Bookplanet: the Observer picks the top 50 people in UK's world of books

Our top 50 players in the world of books.
Who holds the power in publishing? Why do some books become bestsellers? As this year's London Book Fair gets under way, the Observer's panel of experts offer a list of the literary world's most influential people.
By Robert McCrum

Whenever publishers and booksellers get together, as they will do today at the London Book Fair, it's not long before someone starts to play Reputations: who's up, who's down, who's in and who's out. Often in a single sentence you will hear a new writer puffed, a rival trashed, and the speaker's own modest contribution to literary culture slyly promoted. All this will make the latest London Book Fair, which has begun to rival Frankfurt, a highly significant informal stock exchange of literary reputation among writers, publishers and booksellers.

Rarely, however, has anyone attempted to quantify this febrile gossip or try to establish where lies the power and influence that ultimately brings those Booker and Whitbread shortlist novels, not to mention those titles recommended by the Richard & Judy Book Club (plus a host of lesser books), into your reading lives.

The Observer decided to ask a panel of British book experts - the bestselling novelist and Orange Prize founder Kate Mosse, the literary agent Elizabeth Sheinkman of Curtis Brown, the deputy editor of the Bookseller Joel Rickett, the publisher Margaret Busby, our own deputy literary editor Alex Clark and myself - to stick their necks out and come up with, yes, another list: the 50 most influential people in the British book trade.

It's a good moment to do this. After a decade of seismic rumbling in the book world, the past year has seen several minor earthquakes, especially among booksellers. HMV's assault on Ottakar's has been referred, after a bitter struggle, to the Office of Fair Trading. Scott Pack, the headline-grabbing buyer for Waterstone's has just left the company. Hachette's acquisition of Time Warner Book Group has sharpened up the competition among the top imprints. This is a great time to be a literary agent: rarely has the competition for new writing been so cut-throat.

On a longer perspective, editors have ceded influence to publicists, publishers have acknowledged the power of the bookselling chains, everyone is grappling with the IT revolution, and Nigel Newton of Bloomsbury has led a one-man campaign against Google. In 10 years' time, it may not even be possible to evaluate the book trade on the terms we have chosen today.

The English-speaking world still divides along a US-UK fault line: absent here are the bloggers and literary hatchet-men such as Dale Peck who enjoy such influence in America. In Britain we have many fi ne critics at work, but none of these has quite the power to persuade wielded by previous generations. Perhaps the days of Harold Nicolson, George Orwell and Philip Toynbee were not as glittering as they seem in retrospect, but no one today can match their authority. Acknowledging the importance of TV, internet and Amazon, no literary journalists made the top 50.

The list we have come up with, then, is a snapshot of an industry in flux, and it inevitably reflects the whims of our panel. To single out 50 players from a great cultural industry is almost impossible. Many of the people whose word counts for most pride themselves on their invisibility. Still, we think we have made good choices about a new generation of players. Significantly, compared to any previous generation, there are many more women in key positions. The top three slots are occupied by women, and some readers will be dismayed to see it's the noisy marketplace not the editorial armchair that exercises most power in 2006.

Each panel member was asked initially to nominate his or her own top 50 and, over a fairly sober sandwich lunch in a Soho club, with some hilarity and a lot of gossip, we came up with our selection.

1 Amanda Ross
Creator, Richard & Judy Book Club

If Amanda Ross, joint managing director of Cactus TV, the company that makes Richard & Judy, feels herself to be a publishing phenomenon, she certainly isn't letting on. The woman who is also the brains behind the Richard & Judy Book Club is rather earnest on the subject of reading - though I mean this in the nicest possible way. 'I take the responsibility for picking the books very seriously indeed,' she says, sipping contemplatively on a cup of ginger tea. 'I'm asking my viewers to go out and spend money, and books aren't cheap.'

