Consultancy
Giving strategic and business development direction and advice; working with senior management teams developing and writing strategy & business plans; problem-solving / managing specific projects in the areas of publishing, media, arts and entertainment retail; exploring digital opportunities that exist. Working with media, agencies, promotion and marketplace companies and acting as the one-stop introduction to the publishing industries, companies, key players, and content. Helping to exploit the links between creative, media and retail environments.
Organisations that David Roche Enterprises has helped:
Click here to see pdf: Organisations
What is keeping me busy:
Non-Exec DIRECTORSHIPS
I am delighted to continue into my 10th year as Chairman of London Book Fair which unfortunately was due to place at Olympia in March and was cancelled owing to the Covid-19 crisis. LBF will be back in 20201 and will run alongside London Book and Screen Week. London Book Fair 2021 will be at Olympia from 9th – 11th March.
I am into my second stint of 3 years in my role as Chair of New Writing North. We are an Arts Council funded NPO promoting and developing writers across the North of England. We support writers of all ages, from our Cuckoo programmes for young writers to the Northern Writers Awards for all ages. We also help find agents and publishers and have writer development relationships with the likes of BBC, Channel 4 and The Royal Court Theatre. Additionally, we run events such as Durham Book Festival, Read Regional, Crime Story, and the Newcastle Writing Conference. Turnover has increased by 39.1% since I started as Chair, the Board has been strengthened significantly, and the organisation and CEO now have well-deserved, nationally recognised status.
In my role as Chairman of BookBrunch, the Publishing Industry’s online trade magazine, I have developed the BookBrunch Breakfast Briefings since introducing them in early 2017. These are round the table Q&As for C-Level key players in the publishing industry with a guest speaker, held under Chatham House rules. Speakers to date have included:
Matt Hancock, Secretary of State, DCMS
Darren Henley, CEO, Arts Council England
David Abraham, CEO, Channel 4
John Kampfner, CEO, Creative Industries Federation
Christine Mitchell, Head of Global Video Content, Vodafone
Kwame Kwei-Armah, Artistic Director, The Young Vic
Chris Hirst, CEO, Global Creative Network, Havas
Stephen Garrett, TV Producer (Life on Mars, Spooks, The Night Manager) and founder of Kudos
Katharine Viner, Editor-in Chief, The Guardian
Baroness Martha Lane Fox, sits on the Boards of Twitter, Chanel, Queen’s Commonwealth Trust, and Chancellor of the Open University. Founder of @doteveryone and @luckyvoice
COACHING / MENTORING
I am a professionally qualified with accreditation from The Coaching Academy. I specialise in the following:
- Masters students – particularly Publishing MAs and National Film & Television Schools (NFTS) Masters in Creative for Entrepreneurs and Executives students
- New entrepreneurial entrants to the publishing industry (particularly BAME, working class, regional, requiring support)
- London Book Fair Trailblazer Award winners
- First time director/general management/CEO role appointees for executive coaching
- 50-Somethings who would benefit from coaching to evaluate their options for continued career/career change/life balance choices
- Authors
Find out more here.
I am a lecturer and coach/mentor at NFTS’ MA in Creative Business for Entrepreneurs and Executives, and give Masterclasses for the MA in Publishing at University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN), and the MA in Creative Writing at Northumbria University. I am on the Advisory Board of the MA in Publishing at Kingston University and on their Industry Consultants Panel.
I am also on the advisory board of Lockdown Litfest.
CONSULTING
I am consulting for some select, individual authors who are seeking to optimise their publishing route to market and boost their marketing and sales.
HONORARY FELLOWSHIP
I am delight
ed and honoured to have been awarded an Honorary Fellowship by the University of Central Lancashire for ‘significant services to the British Book Trade’. This is a lovely thing to happen and there was a fantastic presentation at a graduation ceremony in July 2017.
AUTHOR
My first book was published in August 2017 with the crowdfunding publisher Unbound. It’s a book of humorous poems that I wrote originally to liven up dull poetry recitations at my childrens’ schools and is about families and what is relevant to them now. It’s called Just Where You Left It… Family Rhymes for Modern Times, and is available now. You can order it from Amazon here, from Waterstones here, and from your local independent bookshop here. It is The Lyrical Loo Book of the Year!
