JASON BARTHOLOMEW

Originally from America, Jason Bartholomew spent ten years working in New York publishing, primarily for Hachette Book Group USA. He moved to Hachette UK in 2008 where he was the Rights Director across Hodder & Stoughton, Headline Publishing Group, Quercus Books, and John Murray Press.

In addition to the Rights Director role, in 2015, he also became the Publishing Director of Quercus US in New York. At Quercus US, Jason helped publish authors including Peter May, David Attenborough, Pierre LeMaitre, Timur Vermes, Damien Lewis, Louise O’Neill, and John Connolly. He completed a Masters in Business Administration at Imperial College in 2017.

Jason is also the CEO of the award-winning Cultural Communications Agency Midas, which provides bespoke PR, social & marketing campaigns for arts and publishing clients from its London and NY offices.

* Jason would like it recorded that he was drinking coffee — because he’s American and coffee is better than tea.

JESSICA KILLINGLEY

Jessica spent 20 years working in Marketing for a number of the divisions within Hachette UK and Penguin Random House, where she ran high-profile & award-winning campaigns across all genres, from debuts to brand names such as John Grisham, Stephen King, David Mitchell, Michael McIntyre and Stephen Fry.

Alongside setting up the agency, she also ran a Coaching & Consultancy business, where she helped coaches and consultants write and publish a book that leverages their influence, grows their business, and turns readers into clients. She is a Master-certified Coach and works with high-achieving women in senior roles. In October 2023 she stepped into running the agency full-time as the Managing Director.

She hosted the award-winning (and sweary) podcast, The AUTHORity Show and created The AUTHORity Blueprint, a self-study online programme on how to write and self-publish a non-fiction personal development book.

JAMES SPACKMAN

James is an alumnus of the Bloomsbury Publishing Graduate Scheme (the post room). From this stellar beginning, his publishing career progressed through sales and marketing roles at Bloomsbury, then at John Murray and Hodder & Stoughton, helping create bestsellers from authors as diverse as JK Rowling, Ben Schott, Stephen King, Freddie Flintoff and Kate Fox. He went on to be MD of Watkins, a division of Osprey Group focusing on personal development and healthy food and drink.

James is Publisher of Pursuit, Profile Books’ cycling imprint, coaches book trade people in presentation skills under the brand The Book Pitch Doctor and is founder of The Spare Room Project. He is the author of How to Pitch a Book: The Insider’s Guide to Publishing Persuasion.

JOANNA KALISZEWSKA

Joanna started her publishing career in the rights department of the literary agency, Aitken, Stone and Wylie. After short stints at Harper Collins and Gaia Books she settled at Hachette where she spent the next 20 years in a variety of roles in the rights departments of their trade divisions, latterly as the Head of Rights for John Murray Press.

While at Hachette she worked with authors ranging from the Booker short-listed Fiona Mozley to the bestselling spy-thriller writer Mick Herron. Her literary taste is very broad, she is equally happy reading a prize-winning literary novel, reading group fiction or a crime procedural.

She is the Rights Director at The bks Agency, as well as developing her own list as an Agent.