As part of our careers in publishing series, we spoke to Aishwarya Das about her role as Children’s Education Sales Manager at Bloomsbury Publishing to find out what skills she uses on a day-to-day basis.
1. Can you tell us how you came to be in your current role?
I joined Bloomsbury as Children’s & Education Sales Executive which was my first account management role. Since then I’ve progressed within the UK Sales Team until I became Children’s Education Sales Manager - just over 2 years since I joined the company.
2. Could you take us through the sort of responsibilities that you manage in your role?
I look after the Bloomsbury Education list from the sales side. I’m the go-to Education specialist within the UK Sales Team, which involves championing the list at every opportunity and working closely with the rest of the sales team and the Editorial and M&P departments to ensure we get every Education book to fulfil its potential in the market.
3. What is the first skill you need for your role?
Teamwork! My job is all about working with the Editorial and M&P teams to help my Sales colleagues get everything they need to pitch our fantastic Education books into their accounts. This works both ways as I also work to make sure the Sales team knows exactly what’s coming on the Education list and what the opportunities there are.
4. What is the second skill you need?
Communication. As the go-to Education person in the UK Sales Team I absorb all the information I’m given from across the departments I work with and then have to make sure the relevant info is communicated effectively and clearly to the parties involved. Making sure everyone knows what they need to when they need to, but isn’t overwhelmed with unnecessary data is important and helps my colleagues work more effectively.
5. Finally, what is the third skill you need?
Research and analysis. An important element of what I do involves taking lots of data like market insights, sales figures etc and processing that into useful information we can make decisions based on.
6. What advice do you have for publishing hopefuls looking to develop these skills?
These are all skills you can develop outside the publishing industry and opportunities to gain experience in these can come from any part of your life, not just your job! Not every role needs to develop all these skills at the same time, sometimes experience comes from different angles but comes together to show that you have everything you need. Having said that working in a team in any context will definitely help both your teamwork and communication skills! Regarding research and analysis I’d say staying up to date with what’s happening in the market through publishing/book newsletters is a great way to learn what the ‘normal’ is so you can build a baseline and then you’ll find yourself starting to gain insight into what the market is doing which will be useful in any publishing role.
Aishwarya Das works in UK Sales at Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.. Born and raised in The Netherlands, she moved to the UK for university where she gained a BA English & Philosophy and an MSc in International Political Economy from the University of Southampton. After a gap year in Spain she had a great time working as a barista and then in LEGO customer services before finally ending up in a bookshop. From there she made the move into her first role in Publishing. She loves to read and is competitive enough to aim for 52x books a year, but always has time for new-fangled London activities or travelling to crazy places!
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