INTERVIEWS
I was interviewed by Alison Jones for her Extraordinary Business Book Club podcast. You can hear the interview here.
You can also read more about my book in the Bookseller magazine here, in BookBrunch here, and read an interview with myself and Book Machine about crowdfunding here. I am delighted that the brilliantly innovative chicken! Newspaper agreed to be patron of the book and 20% of my proceeds are going to the writing agency New Writing North.
OTHERS
I am very proud to have been chosen to be Honorary President of Bros’ Rugby Club by the Michelin starred and hugely talented Floriano Pellegrino and Isabella Potì. They are the founders and owners of Bros’ in Lecce and Roots Trattoria in Scorrano – both in Salento in the south of Puglia. They have founded the Bros’ Rugby Club to develop rugby in the south of Italy.
I have also recently chaired Byte The Book panels – on ‘Crowdfunding in Publishing’ at the Cafe Royale, on ‘The Authorpreneur’ at The Groucho Club and on ‘Author Teams’ at The House of St Barnabas.
photos: Byte The Book / Craig Simmonds
I am advising companies and individuals on advisory boards and on career development.
I can be contacted for NED positions or Consultancy work enquiries
Non-Executive Directorships
CHAIRMAN of LONDON BOOK FAIR
Appointed non-executive Chairman in January 2012 in the 41st year of The London Book Fair, which continues to be the global market place for rights negotiation and the sales & distribution of content across print, audio, TV, film and digital channels. With over 250 seminars and events, 2,000 international exhibiting companies and 24,500 publishing professionals, The London Book Fair encompasses the broad spectrum of the publishing industry.
London Book Fair Market Focus invites a country to feature at the Book Fair and there is a substantial curated professional and cultural programme curated with the help of The British Council. Many delegates, including senior politicians, attend from the Market Focus countries and dozens of invited authors place a spotlight on contemporary writing and the importance of their country as a publishing arena and market.
Market focus countries in recent years have been:
2011: Russia
2012 China 
2013 Turkey
2014: Korea
2015: Mexico
2016: International Publishers Conference
2017: Poland
2018: Baltic Countries: Estonia, Latvia. Lithuania
2019: Indonesia
2020: Sharjah
Recent years have seen a huge uptake at The Quantum Conference, The Author HQ, The Literary Translation Centre and The Children’s Innovation Theatre, The Forum, and the IPA Education Conference. There is even a pop-up Ivy Club which includes agent tables outside of the International Rights Centre.
© London Book Fair
CHAIR at NEW WRITING NORTH
New Writing North is funded to develop reading and writing activity in the North of England. Most of our projects are focused on the North East of England where we are based. Since 2012 Arts Council England has funded New Writing North to expand a number areas of our work into the wider North area (the North West and Yorkshire and Humberside). In 2013 two of our core projects, The Northern Writers’ Awards and Read Regional, expanded to open out to other areas in the North.
As our work develops we will be looking at opportunities to both support new writing initiatives in the wider North and to create partnerships with others that will allow us to spread the benefit of what we do more widely. We approach developing work by aligning it with the three-year plan on which our funding relationship with Arts Council England is based. This is why sometimes we do not have the capacity to help with certain projects or to get involved with every opportunity that we are approached about. Though the geographic scale of our work has expanded, our staffing capacity has not and this means that we have to manage our resources carefully.
Arts Council England funds New Writing North to develop specific areas of work over the duration of our funding agreement with them. From 2012-2015 this includes The Northern Writers’ Awards, Read Regional, Moth Publishing, The Gordon Burn Prize, Cuckoo Young Writers and our work in schools. We are also charged with looking to strategically develop literature as an art form and to support talented writers and we do this in a variety of ways both through open access schemes and competitions, developmental programmes and through individual support and projects with writers.
CHAIRMAN, BOOKBRUNCH
David is Chair of BookBrunch, the online publishing trade mews service. BookBrunch have exciting plans – the editorial team of Nick Clee and Neill Denny is bolstered by the addition of Jo Henry who is Managing Director. BookBrunch has ambitious plans for the future and has introduced the likes of C-Level executive breakfast briefings (see above) into its strategy and plans in the international trade press arena.
