1. Aimee Dewar 1
MAPU714 – Work Placement Report
Intellect Books Ltd., Bristol, UK
Intellect is an independent academic book and journal publisher based in Bristol, UK issuing publications that
contribute to the scholarly fields of Visual Arts, Film Studies, Cultural & Media Studies and Performing Arts. As a
small company with fewer than thirty employees, Intellect is faced with challenges linked to areas such as budget
and, consequentially, their list building capabilities and marketing strategies. Whilst a ‘high proportion of journals
[…] published in the UK are produced by large publishing houses in the capital’ (Keynote, 2015), it can be said that
Intellect maximises its relatively limited assets and marginal positioning by creating considered promotional campaigns
and employing a well-established business model to formulate and deliver its outputs. Intellect has bases in both the
United Kingdom and United States, possesses the University of Exeter Press as an imprint and is partnered with the
University of Chicago Press (Intellect, 2016). In addition, 30% of Intellect’s total sales are within the UK, with
70% in the rest of the world (Reisner, 2016). These figures are endorsed by their marketing representative in China
as well as committed sales and marketing staff who incite interest in the company at an international level; they
attend conferences and arranging meetings with institutions around the globe, including a recent visit to Central
America and a forthcoming trip to Japan.
My internship at Intellect took place between the 4th
and 29th
of April 2016. I worked mainly within the
marketing department though also took on additional editorial tasks such as proofreading future book titles.
Working across departments in this way can be seen as indicative of the nature of working within an independent
publishing house (Reisner, 2016). Due to the size of the company, there are numerous occasions wherein the
production – encompassing editorial, typesetting and scheduling among other tasks – and marketing departments –
also including sales and design aspects of promotion – interlink (Smith, 2012, p. 165). Indeed, ‘marketing and
editorial are very closely allied’ and are especially seen to coalesce in terms of a company’s ‘marketing strategy’
(Balkwill and Davies, 2011, p. 133), a relationship that was particularly evident at Intellect. For instance, the
company’s decisions to take on a new publication at the proposal stage of the project are fundamentally guided by
concerns such as market research, cost and, ultimately, item sales as recorded and advised by the marketing
department (Mitchell, 2016a). Therefore, from the inception of the publication process, the marketability of a
product is taken into account.

2. Aimee Dewar 2
The processes Intellect employs from the initiation of a publication process are markedly different from
that of trade publishing and marketing is similarly approached from this perspective. Academic publishers are
usually specialist houses that market for niche audiences (Balkwill and Davies, 2011, p. 101) or, as is the case with
Intellect, to large audiences with very niche interests including crafts (Reisner, 2016), fashion and Eastern European
cinema (bestselling journals, Intellect, 2016b). As such, the marketing is targeted towards a title fulfilling a
particular purpose for their target audience of academics of the arts, which is in turn determined by the ‘practical
and […] quality’ aspects of the content itself (Balkwill and Davies, 2011, p. 127). In contrast to marketing trade
titles, ‘persuasion is very unlikely to make the academic change his or her mind’ (Balkwill and Davies, 2011, p.
127) about purchasing a title for their institution or research: ‘either you want/need to buy an academic book, or
you don’t’ (2011, p. 127). In response to this, during the initial stages of a publishing project, Intellect are concerned
with features such as the prominence of the author or editor in their field, the costs of the product in relation to its
eventual retail price – a discussion lead by the type of buyer or user (libraries, institutions, students) and format
(hardback or paperback) – and the interdisciplinary of a title, thus confirming its value for a variety of scholars
(Mitchell, 2016a). In terms of marketing and promotion, it is argued that ‘a skill central to the role […] is in
identifying your key demographic; the fundamental audience who you want to engage with your title’ (Broad, 2015).
Therefore, these discussions are centred on potential consumers of the product and, in turn, are dedicated to
informing the marketing strategies that are to be used further on in the publishing process. As a result, the quality
and practicality of a book or journal are assessed, assured and emphasised as the marketable aspects of the product
that will attract the relevant segment of the market (Balkwill and Davies, 2011, p. 105).
