Our Authors
Alison Baverstock
Alison Baverstock began her career in publishing before setting up a marketing consultancy mainly specialising in the book business. Her writing grew out of her professional experience; she began by writing for publishers on how to market books (the job she did) and now mostly advises those who want to get published on how to achieve their dream (apparently the second most common new year’s resolution). She teaches Publishing and Creative Writing at Kingston University.
She is a regular interviewee on BBC Breakfast to talk about reading, writing and parenting, and has also appeared on Richard and Judy, Open Book, Quote…Unquote and Woman’s Hour. She regularly gives talks at writing festivals and helped found the Kingston Readers’ Festival.
She and her husband met at St Andrews and have four children. They now live in Kingston-upon-Thames. She writes regularly for Writers’ Forum and Mslexia as well as articles for the national press.
http://www.alisonbaverstock.com
Books by Alison Baverstock
How to get a job in museums and galleries
A&C Black, 2009
How To Get A Job in Publishing
(with Susannah Bowen and Steve Carey)
A targeted, practical guide for anyone who wants to work in publishing, whether on traditional books and magazines or online publications. It includes working out if publishing is really for you; overviews of different types of publishing; explanations of different roles and departments, and advice from leading industry figures.
April 2008, A & C Black
How to Market Books: The Essential Guide to Maximizing Profit and Exploiting All Channels to Market
How to Market Books is often referred to as the ‘bible of book marketing’ and has been widely translated, including into Serbo-Croat and Chinese.
New edition January 2008, Kogan Page
Marketing Your Book: How to Target Agents, Publishers and Readers (Writing Handbooks)
Your book, however brilliant, will have to compete for attention with the 120,000 other titles that are published in Britain each year. Drawing on her extensive experience in book marketing, the author offers advice and encouragement on how to work with publishers and agents, or go it alone. Covering such topics as organizing a launch event, getting publicity in the local media, and keeping the momentum going after publication, it is up-to-date and eminently practical.
The good book guide, August 2007
Revised edition July 2007, A & C Black
Is There A Book in You?
‘Heartening and intelligent’ Professor John Carey
Many people feel they might have a book in them - but how do you know whether you have what it takes to be a writer, whether your writing is any good, what you should write about and whether you should dedicate proper time to begin your dream? This book asks pertinent questions of you via a questionnaire to help you discover whether there is a talented writer in you.
Packed with advice from experienced writers including PD James, Philip Pullman, Jacqueline Wilson, Margaret Drabble and Katie Fforde as well as publishers, booksellers and other industry experts. Foreword by columnist and writer Katharine Whitehorn.
June 2006, A & C Black
Whatever! A down to earth guide to parenting teenagers
‘This could be the book that restores your sanity’
The Daily Mail
‘All power to these two authors. There’s a real understanding of young people’
The Times Educational Supplement.
Do you find bringing up teenagers more of a pain than a pleasure? Do you find it hard to relate to their values and interests? Do you feel isolated from their new, more separate, lives? Raising teenagers can test parental love to breaking point, particularly if you have previously enjoyed a close and loving relationship. The child over whom you exercised near-total control has suddenly become taller than you, louder than you, with an inside knowledge of all your failings - and a sudden urge to point them out. What is more, this newly arrived creature may talk and dress in a way you find alien and tell you nothing - whilst needing ever-greater financial handouts.
Parents of teenagers can feel very isolated and excluded. Help is at hand. Here is a really practical guide to help teenagers, their parents and the rest of the family. Whatever! will help you spot the joy in newly emerging adults - which concentrating only on the difficulties can sometimes obscure. It will provide you with workable strategies that you can put into practice immediately. You will wonder how you ever managed without it.
2005, Piatkus Books