This blog post is one of a series of Q&As with staff working at Liverpool University Press. We hope through these blog posts that prospective employees and those interested in joining the publishing industry can find out more about LUP and the career paths our staff have taken along the way.
Here we speak with Jennie Collinson, Director of Sales and Marketing at Liverpool University Press.
What did you do before this job and how did you get your current role at LUP?
My career started in 2009 after completing a Masters in Publishing at Oxford Brookes University, first as a Personal Assistant to the Managing Director at Maney Publishing in Leeds and over the course of six years I progressed to Marketing Assistant, Marketing Executive, Sales & Marketing Executive, finishing as Senior Sales & Marketing Executive. Maney was a commercial journals publisher with over 100 HSS journals and 60 STEM journals operating from offices in Leeds, London, and Philadelphia. It was acquired by Taylor & Francis in 2015 which led me to securing the role of Head of Sales at LUP in the September of that year. I was fortunate that the opportunity came along and offered hybrid working well before it was a thing, a lot of my colleagues were taking redundancy without promise of another job or transitioning to work for T&F which is something I knew I didn’t want to do. Maney’s MD reached out to Anthony (LUP’s Chief Executive Officer) about any vacancies, and my predecessor was going on maternity leave and looking to change the direction of her career, pivoting to Editorial. This left an opening at LUP for which I interviewed and secured the position.
What career or job did you imagine for yourself when you were at school?
To be honest, I wasn’t sure. I wanted something that played to my strengths in English Literature and English Language and after completing my undergraduate degree in English & American Studies, an MA in Publishing seemed like a logical next step.
What does your job entail? What does a typical day look like?
It changes depending on the day of the week, the live projects, and the time of year but generally it begins with counting the money – checking Month-to-Date sales at our UK and USA distributors for LUP and the distributed presses, troubleshooting anything that doesn’t look right, e.g. a book hasn’t released on time, back orders are stuck for an unknown reason etc. I also conduct daily ZI checks for the distributed presses at our UK distributor, this means checking through the report our printer emails over every day, per press, and releasing any Print on Demand (POD) books whose publication dates are in the past.
My job is generally split into four – team management, keeping the systems moving so the money flows in, third party relationship management, and sourcing new business for the Press. This means my day is mostly lots of email correspondence and Zoom meetings. Since the launch of Liverpool Distribution Services (LDS) in September 2024, there has been overlapping onboardings for the presses – this requires careful scheduling and time management. I tend to wind down by adding distributed press ISBNs to Amazon Advantage (there’s a backlog) or conducting some data analysis.
What skills did you bring to the job? Where did you learn these?
From my previous role I had experience in managing the marketing for a list of 100+ HSS journals including a team of three, as well as UK sales for digital collections. I was able to bring my knowledge of the market and crucially an understanding of systems and processes used at a considerably larger press for improving efficiency in, and the reach of, selling and marketing LUP’s content.
What is your favourite part of your job?
The ethos – we are a small but ambitious press that moves fast. We are mission-based but commercially aware. We are dynamic and agile; I try to never take this for granted as it’s by no means guaranteed in academic publishing. I have been here for ten years in September and this LUP is completely different to the one I joined in 2015. It’s exciting to think about where we will go next.
What advice or tips would you give for anyone interested in joining the publishing world?
Keep abreast of the key issues facing the sector you are interested in – the best interviews I have seen (and I’ve seen a lot) included specific examples of connecting LUP to issues such as AI, Open Access mandates, accessibility, library budgets, shrinking of the market etc. It shows enthusiasm and diligence, both of which are needed to work at LUP.
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