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Hodder genre focus

04.10.07 Alison Flood

Hodder & Stoughton is to apply a new genre-specific approach to marketing fiction paperbacks from next year, in a bid to draw attention to up-and-coming authors.

At the start of this year Hodder appointed Auriol Bishop to the newly-created role of paperback publishing director, with a brief and budget to focus on one or two brand name authors a month. Bishop is now expanding this to encompass genre publishing.

She will pick two genres a year, starting with crime and women's fiction in 2008. Each month Hodder will take a women's fiction title and a crime title and apply concentrated marketing and publicity focus to the books in order to get them to as wide a readership as possible.

"It's not enough to have a good book. You've got to have a clear vision of how to make it work," said Bishop. The new approach kicks off in January 2008 with Hester Browne's The Little Lady Finds Her Prince and Aline Templeton's Lying Dead. This will be followed in February with Bernadette Strachan's Little White Lies and Catriona McPherson's Bury Her Deep, and in March with Liza Palmer's Seeing Me Naked and Kathryn Fox's Skin and Bone.

"The idea is that because our other campaigns [for authors such as Stephen King and Jodi Picoult] are so high-level, there is room in the list for secondary titles," Bishop said.

"We have a really strong list of up-and-coming authors behind those brand names, and we want to concentrate on making sure they grow with us so they become the new generation of brand names. We will invest time and promotional money in making that happen."The campaigns will differ depending on the nature of the title, with some to focus on starting word-of-mouth about the books, and others about securing chart positions with mass market retailers. "There will be no blanket approach for every book," Bishop added.

Hachette Hodder Alison Flood

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