RICH BARR
Features
Rising Stars
Alumni Focus
it is the nature of the game that some stars leave: Pan lost Ken Follett, after a 35-year relationship, to a global Hachette deal, but that has been mollified by Pathak winning a five-publisher bidding war for Stuart MacBride. The Scottish crime writer has got off to a cracking start with Pan: sales for May’s This House of Burning Bones, his first in the new deal and the 13th DI Logan McRae title, were up 25% on his previous outing. There have been breakouts and new
early-career voices, too. Of the latter, social media creator-turned-author Lucy Jane Wood’s cosy fantasy debut Rewitched has been a hit (the follow-up, Uncharmed, is out in September), as was Simone Soltani’s two “spicy” Formula 1-set Lights Out romances. An example of the former is Alice Feeney bagging her first Original Fiction top spot this year with her seventh book, Beautiful Ugly. And then there is Kristin Hannah. The American had been published by Pan for 15 years, edited by publish- ing director Trisha Jackson (whose authors also include Steel and Confessions of a Forty- Something F##k Up creator Alexandra Potter). Hannah had sold solidly but not spectacularly until 2024’s The Women became a monster hit in the US and later on this side of the pond, too: the mass-market edition was launched in February and has sold just under 145,000 units through the TCM, making it the top-selling paperback released in 2025. Pathak feels particularly chuffed by examples
like Feeney and Hannah, as it shows Pan is in it for the long haul. She adds: “I love those break- ing brands. I love publishing authors that I think, ‘oh I just know you’ve got it’, but we just have to pick the right book to do it on.”
In the Pan pipeline
Jo Murray Dissection of a Murder Macmillan, 7th May, HB £16.99, 9781035072682
Pathak pre-empted Murray’s debut legal thriller for six-figures on a plane to New York (“the most glamorous thing I’ve ever done”): “think Apple Tree Yard or Blood Orange”.
Anna Brook-Mitchell Motherfaker Macmillan, 26th February, £16.99, HB, 9781035073016
Publishing director Katie Loughnane bought Brook- Mitchell’s debut–one of the hottest books at Frankfurt 2024 – in a 48-hour pre-empt. The title revolves around a woman who fakes a pregnancy to get a year of paid leave off work.
A good editor can spot the books people want to read – and a good manager can spot the people who can spot the books
Big-brand commercial publishing in general
is not straightforward at the moment, though, with many year-in, year-out authors hit by sales contractions. Partially, Pathak says, that is due to some retail channels cutting back: “Supermarkets are not taking as much as they used to... What they are taking is what they know will sell. So, actually, breaking new ground is the real difficulty. But new [routes to market] are sprouting up. What’s exciting to me is what The Works is doing; we recently did a special edition with them for Autumn Woods’ dark- academia novel Nightshade, bought by Kinza [Azira, commissioning editor and a Class of 2024 Rising Star]. I loved seeing all the TikTok videos
Jennifer Niven Meet the Newmans Macmillan, 15th Jan, HB, £18.99, 9781035055821
Pathak bagged UK and Commonwealth rights to the YA star’s first adult novel to be published in Britain, pitched as “Lessons in Chemistry meets Daisy Jones & the Six”.
Elle McNicoll Unapologetic Love Story Macmillan, 2nd April, HB, 9781035067763
First adult romance from the Scottish YA bestseller, scooped by commissioning editor Kinza Azira in a two-book deal.
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around it and a lot of the content was about people discovering The Works for the first time.” TikTok has been beneficial for many a commercial list. Pathak says: “What’s so fun about TikTok is it reminds us who is in charge. That’s why it is exciting: readers decide [what goes viral], not publishers saying ‘this is our big book’. We have editors who live and breathe TikTok. But they are not [on the platform] in order to find an author, they are just there watch- ing and reading stuff they love – and acquiring as a result of it. The more authentic a ‘TikTok book’ is, the more successful it is. Publishers can’t reverse-engineer it.”
athak grew up in Manchester and – in a frequent refrain of Rising Stars past and present, particularly those from outside London – had no idea that the making of books could be
a profession. But as a teen she got a part-time role at an indie bookshop, started meeting publishers’ sales reps and thought she had found her calling. After her undergrad at Nottingham, she did a publishing master’s at City St George’s, University of London, snagging her first full-time editorial assistant role at Random House. She started on the non-fiction list, “which
was great as non-fiction teaches you how to go out and find ideas, as opposed to just waiting for them to come in”, before moving over to become Selina Walker’s assistant at Century, just in time for Fifty Shades mania. Pathak says: “I was new and thought: ‘Publishing is great – it’s champagne every week and you’re always selling 700,000 copies.’” The commercial side was always the plan: “When I first started think- ing about a career in publishing, my favourite thing was, on a Sunday, to steal the culture magazine from my mum to look at what the bestsellers were. I wanted my books to be in that list; I wanted to be in the part of the company that makes the most money. I’ve always been very respectful of commercial publishing and it infuriates me when others are anything but.” Reporting to Pan managing director Lucy
Hale, Pathak oversees a team of 11, with Sarah Hodgson – who has come over from Corvus in the new role of crime and thriller publishing director – the most recent hire. Upper manage- rial roles often take editors away from the books but Pathak will be keeping a hand in. She says: “When I joined Pan, I told Lucy that I didn’t want to be a manager, I didn’t want to be a player, I wanted to be a player-manager. I think the best way to show your team how to do something is for you to do it. And I love my authors, though I do have a smaller list now. If you’re a good editor, you can spot the books people want to read – and it’s the good manager who can spot the people who can spot the books.”
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