Journalist Spotlight: Christina Borg, Literary Desk Manager at the Sunday Times

Christina Borg is the Literary Desk Manager at the Sunday Times and deals with the day-to-day administration of the exceptionally busy Books section.

Having previously worked in print and TV advertising and freelance film production, Borg came in to the literary field in 2001 much by chance, but with ‘a long interest in books and a desire to work with writers and journalists’.

Borg’s advice to PRs and agencies is to ‘study the Books pages before making contact’. The books section is chiefly reviews and they seldom publish author interviews or features. She does advise however that ‘there is scope for highlighting publishing news of interest to our readers on the Sunday Times blog, ‘What We’ve Learnt This Week in Books’.’

The Books Section on average receives a very high number of new titles each week but with space at a premium, the number of reviews published is fairly limited. Borg says that, ‘roughly 5% of books published in one month will be reviewed in the books section’.

The Sunday Times Books pages are extremely competitive, the 5% of books that are fortunate enough to appear in the section have been carefully selected by those who know that with the new wealth of literary material available, the reader wants a dynamic selection. Borg notes that the regular contributors to the section ‘encourage readers to examine books more closely and be increasingly discerning in their reading choices’.

A traditionalist at heart, Borg says she is ‘averse to social media’, although she has begun to use Facebook to share details of articles and books that she thinks others may enjoy- but hasn’t quite managed to bring herself to tweet yet!

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