Promoting our authors to retailers

Troubador attend the Gardners Trade Show at the Bookseller's Annual Conference 2023

Troubador's Sales and Marketing Manager Jonathan White and Trade Marketing Specialist Raisa Patel spent a very successful day representing Troubador at the Gardners Trade Show – which brings together over 300 UK booksellers and bookshops in an event that is part of the Bookseller’s Association annual conference. It's an excellent opportunity for Troubador's trade marketing team to talk to booksellers and show them our new and forthcoming titles.

Reporting back Jonathan says: 'We had a great time at this year’s event which was the biggest conference yet with delegates attending from bookshops all over the British Isles, and even a few from mainland Europe. A number of high-profile authors always attend, this year Adrian Edmondson and Caroline Quentin were both there to promote their new books, after which booksellers spend several hours visiting the stands of all the different exhibiting publishers to look at new books and build new trade relationships. It is a great opportunity for us to understand issues the bookshops are facing and to help fuel their passion for the books we are helping authors to publish.

Many of the bookshops we spoke to confirmed that high street trading in the UK remains tough but they were upbeat for a busy Christmas period.  The event is a wonderful way to talk to our bookshop customers and help change perceptions of the quality and range of self-published books that our authors publish. The books we had on display drew praise and interest from the attending booksellers. 

We are one of the sponsors of the delegate goody bag this year too so every bookshop went away with some more information about Troubador. Rarely is there a chance to have quite so many bookshop staff and managers all in one place, and Raisa and I came away buoyed up with the wonderful comments about our books and authors.

We always very much enjoy our time at the Gardners Trade Show and it remains an important event in our Marketing calendar, this year's event comes shortly after we visited the Wholesaler (and organizer) Gardners Books, which you can read about here".