Will Atkinson on book publishing, the role of Sales and Marketing, and Fluff

Will Atkinson is Managing Director of Atlantic Books, U.K. Prior to this he was, for many years, with Faber & Faber, serving as Director of Sales & Marketing from 2006 to 2014. During this time he spearheaded the Independent Alliance, a very successful sales organization that comprises some of the U.K.'s leading independent publishers, including Granta and Canongate. 

I met with Will at his offices in Bloomsbury, London. We talk here, among other things, about the Alliance (Faber, Canongate, Granta, Querus, Profile, Atlantic, Short Books, & Icon), access to book buyers, Steig Larsen, must-have books, faith and trust, selling books abroad, being misquoted, brands, car-dealerships, Waterstones' golden era, Michael Joseph, grounding, classic sales people, enthusiasm, libraries, T.S. Eliot, catalogues, book wholesalers, Gardners Books, Amazon, Call me by Your Name, the Net Book Agreement, Harry Potter, best-sellers and over-publishing, big data, the law of threes, publishing popular people, social media, Rome by Matthew Neale and fluff.