Three publishing professionals discussed the impact of networks, mentorship, and sponsors for women in publishing.

By Olivia Snaije, Contributing Editor

Building on a The Hof digital conversation held last August around women in publishing, a packed session at the Frankfurter Buchmesse on October 8 brought together three professionals from the U.K., New Zealand, and the Philippines to talk about their professional journeys.

Cassie Rocks, who was both moderator and panelist, is the co-director and brand marketing manager of The Bookseller and co-director of The FLIP which aims to inspire female leadership in the trade. Eboni Waitere is the director of HUIA publishers and the first Māori president of the Publishers Association of New Zealand. Andrea Pasion-Flores is the former executive director of the National Book Development Board of the Philippines and now owns and runs Milflores Publishing.

Waitere spoke at length about a formal mentorship she had in her early 20s. The person didn’t want her to use his name in order to pursue opportunities, but once her mentorship had ended, he became her sponsor, opening doors for her. During the mentorship they met each month to discuss strategy, development, and governance. Their relationship was transformational and not transactional, she said.  When approaching a mentorship, Waitere said it is important to be clear about the terms and outcomes, stressing that the trust necessary to developing a relationship doesn’t happen overnight.

Pasion-Flores said she was lucky that her thesis advisor for her Masters, who was 30 years older than she was and on the board of a small government agency, encouraged her to apply for a job in book development rather than remain an “unhappy lawyer.” Pasion-Flores even eventually bought her mentor’s publishing company, Milflores. She wondered if this relationship was serendipitous, simply grew organically, or had she somehow attracted the person she wanted to connect to in the first place?

For her part, Rocks said she didn’t much believe in luck—women work very hard to get where they are, she said. In the U.K., although people in the business are very friendly, “it’s an insular community,” Rocks observed. Unlike the examples of mentorship given by Waitere and Pasion-Flores, Rocks said it was difficult to find people in the U.K. willing to help. Part of the reason why the FLIP was created was to encourage women to “leave the ladder down.”

FLIP was founded in 2019 by three women who worked for Penguin Random House. It was the brainchild of the late Sophie Christopher, said Rocks, who was convinced that it was necessary to talk about women in publishing.

“In the U.K. you know all these people are out there, but you don’t know how to get to them,” Rocks noted. “One of the big pillars of what we do is showing that leadership and mentorship can be anything you need it to be.” Female leaders need to keep doors open as they move up the ladder, Rocks stressed, adding that publishing can be “a difficult industry,” in that, sometimes, “nice people still want to gatekeep.”

How, then, she asked Waitere and Pasion-Flores, can younger women best deal with gatekeeping?

Waitere agreed that at times she has chosen not to share knowledge, but this depends on “the attitude” of the person seeking the knowledge. Some of us are careful about who we’re sharing our values with and knowledge that we’ve spent 20 or 30 years acquiring.”

Coaching others requires energy, and one needs to be careful, she explained, suggesting that such caution is different from gatekeeping. Within her organization, she might pair senior and junior people so that they learn from each other. Her company also selects six unpublished authors, mostly women, and coaches and assists them to become published authors.

Another solution is to arrange for mentorships from outside the industry. Most tools are universal, said Waitere.

Pasion-Flores said that, in the Philippines, structural problems and inequality are their biggest hurdles. She has been pushing for bylaws in the industry to make the structure more democratic. Also, “in a country where you have very little, you want to be able to tap into the bigger companies that can help the industry at large.” She also pointed out that some regions in the Philippines are more developed than others, and said she tries to help new publishers from these regions come to city centers to access they can offer, sometimes matching them with international publishers.

Finally, she said, people need to be given the opportunity to voice their needs. Looking ahead, Pasion-Flores said she would like mentoring to happen in the industry between countries, collaborating, for example, with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

“We need to think out of the box,” Waitere said.  “We can be radical, and get literacy back up, and solve the problems on our doorstep.”