Richard & Judy's Book Club is now in its third year. 'We'd noticed that if a book was on the show, it would always go straight into the charts. We'd looked at Oprah's book club in the US. We thought it might work. Then I was approached by the British Book Awards to see if I could get them on TV.

'So I went to Channel 4 with the idea that we'd do the book club in the 10 weeks leading up to the awards, and on the night, we'd have our own award chosen by our viewers from our list. Channel 4 said: "On your head be it." They thought it was risky. Books don't usually work on TV. But by week two it was obvious it had caught fire.'

This is something of an understatement. Alice Sebold's novel The Lovely Bones, which won the viewer's prize in the club's first year, has now sold a million copies; so, too, has Joseph O'Connor's Star of the Sea (before its appearance on the show, he had shifted just 3,500 copies). This year, Kate Mosse's Labyrinth, a thriller set in 13th-century Languedoc, has already been at the top of the bestseller lists for a month. Even highly literary novels do well.

In 2005, David Mitchell's tricksy Booker-shortlisted Cloud Atlas went on to win the viewers' prize. So how does Ross make her choices? 'I just select 10 great books,' she says. 'I know it sounds corny, but there's something about all of them. And I don't categorise books, and I never underestimate the viewer.'

A voracious reader since childhood, this year, her personal favourite of the 10 is Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth, by Andrew Smith - an account of the Apollo moon landings.

So is she often wined and dined and generally wooed by desperate publishers? She laughs. 'Well, I'm sadly lacking in gifts and bribes. I have a house in Italy and I'm trying to establish a library out there. I'd love a few backlists but, so far, nothing.'

She thinks publishers have noticed that she doesn't like to be crowded - just as she doesn't like to analyse the success of the book club too closely. 'We don't make any money out of the club. I'm happy for writers and publishers to make all the money; they're creative people and they take risks. But if you're asking me what makes a hit, I can't put my finger on it. My only agenda is that the books must all make for great TV.'

2 Caroline Ridding
Books buying manager, Tesco

Caroline Ridding decides which few books out of the 200,000 published each year will make it to the shelves of the UK's dominant supermarket. Publishers know that each of her choices will be seen by millions of people each week; it is near-impossible to reach No 1 in the bestseller charts without Ridding's support. Her rapid-fire buying meetings with publishers are legendary; her word on a jacket design or even a book's title can be final. Publishers will do anything to woo Ridding, flying her to exotic locales to meet authors. Ridding is growing more daring with her selections, scattering heavyweight biographies and Booker Prize nominees among the chick lit and celebrity biogs.

3 Diana Guy
Deputy chairman of the Competition Commission

Six months ago, Diana Guy's name would not have raised a flicker of recognition from anybody in the book trade. So how is she No 3 in The Observer's Power 50? Because she is presiding over one of the most important decisions in the history of the bookselling industry: whether Waterstone's (HMV) should be allowed to swallow up its rival book chain Ottakar's. A solicitor by background, Guy heads the team of lawyers and competition experts who will make the final call over whether the two high-street giants should be allowed to merge. If she puts obstacles in the way of the £96m bid, Waterstone's may decide to abandon it, leaving Ottakar's vulnerable to other takeover approaches. But if she opts to let it through we'll see the creation of the UK's largest ever high-street bookseller.

Waterstone's influential head buyer Scott Pack, who may well have topped the 50 six months ago, recently announced his departure.

4 Tim Hely Hutchinson
Chief executive, Hachette Livre UK

The French have arrived. Last month Hachette Livre, part of France's missiles-to-magazines group Lagardere, bought the transatlantic publisher Time Warner. The deal catapulted Hachette past Random House to No 1 consumer publishing group in the UK, where it already owns five publishers, including Orion. It also represented the fulfilment of Tim Hely Hutchinson's long-held ambition. The younger son of the eighth Earl of Donoughmore, he set up the airport thriller and chick lit specialist Headline 20 years ago, quickly shocked the trade by taking over the distinguished Hodder & Stoughton and later added the UK's oldest publisher John Murray to his stable. As the UK's single most important publishing chief executive, his every word will be watched.

