Book | Slatehead: The Ascent of Britain’s Slate-Climbing Scene
Author | Peter Goulding
Publisher and Release Date | New Welsh Rarebyte, June 2020
Project Brief
The non-fiction work Slatehead won the New Welsh Writing Awards 2019. Its subsequent publication, during the height of Covid in June 2020, faced us with scaling a unique challenge: to launch an unknown debut writer in a niche field – the sport of climbing on slate – when we were allowed outside once a day.
Campaign
We decided to pivot to online publication first in order to get endorsements and a PR boost behind the punk-infused non-fiction book before paperback publication, which we shunted to autumn 2020.
Being situated in-house at the time meant I could feed in ideas at an earlier editorial stage and I suggested sub-titles to help position the title. I took the decision that we should dig deep into the specialist field, and that the book’s ultimate strength was that it was a niche sport.
I mined my lateral desk research skills to unearth myriad opportunities for editorial coverage within the climbing community and beyond to devise a campaign to harness the indie book’s full potential. The campaign was focused around getting Peter into the right venues and outlets to wax lyrical about climbing on slate while ensuring that regional and specialist bookshops and outdoors outlets stocked it. With the author residing in the flatlands of Norfolk, this also gave us an unusual hook and talking point. I sought early buy-in from the trade and from the climbing community by offering ARCs to all the writers we knew who loved to climb, pitching Slatehead on the coat tails of the documentary Free Solo and positioning the book for writers who loved the work of M John Harrison.
Results
The Bookseller declared in their preview of Slatehead that it “already has a cult following”. I secured early praise from Cynan Jones and Helen Mort while Cathryn Summerhayes, literary agent at Curtis Brown said Slatehead was “like a group rock and roll music autobiography”.
The success story for this campaign was the sheer volume of climbing-related coverage we got in the specialist press coupled with high profile exposure in the literary press, while the close-knit climbing community embraced the title with aplomb. An extract appeared in the Times Literary Supplement and I secured recommended read status in Trail magazine alongisde online articles in Climber and UK Climbing. Reviews appeared in 3:AM Magazine by Alex Diggins, Alpine Journal and Nation.Cymru. Peter spoke enthusiastically on the climbing podcast Jam Crack and I organised a ten-stop blog tour to make the most of an online boost in the height of the Covid epidemic.
Elsewhere, I secured author profiles across the breadth of the UK – with author spotlights in both the Western Mail and the Eastern Daily Press and speaking opportunities at the Montgomeryshire Literary Festival and at a bookshop event online with Palas Print, in the heart of Snowdonia. Festival-goers at the Kendal Mountain Book Festival embraced Slatehead when Pete appeared there virtually in the wake of his Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature shortlisting.
Within the trade, I secured distribution via Cordee who supply outdoors shops meaning that the title was for sale in the specialist outdoor wear trade. This one-of-a-kind non-fiction title remains in print and face-out in shops five years after publication and has been a launchpad for a writer whose career is on the ascendant. A Wales Book of the Year shortlisting in the Creative Non-fiction category was a wonderful jewel in the campaign crown.
