During lockdown, I embarked on getting to know the wonderful people who work tirelessly behind the scenes at publishing houses across the UK. I titled the blog page, Meet the Gatekeepers. I thought, after nearly four years, it was time to revamp this and meet familiar friends and introduce new ones. Today is the fifth in a lengthy series of guests featuring on My Shelves Are Full!
Meet Grace Samuel, Marketing and Publicity Officer for Firefly Press
How did you get your start working in publishing?
During my undergrad studying English Literature, we had Greet Pauwelijn, founder of Book Island Books come in to give a talk on publishing. I knew immediately that’s what I wanted to do, so signed up for the Children’s Publishing MA at Bath Spa. I knew I wouldn’t be able to fund myself doing a masters full time, so I did it part time all while undertaking an internship with Book Island Books, freelancing as a copywriter and working in hospitality. It was an incredibly busy time, but I managed to graduate with a job with my first publisher Graffeg. After about 2 years here, I was ready for a step up so applied for the Marketing and Publicity Officer role advertised at Firefly Press. The rest is history!
What are the highlights of your job?
There are SO many things I love about my job, it’s difficult to pick a favourite. Being a smaller publisher, we are often finding new talent and publishing debut’s. Building a relationship with the authors is incredibly fulfilling – pep talking them for their first events, excitedly telling them about awards/accolades their books are receiving and generally getting to be their cheerleader during the publication process. So seeing authors flourish and find their feet is perhaps one of the biggest highlights.
I also thoroughly enjoy the book festival season – from pitching to the actual event. Seeing the authors interact with their readers makes it all SO worthwhile!
Overall though, it is the people I get to work with. In publicity, you spend a lot of time just chatting to people about books: authors, bloggers, journalists, librarians, illustrators. I’ve been lucky enough that everyone has been an absolute joy to work with.
What are the challenges of your job?
I’d say the biggest challenge is simply time and money. Funding for the arts is getting increasingly dire, which means that it’s hard to give as much to a book as you’d like. There are ways we can make up in the face of budget cuts, but these are all much more time consuming. Funding to the arts is something that is often overlooked and dismissed, but research shows that reading for pleasure is the single most important indicator of a child’s future success – is this not something that should be taken more seriously?
Describe a typical day- or are no two days alike?
I know this is what everyone says, but truly, no two days are alike. One day I can be wrapping up special editions proofs for bloggers and sending out a press release to announce a new book, the next I could be pitching for a festival and meeting with an author to discuss their next project. But really, to put my job in its simplest terms, it is being the cheerleader for our always growing list authors and books.
Any tips for book bloggers?
Keep in touch! Don’t be afraid to just drop me a line and let me know what you’ve enjoyed recently and whether we have any books we’re excited about. Building a relationship with bloggers is so much fun for me, and I love the moment when I’m reading one of our upcoming titles and think ‘X blogger is going to LOVE this’.
Also, don’t worry about your reviews being overly formal or a deep analysis of the book. Of course, these are great, but if you simply loved the book and want as many people to read it as possible then you can just say that!
In a more practical sense though, do include pictures of the book or even just the cover image when posting, email us the reviews once you’ve posted them (with multiple people on the social media, we can sometimes miss tags) and when writing the reviews, think about how we could pull quotes – we love a snappy one liner!
What book are you most excited about for 2025?
This is another HARD question. 2025 is going to be a really strong year for Firefly. However, I’ve just read the next book we’re doing with Luke Palmer, Live, which would have to be my pick. It’s a stunning coming-of-age novel about grief, music and friendship. I don’t think I’ve ever read an author who writes teenagers or grief so well, I didn’t want it to end! I cannot WAIT to get this book into the hands of readers. It is all I will be talking about this Summer.
My Shelves Are Full 