5 Gail Rebuck
Chair and chief executive, Random House

Gail Rebuck's focus is legendary - she is reported to have signed her contract at Random House in the middle of giving birth. Her skill as CEO of Random House has been to harmonise a group of diverse imprints - such as Chatto & Windus and Jonathan Cape - while maintaining their distinctive identities. Last week, she was on very public view, accompanying her mega-selling author Dan Brown to court to defend himself against charges of plagiarism.

6 Kes Nielsen
Senior books manager, Amazon.co.uk

Kes Nielsen is the friendly face of Amazon, which is remorselessly crushing all bookselling rivals. The idea of a powerful, if informal, personality running an internet retailer may seem oxymoronic: surely Amazon displays millions of titles as equals? Publishers know this is far from the case: Nielsen determines whether their books are promoted on the Amazon homepage and delivered within 24 hours, or consigned to the 'usually available in 3 to 4 weeks' deathbed. The site can make or break books.

7 Jacqueline Wilson
Novelist and Children's Laureate

Jacqueline Wilson, Children's Laureate and OBE, has written 80 books, sold more than 15 million and beats JK Rowling as the author most borrowed from Britain's libraries. You would be hard pressed to find a girl between eight and 14 who hasn't had a crush, at some point, on her bittersweet novels with their chewing-gum pink covers. Children value her because she writes about how hard it can be to be a child: her novels cover domestic violence, breast cancer, broken homes.

8 Bill Scott-Kerr
Publisher, Transworld

Late last year, Bill Scott-Kerr stepped up to the coveted role of publisher at Transworld, the UK's commercial publishing powerhouse. He is the only editor in the world to have acquired all of Dan Brown's books up to and including The Da Vinci Code. He also publishes Andy McNab, Gerald Seymour, Tom Bradby. Transworld's domination of the 2005 bestseller lists at times looked embarrassing; expect a repeat in May when the Ron Howard/ Tom Hanks Da Vinci Code film opens.

9 JK Rowling
Novelist

JK Rowling may lead a quiet life in Edinburgh, but Harry Potter has made his creator richer than the Queen (she is said to be worth £500m). JK Rowling's career is the best-known fairy tale in children's publishing and Harry Potter its golden goose. A new Potter can sell three million copies within 48 hours of going on sale. Publishers cast hopefully about for 'the new Harry Potter' but only one person can deliver that dream: JK Rowling as she completes Harry's saga.

10 David Roche
Chief executive, Borders

A former boss of HMV, David Roche introduced music industry systems to Waterstone's, revolutionising its approach to buying books. While publishers writhed, Waterstone's managed to sell stock faster than it paid for it. Roche wielded enormous influence over which titles made the front of shops. He made a potentially disastrous career move last autumn, throwing his hat in with Ottakar's just days before Waterstone's made its takeover bid. But last week he returned in dramatic style, taking the top job at Borders. He'll steer the American chain's relentless expansion in the UK.

11 Helen Fraser
Managing director, Penguin

Helen Fraser's 'jolly hockey sticks' demeanour belies her steely grip over the best-known publisher in the world, which she guided to a triumphant 70th birthday celebration last summer. Fraser is known as a clear-headed boss, giving each Penguin imprint - from the newly launched Fig Tree to commercial powerhouse Michael Joseph - a distinctive identity. She has instilled a harder mass-market edge, building author 'brands' such as Jamie Oliver and Gillian McKeith, while maintaining Penguin's literary allure. This year Penguin will unveil the new Red Classics series and a clever repackaging of historical epics.

12 Victoria Barnsley
Chief executive, HarperCollins

Founding Fourth Estate, which went on to become one of our leading independent publishers, in 1984, was only Barnsley's first step. When it was acquired by HarperCollins UK, she became chief executive for the entire company.