This process is especially crucial to small, independent publishers such as Intellect. They do not have the
‘acute economic imperative that the big corporates have’ (Duffy in Cox, 2015); in fact ‘on academic or highly
specialised reference titles, the percentage spent on marketing will be no more than 5 per cent’ of the title’s budget
(Baverstock, 2008, p. 223). As such, their marketing campaigns need to be ‘cost effective and demonstrate lots of
ingenuity’ (Balkwill and Davies, 2011, p. 108) in ‘developing, managing and monitoring the budgets and schedules
required to put on effective marketing campaigns’ (Smith, 2012, p. 165). Further, it has been argued that independent
publishers ‘are actually in a different publishing industry than the corporates. [They] are the only ones taking risks
with new writers and promoting new voices’ (Duffy in Cox, 2015). This increased drive towards creativity and
innovation can be seen as advantageous to the building of an independent publishing brand as a decisive and
distinctive company tailored to the requirements of niche publications (Broad, 2015). Correspondingly, Intellect

3. Aimee Dewar 3
considers their size as beneficial to both their content and marketing strategies; the production department is able to
generate a large collection of niche titles and pride themselves on capturing and maintaining the ‘author’s voice’
(Rollason, 2016). Additionally, unlike their larger competitors such as Oxford University Press, Routledge and
Palgrave (Rollason, 2016), the marketing team is able to act quickly to promotional opportunities due to their
individual experiences in completing interrelated tasks across the whole department (Reisner, 2016). Though the
marketing employed by Intellect is usually dependent on the amount of funding supplied by the author or editor of
a particular title (Joseph, 2016), it can be suggested that the company is proactive (Baverstock, 2008, p. 229) and
consistently comprehensive in terms of the routes to market they employ.
For instance, as well as core or ‘regular marketing activities which are essential to the selling cycles of the
publishing industry’ (Baverstock, 2008, p. 224), such as print and digital catalogues and a website, Intellect is
resourceful in its marketing by employing additional low cost techniques (Balkwill and Davies, 2011, p. 108).
These include exchange promotion (Reisner, 2016), sending postcards and journals to conferences with little
(typically £50 or less) or no fees to do so, posting review copies out to relevant institutions and their research staff
(Broad, 2015) and a focus on pitching press releases ‘to publications of interest to the academic community’
(2015). In terms of marketing to particular academic communities or institutions, individual academics can be
researched and ‘“known” – this is a market where you can find precise names and addresses’ making the task
‘easier because you can get directly to them’ (Balkwill and Davies, 2011, pp. 128 – 9). Known as ‘relationship
marketing’ (Reisner, 2016), this formed part of my duties; I was able to research higher education organisations,
both in the UK and internationally, and gather the contact details of faculty members belonging to departments
relevant to a particular journal for which Intellect was attempting to generate institution subscriptions. It can be due
to this aspect of marketing that Intellect is able to sidestep exposure to the ‘vulnerability’ that mass market publishers
experience due to their dependence on booksellers, ‘simply because they can market directly to individuals’ if they
choose (Balkwill and Davies, 2011, p. 101). Through the distribution of complimentary journal copies to institutional
figures for example, Intellect is able to identify, market and deliver their products as key contributions to the
specific academic fields in which their intended audience members work. In turn, the academics act as the ‘gatekeepers’
(Smith, 2012, p. 167) for the community and may subsequently recommend the title to their students and encourage
the purchasing and stocking of these titles in their libraries or subscription to online versions of the resource
(Baverstock, 2008, p. 268 – 269).

4. Aimee Dewar 4
An additional low cost component of Intellect’s marketing strategy includes their presence on social media:
‘It’s the quickest and easiest way of getting to lots of different people around the world, all at once. And it’s free’
(Grün, 2016). Intellect has numbers of followers on their platforms of Twitter (3,295) and Facebook (3,430) that are
comparative to their competitors, with Routledge possessing 5,464 Twitter followers to date (Twitter, 2016).
