Madelaine Smith

Marketing

Started career as: After I left University my first job was in a very large charity bookshop where I sat all day on a tall stool and priced up secondhand books. It was very Dickensian. Each day great truckloads of books arrived which had to be sorted and then priced up. Anything that was too damaged to sell was thrown into a pile to be recycled. By the end of the week the pile would reach the ceiling of the warehouse. I only worked there for a few months but in that time I learnt a huge amount about books and realised that I wanted to spend my career in some way or another associated with books. Since then I have worked as a Bookseller, a Book Department Manager, a Books Marketing Operations Manager, a 'Product Controller', a trainer for the Booksellers' Association, a Buying Director, a Promotions Manager with a publisher, and at newbooks! (Oh yes and for a short blip in my career I left the book trade and worked as a Marketing Manager at a theatre - but I did write a book about the history of the theatre while I was there).

First book I remember reading all by myself: A Big Ball of String (a Dr Suess book that I borrowed over and over again from the library)

Favourite bookish quote: I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves. ~Anna Quindlen, "Enough Bookshelves," New York Times, 7 August 1991

Favourite newbooks Featured Book: How I Live Now - Meg Rosoff (nb27)

Book I'd save from a burning house: My very battered copy (no dustjacket) of Antonia Forest's Falconer's Lure

Alison Glinn

Beginnings

Like most people here at newbooks, reading has played an important role in my life, but unlike most of the others my academic life and early career choices were not literary.

I too could read before I went to school and one of my earliest memories was my first teacher getting cross with me when I claimed to have read a whole book in Quiet Time; I did, honest!

As a child I always had my nose in a book, but when it came to A’Level choices my headmistress and father were of one mind; I could do the sciences so I should take those, I could always read in my spare time.

Two years later I found myself at Sussex Uni reading Physics with Medical Physics. Unsurprisingly I felt like the proverbial round peg in the square hole but struggled on to the end. Then, not being able to face a career making bombs or working with computers, I opted to do a PGCE at Marjons in Pymouth.

Middles

I met my husband in Plymouth so, wanting to be near him, I took a job as an infant teacher – lots of books and reading but not quite at my level. Children followed and I gave up teaching, but became involved in the NCT as an antenatal teacher.

Then we moved to the South East and I found myself going back to teaching to help pay the bills. However, our youngest was just two at this point and I hated giving all my energy to teaching, leaving little for my family. So took a job as a Science Technician at the Sixth Form College for a couple of years.

Eight years later, feeling a bit bored and in need of a change, I sent a note to newbooks basically saying, “Give us a job” and didn’t include my CV, as I didn’t want to be judged on my science background. Guy rang and my surprised husband passed on the message – I hadn’t mentioned the note to him as I thought it would come to nothing – to meet Guy at the café in Alresford.

Endings?

Three years now and counting….