An Evening with Hot Key Books

For once this summer, the weather shone on me. At least, it shone long enough to enable me to undertake the one point something hike across country lane, bridle way and footpath to the local station without the need of wellington boots and waterproofs. And a mere couple of hours after leaving the house I was ensconced with fellow SCBWIers in the light and airy board room in Hot Key Books new London headquarters.

The observant among you will notice the odd glass of wine on the table and the happy faces of the attendees.

 Please don't get the wrong impression. There were refreshments but not such that we were all smashed before we started.

And anyway, some people (Paolo) had to work.


But I digress.

The evening opened with a short introduction from Sarah Odedina, Managing Director of Hot Key Books and a lady with an illustrious publishing career.

Sarah set the scene. Hot Key have been around for less than a year and will have their first books on the shelves of booksellers in July. They plan to have 9 books published this year and have commisioned near 40 so far. They are very catholic in their tastes. They look for writers with a unique sensibility in their writing regardless of genre or age group (although they do not publish picture books).

Sarah believes in the hand-made. They hand-pick their authors, hand-design the books and get book-sellers to hand-sell them. You get the sense that the team there has been hand-picked too, when you hear them speak.

Editorial Director, Sara O'Connor then took up the reins.

She explained how Hot Key are trying to use digital media to keep a conversation about books going with people all the time, and they don't confine that conversation to their own books either. So they ensure that the blog is updated frequently and regularly and they all tweet. The aim is to be open and easily accessible as they believe that this is the way to build a reader audience.

They are also trying to be innovative in the way they use digital publishing. For example, Sally Gardner, the author of Maggot Moon, is dyslexic and the condition plays a major role in the novel. Sally was keen to provide additional material about dyslexia, to help readers understand it, for the digital edition and that is precisely what the enhanced i-book does.

In another example, the enhanced i-book of A World Between Us, which is a romance set against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War, includes a lot of the period background, drawn from the author's own family history.

Sara's view is that enhancement is not for all books and it is important to identify the right projects. Those books that aren't right for inhancement will have simple digital versions of the printed edition.

The Sales and Marketing Team of Kate Manning and Sarah Benton took over next.

Kate explained that their job is mostly spreadsheets and nattering. When Kate and Sarah started their were no books to sell or market and so their aim was to get themselves known.

The first thing they did was to set up the blog to tell the story of how they set up a new publishing house and to reflect the passion, excitement and enthusiasm they all had for the books they were acquiring. They soon discovered that the more they talked the more people listened and they now have regular readers among the big booksellers.Twitter has been key to driving traffic to the blog. There are 4 or 5 people who tweet as Hot Key.

To illustrate what they now do (given they finally have books to market) they provided two contrasting examples:

Shrunk is a debut novel by F R Hitchcock. They acquired it because it was the craziest idea that had ever landed in Sara O'Connor's inbox. It tells the story of a boy who wishes on a star that he could shrink things and his wish comes true. He shrinks al manner of things, of course, but then he shrinks Jupiter and loses it. That throws the whole solar system out of alignment and the race is on for him to find Jupiter before the Earth hits the Sun. Sara fell in love with it instantly and had to publish it.

But this is a new author and so they have to establish her. This has involved ideas like the author tweeting photos of Sylvanian family creatures with tiny books with the Shrunk cover and they are about to make a promo video of a tiny tea party too. They are also working with children's magazines on shrinking things. These ideas have come from the author and the editorial team as well as the sales and marketing people.

Maggot Moon, by contrast, is by a well-established author who has won a number of awards. It was acquired by Sarah Odedina because it was 'exceptional and original'. This book will be published in hard back and is aimed at a more literary audience. So they are expecting it to be picked up by the independent booksellers and Waterstones, ie book shops where hand-selling is more usual.

They took over the regular Hot Key newsletter for Maggot Moon, making it look like something from a totalitarian state as this fits the dystopia in the novel. This gives booksellers a reason to pick up the book and read it and then they are equipped to sell it properly.

Kate and Sarah believe that the author often has the best ideas about marketing. They like to support authors in developing their readership. Twitter plays a role in this. Readers can tweet to authors while they are reading. This gives them a relationship which they never had in the past.

The last person to speak to us was Art Director, Jet Purdie.

Jet explained that one of the unusual things about Hot Key is that the Art department actually get to talk to the authors. He cited the example of A World Between Us.  They originally produced a series of photographic covers for the book but the author wanted something in the style of Spanish Civil War posters and with a tight colour scheme of red blue and yellow. Eventually Jet located a Swedish illustrator who'd worked in those colours and he produced something which everyone at Hot Key agrees is a far better cover than the original ones. So the author actually pushed them to work harder and it was a success.

 The aim is to produce covers that stand out. Everyone buys books by cover. So design is key.

The floor was then opened to questions and the following topics were covered:

• Acquisitions policy. They are looking for authors with original voices and ideas. They accept unsolicted manuscripts and will give everyone a personal reply. They are in very active buying mode and as they do not have a back list they don't have the problem that  they can't acquire something because it's too similar to something else on the list.
• Editorial input. The only thing they can't fix is voice. So if they like the voice they are happy work hard on developing the manuscript.
• Age banding. They don't. But they have developed Hot Key Rings which give buyers an indication of what they will find in a book. This is orginal and makes their books stand out.

And then the meeting broke up and it was time for all those budding writers to pigeonhole an editor:

And they did!







It was a great evening, with lots of information and very friendly hosts. I think we all came away wanting to be acquired by Hot Key Books. It would just be so much fun!