13 Nigel Newton
Chief executive, Bloomsbury

In 1986, Nigel Newton, along with David Reynolds, Liz Calder and Alan Wherry, set up Bloomsbury. Their impressive list already included John Irving, Margaret Atwood, Joanna Trollope and Nadine Gordimer, but the company struck true gold in 1997 when it signed up unknown children's author Joanne Rowling. The following year they expanded into the US and have since acquired the independent German house Berlin Verlag, giving them a base in the world's three largest book markets. Recent successes include Susanna Clarke, Ben Schott and Sheila Hancock.

14 Sarah Waters
Novelist

It was while researching a PhD on gay and lesbian historical fiction that Sarah Waters realised that what she was uncovering could be of wider interest than the purely academic. In the novels Tipping the Velvet (1998), Affinity (1999) and Fingersmith (2002), she conjured a world of secretive relationships, forbidden desires and overlooked social history. But her skill was also to adopt and adapt the conventions of the Victorian sensation novel to produce thrilling narratives and she quickly gained a strong critical and commercial following. Her fourth novel, The Night Watch, was published earlier this year and she has taken lesbian writing well and truly into the mainstream.

15 Pete Ayrton
Publisher, Serpent's Tail

Pete Ayrton began his career as a translator, before becoming an editor at the radical non-fiction publisher Pluto Press, where he spent 12 years before setting up Serpent's Tail. It was one of the first houses to publish fiction straight into paperback, and Ayrton has remained clear about the editorial identity of his list - fiction and non-fiction that is radical, innovative, away from the mainstream and high-quality writing. Star writers include Walter Mosley, Lionel Shriver (just poached by HarperCollins) and two Nobel Prize-winners (Kenzaburo Oe and Elfriede Jelinek).

16 Val McDermid
Crime writer

From her first novel, Report for Murder, published in 1987, to this year's The Grave Tattoo, Val McDermid has been at the forefront of crime writing, winning a CWA Gold Dagger in 1995 for The Mermaids Singing. Even Linda Snell, The Archers' famously hard-to-please busybody, once remarked: 'I'm a Val McDermid woman, myself. She understands the depraved mind.'

17 Peter Florence
Director, the Hay Festival

The Guardian Hay Festival may not be the biggest British literary festival - that is Edinburgh - but it remains the most influential. The word-of-mouth buzz and media coverage generated by a Hay appearance can directly affect an author's sales and future pulling power. Florence hand-picks the cream of UK and international writers and pairs them in provocative mixes. Hay has spawned hundreds of imitators, flourishing in every corner of Britain.

18 Peter Straus
Managing director, Rogers, Coleridge & White literary agency

Peter Straus, 45, spent 12 years as publisher of Picador, during which time he acquired a reputation for having the Midas touch. His success stories included Bridget Jones's Diary, Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient, Graham Swift's Last Orders and Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho. Within two years of making the transition to agenting he was appointed managing director of Rogers, Coleridge & White and seems to be weaving his magic there too, with such recent successes as Alexander Masters's Stuart: a Life Backwards and Kate Long's The Bad Mother's Handbook.

19 Andrew Motion
Poet Laureate

The Poet Laureate has made a point of addressing the duties of his office seriously, writing poetry on a succession of public occasions, from the death of the Queen Mother to the horrors of last summer's London bombings, and tirelessly touring the country to beat the drum for English poetry. Motion has a direct line to the New Labour arts lobby and takes an active interest in promoting the best new poetry through innovative educational programmes. His work on the national poetry archive has pioneered a role for poetry in schools that will prove influential for generations to come.

20 Andrew Franklin
Publisher, Profile Books

When Andrew Franklin was made redundant 10 years ago from Penguin, where he had published Paul Theroux, Germaine Greer and Peter Mayle, he decided to set up his own company, launching Profile Books with a staff of three. Ten years on, it has grown to 15 and occupied three places on the top 10 bestsellers list in the run up to Christmas (Lynne Truss's Talk to the Hand, Alan Bennett's Untold Stories and the New Scientist's Does Anything Eat Wasps?