ADVISORY BOARD MEMBER, KINGSTON UNIVERSITY
Board member for the Publishing MA. The Board is involved in the course’s development and we are keen to contribute. Each member gives guest lectures and masterclasses, and contributes to placement and dissertation study.
UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL LANCASHIRE 
Attend the MA Publishing course to give lectures and judge presentations.
ComeRound.com
Helping to introduce this innovative company who provide real social networking muscle to launch or accelerate products and brands.
ComeRound.com arrange up to 1,000 themed parties on the same day with at least 10 people attending each. The resulting network of recommendations can quickly reach over 1.4 million friends on Facebook alone, let alone through other platforms or word of mouth. 92% of people trust recommendations from people they know, easily the highest rating, by over 20 points; Come Round not only help you harness this but will share the resulting data too.
Born out of the music industry, past parties have included Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga and JLS and have now extending to other brands such as Philips, Sharwoods, and Dr Who. This is a must for Children’s brands and licences and the scope for this sort of reach is inexhaustible.
Advisory Board Member at Bookswarm
Member of the Advisory Board of Bookswarm, the digital book marketing services venture led by Simon Appleby and Mathew F. Riley that is ramping up its activities. Bookswarm have kindly developed this website.
Partnering with Bookomi on new Bookomi Live venture
Working closely with Richard Kilgarriff to develop a Bookomi Live concept to sell books as passes to view live launch events, capture data and build a new channel for direct-to-consumer relationships. Find out more about Bookomi here.
David Roche Enterprises is a company approved by Inclusive Minds and is signed up to their charter
David Roche has attended both The Role of the Managing Director and The Role of the Non-Executive Director courses at the
Institute of Directors and is available for other suitable Non-Executive roles
RECENT ROLES
BOARD MEMBER at BOOKTRUST
Member of Development Board, Digital Strategy and Branding Committees and chairing the Trustee Recruitment group
Serving 2008 – 2015 as a Trustee on the Board of Booktrust, the biggest independent UK-wide charity dedicated to encouraging people of all ages and cultures to enjoy books.
Their work supports children and young people, parents and carers and indeed anyone who would benefit from the positive impact that books, reading and writing can have on their lives.
Vision: Empowering people through reading and writing.
Mission: Booktrust inspires everyone to enjoy books, reading and writing and the lifelong benefits that they bring. Our aim is to build a literate, connected and creative society.
As a Trustee, and interim Chair in 2014, I was particularly involved with the Business Development Board, Brand development, Digital strategy and chaired the group who successfully managed recruitment of a new Chair in 2014 (Karen Brown, also Chair of Oxfam) and 4 new Trustees in 2015.
David also worked as a consultant in 2011 to develop a new 3 year Strategic and Business Plan with the CEO and Senior Management Team. This is now being successfully implemented by Booktrust, continued Government funding has been confirmed for the next 2 years and funding is being successfully diversified.
CONSULTANT for EU PROMOTIONS
EU Promotions offer effective Retail Marketing Programmes to increase sales and market share of their customers across Europe. Currently working with them on developing an exciting national campaign with schools, authors and a major retailer.
CONSULTANT at ENTERTAINMENT ALLIANCE Ltd
Entertainment Alliance is a specialist provider of physical entertainment products to non-core retailers across Grocery, High Street, Convenience, Discounter and Out-of-Town retail channels in the UK in partnership with major content owners.
Entertainment Alliance has exclusive partnerships with more than twenty content owners across Music, Video & Games including Entertainment One, Hit Entertainment, Paramount Home Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Music Group and Warner Brothers.
Entertainment Alliance acts as an extension of the traditional sales team within these business’, providing direct-from-manufacturer services consolidated into one representative, one box and one invoice. Entertainment Alliance currently service over 8000 stores across 30 retail customers including major brands such as Aldi, B&M, BHS, The Co-operative, Lidl, The Range, Waitrose & WH Smith, as well as running The Entertainment Store for eBay (http://stores.ebay.co.uk/The-Entertainment-Store) and Rakuten (http://www.rakuten.co.uk/shop/the-entertainment-store/).