Furthermore, employing social media marketing ‘opens up the possibilities for virtual spread of […] promotional
message[s]’ (Smith, 2012, p. 173) and, as a result, is able to create a ‘community’ (Rycroft in Myers, 2016) of
followers for Intellect’s brand and products. Twitter in particular (Rycroft in Myers, 2016) has had positive impacts
for publishers, and represents a platform on which ‘starting and participating in conversation[s]’ as well as
‘communicating in real-time, to multiple people’ can be achieved (2016). Furthermore, the use of Twitter can
enhance a publishers’ engagement with wider elements of the academic publishing community and debate with
current issues. For instance, the #AcBookWeek social media campaign initiated by the Academic Book of the
Future (ABF, 2016) initiative was employed in order for academic publishers to explore contemporary issues
through the lens of new concerns such as Open Access and digital rights (2016) to expand in their understanding of
what is now required of scholarly materials through engaging with academic readers.
However, due to Intellect’s small marketing staff, they are not able to explore the full range of community
and brand building social mediums available, for instance, podcasting (Rycroft in Myers, 2016) or new literary app,
Litsy (Kindness and Kingman, 2016), where publishers communicate directly to their readership communities in
regards to their forthcoming titles or to make recommendations. Yet, there are benefits to this approach as overall
focus can be given to the company’s ‘main platforms whilst keeping an eye on those that might fit [them] in the
future’, thus not taking any chances on new platforms or apps that might not ‘break through’ to popular use (Rycroft
in Myers, 2016). Instead, Intellect chose to maximise its existing strategies to make them as wide-ranging as
possible as opposed to taking on new ones that would ultimately impact upon the marketing budget available.
In addition to marketing that stems from in-house, Intellect’s authors or editors are also encouraged by the
team to take an active role (Balkwill and Davies, 2011, p. 119) in the promotion of their publication through, for
example, attending events and engaging their institutions’ libraries and bookshops as potential stockists (Intellect,
2016a). An example of this type of marketing occurred during my time at Intellect; the founder and editor the
Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies (Intellect, 2016c), Flavia Laviosa, had recently attended the David di
Donatello Film Festival in Rome whereby the Italian President gave an honourable mention to the journal, praising

5. Aimee Dewar 5
its identity as the ‘world’s only Italian cinema journal’ (Wellesley College, 2016) and its scholarly contributions to
the field. This activity has lead to further invitations for Lavisoa to speak at relevant events such as the Cannes Film
Festival on 18 May 2016 (Wellesley College, 2016) along with disseminating corresponding promotional materials
for the journal as supplied by Intellect. We were able to negotiate with the editor regarding the number of promotional
journal copies to send in order to satisfy the ‘sales potential’ (Baverstock, 2008, p. 224) of investing in events such
as these, whilst at the same time factoring in the costs for the company. For this type of marketing, the expenditures
were minimal as Intellect only had to account for the production of each journal and the postage and packaging
(Balkwill and Davies, 2011, p. 108). In exchange, and whilst working in tandem with the editor’s activities, Intellect is
able to generate increased, high profile visibility for their journal that is representative of its international contribution
to the field of Italian cinema. Thus, the journal is marketed as a title that delivers pioneering research into the centre
of that academic community, establishing and maintaining interest for the journal as a fundamental text.