21 Jenni Murray
Presenter, Woman's Hour

Jenni Murray has arguably done more than any other broadcaster to champion books and reading in general, and women writers in particular. The presenter of Woman's Hour for the past 19 years, an author in her own right and chair of last year's Orange Prize judges, Murray has been the driving force behind the programme's unashamed and ever-growing focus on literature. It is no accident that one quarter of Woman's Hour's daily 60 minutes is taken up by new writing or a literary adaptation.

22 Philip Pullman
Novelist

Philip Pullman, a clever, left-wing Oxford schoolmaster, with a passion for Milton and Homer, had been writing children's books for years. But it wasn't until 1995 when Northern Lights, the first of his prodigious, award-winning trilogy His Dark Materials was published, that he became a must-read. Pullman's tough, moral magic invigorates readers of all ages. The trilogy was pounced on by the National Theatre and Hollywood.

23 Richard Charkin
Chief executive, Macmillan, and president of the Publishers Association

The head of the £350m global Macmillan group and president of the Publishers Association is no bland book trade politician. Richard Charkin is provocative and prone to upsetting people. He is also a strategic thinker, more engaged with online, educational and academic publishing than with the niceties of Picador's literary list. Charkin has also become the trade's blogger-in-chief. He muses on the market in slightly Pooterish style at http://charkinblog.macmillan.com. But when called upon to mount the case against Waterstone's buying Ottakar's, he assembled a formidable argument that sparked the competition investigation.

24 Martina Cole
Novelist

When Martina Cole, then a 19-year-old single mother in a Tilbury council flat, wrote her first novel, Dangerous Lady, she put it in a drawer and forgot about it; it didn't occur to her that it might ever get published. Now, 12 books and worldwide sales of three million later, she's the doyenne of the grittiest kind of crime writing. Cole's feel for the criminal underworlds of Essex and her ability have not only garnered her sales - they've also led to her teaching creative writing courses to the inmates of HMPs Belmarsh and Holloway.

25 Ted Smart
Founder, The Book People

Ted Smart started his direct sales company, The Book People, from his kitchen table in the late Eighties. His idea was to reach the kind of people who never go into bookshops, by taking books to offices, factories and schools. The mix of rock-bottom prices and fast delivery was so successful that in 2002 Smart sold a 15 per cent share of the company for £12m, paid into his personal bank account.

26 Kazuo Ishiguro
Novelist

Kazuo Ishiguro, The Booker prize-winner for The Remains of the Day was also the fancied runner-up in 2005 for Never Let Me Go, and is translated into a score of foreign languages. Ishiguro's word on unpublished manuscripts counts for a lot among literary 'coolhunters', and although he can seem like a reclusive figure, he is quietly influential behind the scenes.

27 Mark Lucas
Literary agent, Lucas Alexander Whitley

Instead of waiting for manuscripts to land on his desk, the resolutely commercial Lucas specialises in 'packaging' bestselling books: putting together someone in the public eye with the right ghostwriter and editor. These can be pop stars such as Geri Halliwell and Robbie Williams, but they are often 'real' people with extraordinary lives, such as Jane Tomlinson, who ran three marathons after being given six months to live, and Johnson Beharry, who won a VC in the Iraq war.

28 Simon Prosser
Publishing director, Penguin and Hamish Hamilton

Prosser made his name at Hodder & Stoughton with Disco Biscuits, an anthology that celebrated 10 years of club culture and was one of the first examples of literary fiction aiming beyond a 'literary' readership. He brought this approach with him to Hamish Hamilton and Penguin, where he has published Zadie Smith's White Teeth, Hari Kunzru, Dave Eggers, Ali Smith and Alain de Botton.

