This week for the BookBrunch interview, I chatted with three of this year’s Trailblazer Award winners, Anna Russo, Heather McDaid, and Željka Maroševic. Check out the excerpt below or follow this link for the full article.
Two months on from the second annual Trailblazers Awards, organised by London Book Fair (LBF) and the Society of Young Publishers (SYP), we catch up with three of the five Trailblazer winners – Anna Russo, Željka Maroševic and Heather McDaid – to find out what they’ve been up to and their plans for the future. They provide a snapshot of an industry, not just expanding outside London, but around the world
A digital future with Anna Russo
Anna Russo moved into an executive role when she took over Hodder Education’s Caribbean list two years ago, as the small Hodder Caribbean list merged with the larger Pearson list, acquired in January 2015. Russo manages the different agents and employees in the Caribbean region, develops new sales and marketing strategies, and works with local bookshops, ministries and schools.
“The Pearson acquisition was a huge move for us, going from a handful of Caribbean-specific titles to over 500,” Russo explains. “So even though the first year we had lots of teething issues and those have been ironed out more or less, I’m still keeping an eye on it, making sure everything is running really smoothly and that the transition is going well, so that we not only took over the list but can make it grow and develop all our staff…” [READ MORE]