A day in the life of a Publicist with Alison Barrow
Ask Penguin
Penguin Books UK
4.1 • 550 Ratings
🗓️ 23 January 2025
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this bonus episode we speak with Alison Barrow, Publicity Director at Penguin Books, to explore the fascinating world of book publicity. Alison shares insights into her role, offering a glimpse into her daily life as she works with authors and connects their books with readers.
Explore the full list of the books discussed in this bonus episode and read the transcript by visiting: Bonus Episode 4
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Penguin podcast. I'm Rihanna Dillon and I'm delighted to be popping back up in your podcast feed with another bonus episode of Ask Penguin. We had such a jam-packed series last year that we just didn't have enough room for all of the amazing moments with our guests. So today I wanted to bring you some more from our crime and mystery episode. |
| 0:23.0 | Back in November, we dived into the world of crime, thrillers and mysteries with the award-winning |
| 0:29.0 | author Kate Atkinson and discussed her brand new Jackson Brody novel, Death at the Sign of the Rook. |
| 0:35.3 | As ever, we put your Ask Penguin questions to Kate, |
| 0:38.8 | and we were lucky enough to chat with her publicist, Alison Barrow, too. |
| 0:43.1 | Alison's been working with Kate for the whole of her career, having worked on the author's |
| 0:47.0 | very first book, behind the scenes at the museum, which was published in 1995. So I wanted to |
| 0:53.3 | find out from Alison a little bit more of what it's like to be a publicist at Penguin |
| 0:57.2 | and began by asking her to explain that rather multi-layered role. |
| 1:03.2 | To boil it down, if you think about, apart from personal recommendations from friends and family, |
| 1:09.6 | how you hear about books or writers. |
| 1:13.5 | That can be from a multitude of places and those are the places that I'm talking to all the time. |
| 1:19.8 | So traditional press and magazines to broadcast, radio, TV, events, bookshops, booksellers, podcasts. |
| 1:31.5 | Anywhere that a writer might talk about their work and their craft, I am the conduit between |
| 1:39.3 | the writer and the producer or the journalist or the editor, I put books in people's hands so that |
| 1:48.3 | they can share them with readers. And like you just said, you seem to have to be across so much. |
| 1:53.8 | So what is like an average day in the life of Alison? There isn't really an average day. |
| 2:00.1 | But the sort of nuts and bolts, because I |
| 2:02.3 | attend a lot of meetings and I'm very much part of decision making on the books that we publish, |
| 2:10.1 | on crafting thoughts around pitching books out and coming up with ideas for lines for books, involvement with the art team on |
| 2:20.2 | creating brilliant covers. But the nuts and bolts of every day would see me constantly contacting |
| 2:28.3 | people. Connections and contacts and outreaches and networking is kind of the hub of what we do. |
... |
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