29 Sophie Kinsella
Novelist

Former financial journalist Kinsella has become an international bestseller in the past five years, taking up where Bridget Jones left off with her light, easy-going 'shopaholic' novels about, yes, a workaholic financial journalist who loves to shop. Her frothy upbeat novels have inspired numerous imitators.

30 Carol Ann Duffy
Poet

Carol Ann Duffy is the most successful woman poet in Britain today and has won almost every poetry prize going. It is said that she missed being Poet Laureate only because Tony Blair was worried that a gay laureate might not go down well in Middle England.

31 Simon Mayo
Presenter, BBC Radio 5 Live's Books Panel

The veteran broadcaster's weekly book panel, which features on his Radio 5 daytime show, presents listeners with reviews of a lively mixture of fiction, non-fiction, commercial and literary publishing - resulting in significant sales uplift for featured titles.

32 Stephen Page
Chief executive, Faber & Faber

When Page joined Faber in 2001, his challenge was to turn three years of losses into profit in an increasingly tough marketplace. Employing his marketing nous, he achieved his goal by building on Faber's historic backlist while driving an energetic programme of acquisitions.

33 Ian McEwan
Novelist

The bestselling author of Saturday is a rare example of a literary writer with a mass-market appeal. As a serious writer addressing contemporary themes, and not afraid to voice his views on events such as 9/11, he has become in many ways the voice of literary Britain.

34 Sigrid Rausing
Owner of Granta and Portobello Books

Instead of squandering the millions she inherited from TetraPak packaging, Rausing established a tightly managed charitable foundation which has given away £60m in grants to human rights and women's rights causes. Last year Rausing became a serious player in publishing. First she financed the start up of a new house, Portobello Books; then she bought literary magazine and book publisher Granta. But while her aims are noble, Rausing showed that she won't be running the businesses solely philanthropically - one of her first moves was a personnel change and management restructure at Granta.

35 Jamie Byng
Publisher, Canongate Books

In October 1994 when Canongate was about to be taken over, Byng and his then business partner put together a bid with five other backers and bought the company, making him joint managing director and catapulting him into an editorial role. Since then he has reinvented the company, maintaining its core Scottish identity while bringing in American and European authors. Byng has been the force behind publishing initiatives such as the Bible series and the current Myths series, now published in 37 countries.

36 Benjamin Zephaniah
Novelist and poet

Benjamin Zephaniah manages to be an establishment and an anti-establishment figure: a difficult balance. He is set for GCSE (not bad for someone with no education), but it is as a reciter of his own poems (for adults and children) he is most influential. His poetry (rated by Nelson Mandela and Bob Marley) moves at a rapper's pace. His novels for teenagers never condescend (Refugee Boy was sensational). He writes where politicians fear to tread.

37 Jane Mays
Literary editor, Daily Mail

The Daily Mail regularly outbids every other newspaper for the hottest book serialisations. If the Mail features a diet fad or celebrity autobiography it will transform the book's fortunes.

38 Anne Louise Fisher
Literary scout

Literary scouts are the ultimate behind-the-scenes matchmakers, and Anne Louise Fisher is matchmaker in chief. She and her London-based team cultivates close contacts and friendships with editors and agents. They then intercept the most hyped manuscripts and speed them to international publishers and film producers, who buy up rights. A word from Fisher and an author can find themselves with 20 global publishers inside a week.

39 Jonny Geller
Agent, joint MD of Curtis Brown

Trained as an actor, Jonny Geller swapped trades and fast became the sort of flashy agent who could grab the headlines by getting six-figure deals for first-time writers - Hari Kunzru, Jake Arnott and Adele Parks.

40 Zadie Smith
Novelist

With the publication of her first novel, White Teeth, in 2000, Zadie Smith became a publishing phenomenon - and spawned an array of imitators.