Conversely, Intellect occasionally employs high cost (Balkwill and Davies, 2011, p. 110) marketing routes
that can come with certain associated concerns in terms of budget. For instance, Intellect have been known to
advertise in Sight & Sound magazine though this is usually done on a case-by-case basis (Intellect, 2016a) and is
dependent on the amount of additional funding that is available to enhance Intellect’s restrictive budgets (Joseph,
2016). If funding is not available, this will in turn impact negatively on potential marketing opportunities and
visibility for the publication (Norwood, 2015) as well as, ultimately, applying pressure to the numbers sales and
subscriptions that need to be generated (Mitchell, 2016a). For this reason, these titles are rarely taken on unless
forms of subvention can be sourced, as per Intellect’s business model (Mitchell, 2016a). This is a current trend
faced by independent academic publishers (Norwood, 2015). For instance, Alison Norwood, publishing manager of
the Institute of Developmental Studies, has identified that it is the ‘subscription income [that runs] our journal[s] in
the first place, to cover the costs of producing it. […] If readers were not going to be the income-generators for our
journal[s] that we’d need to find other ways to keep it going’ (Norwood, 2015). Therefore, as the academic publisher’s
business model is seen to be ‘moving towards author pays, not reader pays’ (Perkins, 2015), there are significant
impacts for the marketing of titles in terms of the advantages for academics who would be using them. The costs
involved in producing a book or journal must be analysed in conjunction with an understanding for the market
requirements. For example, Intellect was seen to take into account the possible affordability of a particular title as a
promotional factor for the university libraries that would be looking to subscribe (Hamilton, McCall and Rayner,
2016). However, this strategy is reliant upon the relevant subsidising from an author or editor; without this the

6. Aimee Dewar 6
affordability of a key text for libraries cannot be achieved or sustained. Consequently, by absorbing support from
the authors into their business model, Intellect is able to maximise their budget and potentially make their titles
more affordable. It is key features such as a fair price that further confirm the desirability of their products to their
highly specialised audience and will ensure their titles will be visible to an increased number of academics.
To expand on this, it can be said that visibility in terms of academic publications has changed drastically in
recent years (Talkhani, 2015). As of 2015 (Keynote), Intellect is one of 285 companies in the South West of England
that publishes journals and periodicals. Yet, since 2004, the turnover of these companies has dropped ‘by 9.3%
from £6.92bn in 2004 to £6.28bn in 2013, driven by a decline in print media’ (Keynote, 2015). It can be seen that
the proliferation of digital media has been pivotal to the marketing techniques employed by academic publishers,
especially in terms of increasing their products’ discoverability (Perkins, 2015) and accessibility (Talkhani, 2015)
in the online world. For instance, recent changes such as Open Access are encouraging publishers to ‘adapt’ to the
needs of academic readers in the twenty-first century (Hamilton, McCall and Rayner, 2016) and to fill a ‘new gap
in the market’ (Talkhani, 2015) – namely a requirement to deliver ‘accelerated discovery’ and improved educational
opportunities across niche subjects (PLOS, 2016), for academics of all kinds (Norwood, 2015). It can be said, therefore,
that publishers need to market themselves as able to offer such an experience to its subscribers and authors.
Similar to the impacts of authors funding their own academic publishing outputs, Open Access is able to
increase the visibility (Intellect, 2016b) of scholarly papers to an increased number of members in an academic
community (PLOS, 2016). Intellect’s exploration of Open Access has come in the form of ‘IntellectOpen’ (Intellect,
2016b) and currently features ten free access articles from a combination of their bestselling titles (Reisner, 2016) that
I added to the website during my placement. As a result, it can be argued that publishers are required to enhance
their products in terms of digital publishing in order to fulfill the current demands of academics and to market
themselves as in step with the changing needs of its audience: ‘Academic book publishing is concerned with
addressing the needs of the scholarly community and therefore targets students and academics specifically’ by
‘developing new platforms so that the content is accessible in a form most useful to them’, in particular one that is
‘increasingly in interactive and digital’ (Broad, 2015). In this way, IntellectOpen and other innovations in digital
academic content can be used as tools with which the company is able to market itself as a publisher that continually
delivers niche topics, which can be used to enrich present research (PLOS, 2016), to a global audience (Intellect,
2016b).