I completed a consultant director role in 2015 at Entertainment Alliance Ltd, a specialist provider of physical entertainment products to over 8,000 non-core retailers customers including major brands such as Waitress, Aldi, WH Smith, The Range, The Co-operative, BHS, B&M, as well as running The Entertainment Store on eBay and Rakuten. I developed a strategy for them to enter the books market, provided the necessary introductions at the highest level, presented the EA offer and brokered the initial stages of the deals with major publishing groups in the UK.
AUTHOR LITERARY AGENT / BUSINESS MANAGER
Authors
Stephen Bayley & Roger Mavity
The intriguing combination of design guru Stephen Bayley & media buddha Roger Mavity together have written Life’s a Pitch – a book to help you win life’s battles in business, at home and over lunch… Hear them talk about it.
Roger’s 2nd book, with a foreword by Stephen, has just been published by Little, Brown, 3 times publisher of the year and publisher of the likes of Steve Job’s biography and JK Rowling’s new books. The Rule Breakers Book of Business describes how to achieve business success by ignoring conventional wisdom, instead of being trapped by it. It extols the virtues of passion rather than process, of the lateral rather than the logical. It’s a slightly maverick look at key aspects of how we work in bite sized pieces. Hear Stephen Bayley interviewing Roger about the book here.
Lyndsay Russell
Agent for Lyndsay Russell, the author of Making It Big, a debut novel that has become an Amazon Kindle top 10 bestseller and number 2 on popular women’s fiction.
Following a fantastic review in Publishers Weekly, Making It Big has been optioned for a Hollywood movie and as well as a significant 5 figure sum for the option, Lyndsay has signed an agreement to write the screenplay with US star writer and producer Lee Aronsohn, co-creator and writer of Two and a Half Men. Lyndsay spent 3 months in LA writing with the screenplay with Lee in 2012, ‘living the dream’!
Lyndsay signing the deals
Lyndsay Russell and Lee Aronsohn on the set of Two and a Half Men
Lydia Davies
Lydia has written an extraordinary first book called Raw that recounts her experience as a sufferer from horrific eating disorders during her time at, and eventual drop out from, University of Northumbria in Newcastle. It is dark, disturbing, brutally honest and always compelling and unique in this space, as it is so soon after the worst and reproduces both the doctors’ notes a the time and her diary that she kept. She wrote the first, harrowing draft in just a month. Lydia was signed up by HarperCollins in December 2014 and Raw was published in April 2015.
Advisor to Murphy Literary Agency
Working with Seamus Murphy to advise his literary agency business which sells worldwide English rights for Russian authors. Recent successes included a first time in English language deal with Quercus for Mikhail Shishkin. His first book in translation, The Light and the Dark, will be published in 2013.
Consultancy and Publisher Services
The Stock Range MOT provides reviews of both backlist and frontlist to arm publishers’ sales teams with the data to drive positive, incremental results. Providing publishers with a bespoke, expert service to assess and audit UK & International sales opportunities for both physical and digital, as well as reporting, analysis and interrogation of inventory, stockholding and all channels.
Working with Pete Harvey, whose 20 years with Waterstones, Borders and HarperCollins give him unique experience in data manipulation, analysis and the ability to provide results that have lasting beneficial effects. Pete’s clients included Quercus Books and Aurum Publishing Group.
See what publishers who have had an MOT think:
“The MOT is a fantastic idea and professional service. Pete Harvey’s knowledge and combination of technical expertise and strong commercial eye enabled him to zero in on the issues that needed tackling. His combination of retail and publishing experience is invaluable and he quickly identified not only scope for mid-term improvements but also immediate money-making opportunities for the team. Pete is an invaluable added resource who unlocks incremental revenue.”
Jane Harris, Group Sales and Marketing Director, Quercus Publishing
Andorran Premium Properties
Working as part of the Andorran Premier Properties team (formerly Invico) to harness the potential of this beautiful tax friendly jurisdiction with its healthy mountain environment, world class skiing, temperate climate and duty free prices. Andorra is one of the world’s best kept secrets, handily located between Barcelona and Toulouse and far more accessible than other tax free states such as Monaco.
