Editors are crucial to the overall package of a book as it moves towards publication author Katherine Rundell has said. Speaking at a Nibbies Salon event hosted by The Bookseller at the Hay Festival, Rundell said her editors acted as her eyes and ears within the publishing business, and were vital not just in how the books were edited, perceived internally, but also what they looked like when they were published.
A three-times Nibbies winner, Rundell shared the stage with her two editors Ellen Holgate, associate publisher at Bloomsbury, and Faber publisher Alex Bowler, in a discussion of the publishing process, compered by publishing marketing consultant Miriam Robinson. “People often think of an editor’s job as just the editing, but it is a wide and creative thing,” said Rundell describing how her two editors championed her titles, as well as helping her to perfect them.
Faber published her first adult book, Super-Infinite in March 2022, which went on to win the Baillie Gifford Non-Fiction award; Holgate publishes Rundell at Bloomsbury Children’s where she has published 11 titles, with Impossible Creatures the latest book. Both books won the top honours at The British Book Awards in their respective years, and Rundell was also named Author of the Year in 2024.
Holgate said the she knew she was onto something special when Impossible Creatures landed. “I turned around to the whole team, and said this is incredible, you’ve never read anything like this. Go! I didn’t need to throw my weight around.” Bowler said that he also knew what an important book Super-Infinite would be. “I was able to go with absolute conviction, and that does cut through. But it was her first adult book, and on John Donne, so there were one or two obstacles. But I remember at the Faber sales conference saying this would be the best reviewed book any of us work on for the next three to five years.”
Both editors worked on the visual identity of the two titles. “It’s about the vision for the whole package,” said Holgate. “Our impossible brief for Impossible Creatures was to find an artist who could make the dragon look completely different to any other dragon out there, but still appeal to children.” For Bowler it was a focus on simplicity, with a strong title and sub-title, and the use of the infinity symbol around a very plain portrait of Donne. “That gave us all this space to use quotes on the cover, so it became almost like a movie poster. It broke the rules, some people still think it has too many words for a front cover.”
Faber also benefitted from a delay to publication of Super-Infinite after a World Book Day title was also scheduled for 2021. Rundell said: “We did have a clash, during lockdown. I was writing for World Book Day—Skysteppers, a prequel to Rooftoppers—and I suddenly realised I was two months away from finishing John Donne, and I couldn’t finish it, so we had to move publication date by a whole year. But it was lucky, as otherwise it would have come out in the most bleak period of the lockdown of March 2021, at which time no-one wanted to read a book about the plague. It was also the year Empire of Pain won the Baillie Gifford and I would not have beaten it.”
Bowler added that the pause had been beneficial as it meant they could return to the title as “readers” one year on. “This is the first time it’s happened to me. As you get close to the end [of the publishing process], it begins to get more intense, and we were pretty much there, but [then] we’re going to stop. When I read it again fresh, out of the context of all the work we were doing on it, it was wonderful.”
Rundell also spoke about writing for children and celebrity writers. “There is crucial distinction between celebrities writing their own novels, for they could be brilliant as with Richard Osman… but the ones who are not writing brilliant novels because they are not writing the novels, I would say to them, ’if you would not put your name on a symphony that you did not write… then maybe don’t write a children’s book’, because they matter as much, if not more.”