7. Aimee Dewar 7
Correspondingly, discoverability and new developments in digital products can be seen as important
concerns for Intellect and other independent academic publishers. Intellect releases all of its outputs as e-products
able to be found and bought online. As such, they promote discoverability for consumers online by employing
vigilance towards metadata and keywords, a consideration that was raised as highly important at London Book Fair
seminar in 2015: ‘Optimisation not good enough – we need better tagging, page structure, and the ability to add
abstracts, keywords and rich metadata’ (Perkins, 2015). Therefore, in addition to employing standard product codes
to enable the investigation and discovery of the product on Amazon for instance (Joseph, 2016), keywords are
developed from website copy that has been carefully constructed to describe the most marketable elements of the
title, such as it’s contributions to the field in which it sits. This is now a key process for publishers to undertake to
increase the marketability of a book: ‘It’s no longer sufficient to simply convert printed products to digital at the
end of a workflow. We believe in the need for placing structured digital content at the heart of every production
workflow to allow publishers to make the best use of digital platforms’ (Talkhani, 2015). However, Intellect does
not yet harness or pioneer the way for fully linked-up e-book publishing; indeed, it has been argued that discoverability is
not just ‘as simple as the ebook’ (Perkins, 2015). For instance, with the decline of the monograph text (Cross, 2011,
p. 164), academics appear to be more interested in making micropayments for particular chapters of an edited book
(Perkins, 2015) an advance that would surely increase the accessibility and discoverability of crucial and helpful
research that they would otherwise not be able to use. As a consequence of changing needs and the increased
possibilities of digital publishing, ‘publishers should be bringing new forms of content to life and taking advantage
of digital advances to do so’ (Perkins, 2015) and Intellect, as ‘publishers of original thinking’ (Intellect, 2016a) may
soon be required to advance into new directions for their e-products in terms of their marketable qualities such as
affordability and accessibility.
In terms of considerations for my future career, it can be seen that academic publishing houses require its
staff to be innovative, interrogative of existing strategies and questioning what else can be done to enhance the
product and bring it closer to what academic circles require it to be. An example of this is Goldsmiths Press, an
‘inventive’ (Page, 2015) academic press that is exploring the ‘digital-first’ (2015) business model hoping to appeal
to postgraduates with a mixture of Open Access and flexible payments to find opportunities for struggling creative
practices in the wider publishing world (Yao, 2016). The Intellect team met with Goldsmiths at the 2016 London
Book Fair and are hoping to work together with them to find a sustainable business model for academic writing that
encompasses the Arts and Humanities, texts that are published by Intellect (2016). Not only will this action require

8. Aimee Dewar 8
creativity and forward thinking, adapting existing reader delivery methods will require excellent networking skills
in order to link up with other companies that could offer improvements to readers of other houses. Networking and
my grasp on the digital are areas I would enjoy obtaining further training on as I progress into my career in
publishing.
It is also clear that transferability of skills is vital to working in most areas of publishing (Vassilopoulos,
2016) as well as the ability to interlink all my existing skills together. For instance, and especially in terms of
marketing departments in small, independent houses, sales experience can be seen as advantageous due to the
understanding of ‘buying and commerciality’ (2016) that can come with bookselling. The inextricable links
between marketing and the comprehension of sales and budgets indicate to me that this is an area to expand my
knowledge on and to be constantly updating my understanding of as new developments come about. For this
reason, combining sales and marketing in my future career is appealing to me as it may allow me to reach my full
potential in a marketing post. Finally, and similarly to the interlinking between marketing and sales, the insights
into production and editorial I gained whilst working at Intellect did interest me the most in terms of future career
paths. For instance, I was especially interested to sit in on a quality control meeting with the production team
whereby the standardisation of the publications were examined and, in turn, the professionalism and validity of the
academic texts were investigated and improved upon. The research involved in elements such as these have
encouraged me to look into areas of production that I had not considered before, and to look beyond copy editing
and proofreading as the only career options for me.

9. Aimee Dewar 9
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