A.P.P. is the only company licensed to deal fully with both real estate sales and relocation support, in particular with banking, tax, government advice and residency.
Click on Prezi below for an Overview (then select Fullscreen option on bottom right hand corner – NB may take a minute to load):
PREVIOUS ENGAGEMENTS.
Meet The Innovators Presentation, Independent Publishers Guild Conference, March 2013 
Launch of Evanidus and Boosh to the trade.
NFTS MA in Creative Business for Entrepreneurs and Executives
February 2013 – 2017
Masterclass lecture to the group as part of their publishing orientation session. This is one module in this 10 month business course with NFTS.
Walker Books Annual Conference 21st June 2012
Speech/Presentation/Q&A to the Walker Books global team on the theme of ‘The Big Picture‘ on the role of the publisher over the next 5 years.
Westminster Media Forum Keynote Seminar 24th May 2012
Speaker and Panellist at Westminster Media Forum Prospects for UK Publishing – retail, eBooks and digital opportunities.
Consultant to Booktrust 2011
Resigned from the BooktrustBoard to tender for the role of commercial consultant. Won the tender and worked closely with the CEO, the senior management team and the Board to develop and write the new Strategy and Business Plan to turn the business round and take it through the changes required up until 2015. This project took 4 months of part time involvement up to the end of 2011.
The Plan is now being successfully implemented by Booktrust, continued Government funding has been confirmed for the next 2 years and funding is being successfully diversified.
David was asked to rejoin the Board as a Trustee in June 2012.
Booksellers Association 2011
Engaged by the Booksellers Association of Great Britain and Ireland, with the support of The Publishers Association, to develop a new media format for books and to pitch to target partners.
Bookseller Industry Awards 2011
Part of a top-level panel judging the Bookseller Industry Awards 2011. The panel also included The Bookseller’s Neill Denny, marketing consultant Damian Horner, retail specialist Paul Smiddy and bestselling novelist and Orange Prize cofounder Kate Mosse.
The Book Industry Conference 2011
David was the Conference Chair for The Book Industry Conference 2011 in May. The Conference is a significant event in the Book Industry Calendar, being one of the few opportunities for all corners of the Industry to come together to debate, learn, and set the agenda for the years to come. It is attended by hundreds of delegates made up of leading figures from the fields of Booksellers, Publishers, Wholesalers, Distributors, Librarians, Authors, Agents and Book industry professionals.
Booksellers Association Conference 2006 & Booksellers Association Conference 2007
Delivered the ‘Presidential Address’ at the Booksellers Association Conferences in both 2006 and 2007. This was the opening keynote speech for the 2 day Industry Conference attended by hundreds of leading figures across retail, publishing, authors, literary agents, distributors and wholesalers. This presentation was followed immediately by Richard Dawkins in 2006 and Charles Handy in 2007. Charles Handy was kind enough to quote: “David has an engaging and witty presentation style that complements the significant substance of his content”.
BA’s Digitisation Conference 2007
Speech at Conference on the changes to be expected in the publishing industry as a result of the advances in digital delivery.
Retail Week Conference 2004
“Competing with Tesco and Asda/Wal-Mart: The Impact of the Supermarkets on UK Retailing.” Speech on how to protect high street businesses from the perils of competition from supermarkets. Read more
Peach Factory Conference for the Pub, Bar and Restaurant Chain Industry 2008
“Food, Drink and the Consumer” An exclusive conference on the latest trends in UK eating and drinking out market and how they impact the way pubs and restaurants are marketed, managed and developed. Was asked to present the issues facing bookselling and how we were reacting in response to the threat of supermarkets and the internet.
Inaugural Spoken Word Conference September 2009
This conference was held at the Rose Theatre and Kingston University on 18th September 2009. Over 90 delegates attended from across the Spoken Word spectrum – researchers, practitioners, teachers, and policy-makers. Was asked to speak on the important role that the spoken word represents in business. Read more
