22 years of Gold Leaf: an interview with Linda Bennett

An interview with Linda Bennett , conducted by Frances Pinter

Frances: Gold Leaf was founded in 2001. Your current work is mainly in the area of scholarly publishing, but you’ve had a career in the wider book trade. Would you like to say something about your past?

Linda: Working in scholarly publishing combines elements of all the jobs I’ve had since I graduated. I am an academic manqué – I’ve served two short stints in academia, first as a research assistant, then (when in my early forties) as the MBA Course Director at the University of Huddersfield. I’m very interested in research and how to conduct it successfully and for many years I thought I wanted to be an academic. However, after I had been working at Huddersfield for two years, I was “homesick” for the publishing and bookselling industries. I had started my career as a cataloguer for a library supplier when I was 25 and gradually worked my way up to become the managing director; then, after the Huddersfield stint, I worked for another library supplier, in Scotland, as the sales and marketing director, then went to Dillon’s as the senior manager in charge of its 18 campus bookshops. After a year Dillon’s was taken over by Waterstone’s, where I continued in the same role for a while before becoming business development director. I left Waterstone’s in 2001 to set up Gold Leaf.

Frances: Having such a varied background must be useful to your work today, could you talk about that a bit?

Linda: I am passionate about both research and publishing and I am fortunate to be able to work in both spheres every day. I think I understand the challenges and dilemmas that publishers and booksellers face – some of which are, without exaggeration, existential threats – and I feel privileged to be asked to help address them. I’m also very interested in academic librarianship: today’s librarians must be experts in information science, skilled negotiators, excellent “people persons” and, increasingly, contribute to their universities’ strategies and teaching and learning programmes. Many are also researchers and some have more academic qualifications than the academics they serve. All my working life I’ve been in contact with librarians and I admire them immensely. If I were a new graduate today, I’d be very happy to enter their profession; unfortunately, when I was young they were all “shushers” and book-stampers.

Frances: Gold Leaf stresses the value of research as the backbone to inform strategy. How did you come to that conclusion? Can you give me some examples of where it was especially critical for the success of building a strategic plan for a company?

Linda: I think that modern academic and scholarly publishing are so complex – and expensive – today that all the organisations involved need help from as much information as they can gather, both to enable them to establish their overall strategic direction and to define what the market needs / can bear – and therefore whether it is worth investing in proposed new products or business models. I think at core most Gold Leaf projects have been about this, though some take a wider remit – exploring the overall national and international environment, for example – and some a narrower one – e.g., trying to determine what tweaks are needed to make an existing product more successful. In all these instances we collect information to develop a “rich picture” of stakeholder views and distil solutions that might work. We deal in the art of the possible!

Frances: I sometimes wonder whether we’re now too obsessed with quantitative data and sometimes we lose the ability to follow our instincts and experience. Do you have any thoughts on this? Can qualitative analysis assist with helping a business understand itself, develop and thrive?

Linda: You’re speaking to one of the converted now! I am very much in favour of gathering qualitative data and so-called “soft” information. However, in an ideal world quantitative and qualitative data complement each other. My colleague Annika and I have developed a method of incorporating both in the surveys we conduct. She then analyses the quantitative data and I unpick and summarise the qualitative stuff. Over time, we have built up a range of techniques that ensure that we don’t omit anything, while at the same time appropriately weighting the information so that certain points are not over-emphasised. This takes time and patience – which is why I think quantitative data alone is often relied on so heavily.

Frances: You’re well known to senior people in big brand publishing houses, but I’d like to know more about how you work with smaller clients. How much handholding is required and do they listen to you?

Linda: I’m sure there are many seniors in publishing houses who don’t know me! However, as you say, I have worked with quite a few. They’re of course usually very competent and talented and it’s sometimes been my good fortune to work with inspirational people who can really see into the heart of this industry and understand what makes it tick and what it needs to do to continue to flourish – like you, Frances, if you don’t mind my saying so! However, a good proportion of these people began by working for small publishers and I think often gained their insights and out-of-the-box ways of thinking from that. People working in small companies think on their feet, take on a lot of individual responsibility, sometimes when very young, and usually occupy roles that in a larger company would be split up between several people. This gives them an overview which they can then build on in their later careers. The people who really need help – and sometimes quite a lot of hand-holding – are junior staff thrust into large publishing companies and left to get on with it. They may have formal “inductions”, but these tend to be catch-all and not tailored to the job. I’ve mentored, advised and otherwise helped – both officially and informally – a significant number of early-career publishers – and booksellers – who find themselves in this unenviable position.

Frances: Have you ever sacked a recalcitrant client?

Linda: Not sacked, as such. A very well-known literary publisher wanted help to digitise its list and to find suitable tech companies and aggregators to partner with. I carried out some spadework, we had “beauty contests” with promising digitisation companies and sales partners and I wrote a report drawing up the pros and cons. Then we had a series of internal meetings which were attended by most people of any seniority in the company and they couldn’t agree. After 4 or 5 of these meetings, which ran to the same agenda and always produced a negative result, I told them that I could not help them further unless they could reach a resolution; and therefore that I felt uncomfortable about charging further fees. They accepted what was effectively my resignation. I believe it took them a further two years to implement a project plan!

Frances: Keeping up with the rapid changes that we all face these days is a challenge. Do you have any tips for how business managers and leaders can stay abreast of things.

Linda: I would say you need to embrace a mixture of reading reputable reports, blogs and newsletters – Scholarly Kitchen, for example, talking informally to people whom you respect who occupy a wide range of roles in the industry and attending judiciously-selected formal events. Post-Covid, many of the latter are now online – which is resources-efficient, if less fun! And, importantly, think about them afterwards.

Frances: You’ve worked with publishers who are heavily in open access. Where do you see the role for Gold Leaf in helping out with this transition – for journals and books?

Linda: Thank you for making me think about this. After some internal debate, I believe that, at heart, Gold Leaf’s role is similar for most of the projects we take on: to gather as comprehensive a portfolio of information as possible for the client about the views and needs of its stakeholders and, after careful analysis, suggest a strategy that can provide a win-win situation – or as close to it as possible – for everyone.

Frances: We’ve talked about Gold Leaf, but you also have another life under another name! I’m sure people would be interested in knowing more. What would you like to reveal to us?

Linda: I do have an alternative career, as a novelist. I have published nine crime fiction novels under the pseudonym Christina James. They all feature the same detective, DI Yates. Over the past two years I have been working on a different kind of novel – a mystery set partly during the Malayan Emergency and partly in the present. It is out with readers at present and I’m hoping to find a publisher for it.

Frances: Personally, I’m amazed whenever anyone can pull off two very different careers at the same time. What is the key to doing that successfully?

Linda: It is kind of you to say so! I think I probably just muddle through somehow!

Frances: Thank you for all these insights!

Linda: Thank you for some fascinating questions!