This year, The Bookseller Children’s Conference was held on the 26th of September in a buzzing Waterloo, London UK. But Waterloo being a considerable distance away (405 miles, to be precise), I joined the conference virtually. I settled down at my desk, overlooking a sunny Monday Edinburgh morning, and looked forward to a day of panels packed with publishing talk.

When I first saw the title given to Magic Cat Publishing’s keynote speech, I was anticipating learning about start-up businesses and how to flourish in a competitive market. And indeed, I did learn a lot about those two topics but co-founders, Rachel Williams and Jenny Broom, delved much deeper than that.

In the end, their speech was actually about womanhood, collaboration and trusting your intuition.

In the summer of 2019, Rachel and Jenny co-founded Magic Cat Publishing, an independent children’s publishing house, which prides itself on being an all-female managed and owned business.

The duo set out on a mission to publish non-fiction children’s books which bring, as Jenny put it, “real world subjects to families”. Mindfulness, inclusivity, and adaptability are just a few of the words which spring to mind when browsing through their website, reinforced by their motto ‘Open a book. Open a mind.’

Image of child flicking through the pages of a large paperback book.
Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash

Their first book release Slow Down, was published in the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and encourages children to embrace the outdoors to ‘bring calm to a busy world’. Since then, the Magic Cat team have produced a range of exquisitely illustrated books, from picture books promoting sustainable living to hardbacks detailing the roles of emergency service workers.

But their success hasn’t happened overnight and there were many setbacks along the way. Rachel explained that gender disparity is prevalent in the industry and highlighted that for “every £1 of venture capital investment in the UK, less than 1p is given to all-female founded teams”, compared to 89p being granted to all-male founded teams.

 “This industry needs more women owning businesses”

Rachel Williams, The Bookseller Children’s Conference 2022

Not only were Rachel and Jenny facing the struggles resulting from a lack of investment, they were also experiencing some of the challenges of the publishing industry for the first time. With no prior experience in trademarking, sales and production, Jenny noted that “everything was on [them]” to succeed.

But the balancing act doesn’t stop there.

Like many of us, Rachel and Jenny are constantly trying to find the balance between work and life. And as mothers, they face a greater challenge. While they didn’t claim to have cracked the code, they did explain that honesty and building a trusting work relationship goes a long way. Jenny said: “We keep it real. We talk all the time. We trust each other. We know our flaws. We know our strengths. We’re better together.”

Navigating motherhood whilst establishing a start-up business (or solely coping with motherhood, for that matter) isn’t simple, but it was togetherness and womanhood that helped Magic Cat to stand the test of time.

As they addressed the many female faces in the audience, Rachel said: “Women, as we can see from this room, are the backbone of this industry” and by the end of their speech, I felt inspired and emboldened as a woman embarking on a publishing career.

Featured photo by CoWomen on Unsplash