41 Simon Schama
Historian

Schama, has revolutionised the way we view history books and television programmes in the UK, transforming them from stuffy to intellectually sexy. In 2003, Schama signed a new deal with the BBC and HarperCollins for a reported £3m, the biggest advance ever for a television historian.

42 Andrea Levy
Author

Levy didn't write a novel until she was in her mid-thirties and had to wait until her fourth book, Small Island, to enjoy major success. It won the Orange Prize, the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize.

43 Clare Conville
Agent, Conville and Walsh

Former editor Clare Conville founded her own company six years ago. Her stock rocketed when she pulled DBC Pierre's Vernon God Little from the slush pile and he went on to win the 2003 Booker prize. Clients include Pierre, Adam Wishart and Harland Miller.

44 Jane Ellison
Commissioning editor, BBC Radio 4

Alongside Caroline Raphael, who is responsible for Book At Bedtime, Ellison oversees Radio 4's book-related output, including Book of the Week, With Great Pleasure and A Good Read

45 Carole Welch
Publisher, Sceptre

Among the authors Carole Welch has discovered over two decades at Sceptre are Siri Hustvedt, Andrew Miller, Jill Dawson and Andre Makine.

46 Miranda McKearney
Director of the Reading Agency

Miranda McKearney has spent the past decade working with evangelical zeal to revolutionise libraries.

47 Caroline Michel
Managing director, the William Morris Agency

Caroline Michel, who ran Vintage for 10 years, recently switched sides to take charge at William Morris's UK division.

48 Ian Jack
Editor of Granta magazine

A founder and former editor of The Independent, Ian Jack has spent 10 years at the helm of Granta

49 Mary-Kay Wilmers
Editor and part-owner of the London Review of Books

The LRB remains the house journal of the British intellectual establishment. Alumni of her literary academy include John Lanchester and Andrew O'Hagan.

50 David Godwin
Agent, David Godwin Associates

The story of how Godwin jumped straight on a flight to Delhi after coming across the manuscript of Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, signed her up on the spot and secured her $1m worth of advances is well known. He has done nothing so dramatic recently but remains an influential agent with clients including Claire Tomalin, Jim Crace and William Dalrymple.

Did we forget anybody? Email us at review@observer.co.uk

The Observer literary editor Robert McCrum will debate this question with the Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, Amanda Ross, executive producer of the Richard & Judy Book Club and Joel Rickett, deputy editor of The Bookseller on Tuesday 7 March, 7-8.30pm (doors open at 6.30pm) at The Newsroom, 60 Farringdon Road, London EC1. Tickets £5, including drinks reception. To apply for tickets email reply@guardian.co.uk stating how many tickets you require.

The ones who nearly made the list

Mark Thwaite , founder and editor of www.readysteadybook.com , the UK's largest independent literary website. A librarian by trade, Thwaite writes a regular blog attracting up to 3,000 visitors per day.

Gary McKeone , much-respected administrator of Arts Council funding for authors.

Jane Gregory , head girl among crime agents who numbers Val McDermid (see Power List) and Minette Walters among her clients and was also a co-founder with Kate Mosse of the Orange Prize for Fiction.

Alan Jenkins , TLS deputy editor, ageing bloke about town and prize-winning poet.

Rebecca Nicolson , pioneering founder of Short Books, a list that consistently punches above its weight.

David Fickling , publisher of Philip Pullman, and now developing the best list of books for children in the English language.

Angus Hyland , cover designer and director of Pentagram, one of the biggest design companies producing book covers in the UK. Hyland is a big name in book jackets. He has won every award going

and his radical theme for the Canongate 12-part series of biblical stories in 2001 was hailed a design classic.

Melvyn Bragg , one-man arts show, writer, critic, influential broadcaster, host of The South Bank Show and regular interviewer of world-class writers.

Andrew Kidd , charming, sophisticated publisher of the cutting-edge paperback list at Picador.

Catherine Lockerbie , charismatic and energetic director of Edinburgh's increasingly influential Book Festival.