Tuesday 10 July 2012

Hot Key Books First Blogger Event - Photographic Evidence!


Oh lovely publishers, please take the following photos as a warning. If you invite me to your offices and see me get my camera out of my bag, confiscate it! Otherwise I will nose in every nook and cranny to get fab photos of real life in the publishing world!
Only kidding, I was given permission to take these and I want to show you how shiny and new the Hot Key Books offices are.
 Here is the main boardroom where we all got to sit to drool over the launch list.
 As you can see the back wall has canvas prints of the launch titles. I asked Sarah Benton, the Sales and Marketing Manager, if they would change them with each new release. She told me that they would only be keeping the launch book covers up, so that in years to come they can look back at where it all began and how much they achieved.
All the covers are created in house, which I felt gave them a uniqueness.
 Books galore! These belong to another imprint under the Bonnier company, who also own Templar. Five Mile Press who are extremely well established in Australia.  
 The staff relocating from Australia sent all their books over first, so the Hot Key Books staff have been busily unpacking boxes to get the office ready for their arrival.
 The urge to delve into the shelves was extremely hard to resist!
 As we toured around the office, we got to see where every one sat.
 I believe this is Sarah's desk!
 As we strolled around, we were allowed to step into Sarah Odedina's office. Sarah is the Managing Director  of Hot Key Books and sadly was away when we attended the blogger event. Sarah was originally the editor in chief at Bloomsbury Books.
I loved the wall plaque above which held different types of keys! What an amazing idea!
 Lynsey Newton from Narratively Speaking, kindly took over during Sarah's absence. She was in the middle of an interview with Stacey from Pretty Books when we arrived...
 The lovely Sarah Benton, who provided tissues for all the book drooling going on and answered our endless questions. Sarah was originally at HarperCollins before joining Hot Key Books. The team are quite a small one at the moment, but they are very efficient and will grow as Hot Key Books establishes their name in the YA market.
 Sarah from Feeling Fictional, Casey from Dark Readers and Becky from The Bookette talking about books of course!
 We all moved into the board room to discover what delights Hot Key Books would be bringing us. They have nine books coming out before the end of the year. Next year they aim to publish 50 books covering children's books as well as Young Adult.
It was lovely to see Sally Gardner again, whom I met last year when she was publishing The Double Shadow, an amazing book that everyone needs to read!

 Sarah Mussi, author of Angel Dust was also there to talk to us. Sitting in between Mark and Liz from My Favourite Books.
There was a real buzz at Hot Key Books, everyone was extremely enthusiastic and some of the ideas they discussed about books had us all impressed.

I bet you are desperate to know more about the books they are bringing out now. Well you will have to wait until Friday  for me to show them to you! I just wanted to get you desperate!!

8 comments:

  1. Oh my gosh Viv, you lucky lady getting to attend these events! Very cool!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I like the plague with keys :) Can't wait to see what's coming out!

    ReplyDelete
  3. So glad you had a great time, and great photos! I'm sorry I didn't get to meet you, but I'm sure I will get to at the next one.
    Sara OC (Editorial Director)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Don't you love wandering through publisher's offices?! That looks like another wonderful event!

    ReplyDelete
  5. So neat!! I've never been to a publisher's office but I imagine you felt giddy being at the scene of it all. Thanks for sharing!!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Sounds like it was a fabulous event and I love the photos :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. love this write up Viv, you were very lucky indeed to be invited and to get to see the offices, I love what Hot Key are doing with YA and cant wait to see it all in action :)

    ReplyDelete

Hiya, thanks for stopping by, it is always nice to hear what you have to say, so do leave a comment if you have time.