as the author had a platform already. They didn’t
send influencers copies as they knew that reaching the core audience was key sC
they asked influencers to post a video talking about why they were so excited for the
book
This created online content and buzz around the book without the team having to do
anything
They then hand selected 20 of those influencers and invited them to an event where
they could read the first few chapters – they weren’t allowed to take the the book away