The 2020 judges

Linda May spent 30 years as Vice President of Marketing and Sales for several different publishers before fulfilling a long-held dream and becoming Executive Director of a public library in Pennsylvania. As a library director, she watches circulation and interlibrary loan data and trends to track not only which books are well reviewed but which ones actually are circulated. As a former marketer, she remains interested in the “merchandising” of the books: how do they look on displays and face out on shelves? May is a big mystery and thriller reader but also loves biographies and military history, as well as contemporary romances for their happy endings! www.ahmfl.org

Matia Burnett is editor of BookLife, Publishers Weekly’s website dedicated to independent authors, having been involved with BookLife since its launch in 2014. Before that she was Publishers Weekly’s associate children’s reviews editor. She earned a Master of Education and an MFA from Columbia University, where she also worked as a researcher. In her free time, she writes novels and picture books. https://booklife.com/about-us/about-booklife.html

Robin Cutler is director of IngramSpark, the international publishing platform providing print and distribution services to indie authors and publishers, owned by Ingram Content Group.  During her career, she has published over 1000 books as Assistant Director at USC Press, and CEO and founder of her own trade imprint, Summerhouse Press. Robin most recently worked for Amazon/CreateSpace. She has broad knowledge of indie, academic and trade publishing and is an expert in content creation, distribution, on-demand models, and author strategies.  www.ingramspark.com/blog/author/robin-cutler

Jo Henry is managing director of Bookbrunch, the daily online trade journal for the book industry. She worked in various editorial, sales and marketing roles in publishing for 14 years before moving to research company Book Marketing Ltd (BML) in 1995. BML was successively owned by Publishing News, Bowker and then Nielsen Book, where she was VP of Insight and Analytics before she joined BookBrunch in 2017. Henry is co-founder of the Book Marketing Society and a former Chair of both the Book Society and the Book Trade Benevolent Society. www.bookbrunch.co.uk/page/about-us/