Aimée Felone
In 2017 Aimée Felone co-founded Knights Of, an independent children’s publisher with a mission to publish more inclusively and diversely. Knights Of gained huge attention and support from within the industry in October 2019, when they set up a pop-up shop in Brixton to celebrate their first birthday. The project was so successful that Knights Of have now set up the bookshop – Round Table Books – in a permanent home in Brixton.
Aimée Felone is the co-founder of the ground-breaking independent children’s publisher Knights Of, which aims to make books better by publishing diverse stories that give windows into as many worlds as possible. It wasn’t until her third year of university that Aimée even considered publishing as an option.
In previous careers talks, the only choice that was presented seriously for an English student was teaching − something she definitely didn’t want to do. So when, during this time, Aimée was asked by a lecturer on her year abroad whether publishing was a career she would be interested in, this changed everything.
What followed was a year of internships, with placements at the Eve White and David Higham literary agencies, and at Penguin as well as OneWorld. For half of this year, the work was unpaid, and Aimée credits the fact she was able to live at home with her very supportive mum with enabling her to participate in unpaid internships and get the foot in the door that she needed. Following this, Aimée got a job at Scholastic as an Editorial Assistant and left there in 2017 as an editor to launch Knights Of with former Scholastic colleague David Stevens.
'The decision to leave corporate publishing and launch an indie felt like a sigh of relief for me.'
You took a big leap − from a permanent job at a big publisher − to set up your own independent publisher. What was the driving force behind that?
If I’m really honest, the decision didn’t feel risky. I was at a point where I was so despondent and frustrated with the job I was in that I became nonchalant about it, which completely isn’t me. So the decision to leave corporate publishing and launch an indie felt like a sigh of relief for me, it didn’t feel super scary. Yes, there are scary things about it, especially when we weren’t earning any money, but I felt much more at peace when we stepped out. David, my co-founder and the only person I would want to do this with, had left Scholastic three months before me and he was aware that I wasn’t happy..
In the eight years David had worked in publishing, he had never worked with a person of colour in editorial before and I was the first black woman he had ever worked with in publishing full stop. We had conversations about what we could do to make lasting change and from there Knights Of was born. For us, what the company looks like was as important as what the book and end product looks like. The vision for the company has always been four words: hire diversely, publish inclusively. We spent a winter writing up pitch decks, getting a list of potential investors together and working out the structure of the company. Everything grew from there: the team, the blog, the bookshop, everything.
'A 10-year-old black girl reached out to me and said ‘I’ve never seen myself in books. I saw you on the telly and you look like me. Now I’m writing a story.’ I cried when I got that email, because that is why we’re doing this.'
What would you say to someone who has a big idea, like yours, and doesn’t know how to activate it?
The more voices and allies you have in-house, the better. If you have an idea for your company, I would say go to your manager first and gather support in- house before you present it in a big meeting, which I know can be intimidating. Get people on your side and then go as a group to present so that you have people backing you, but don’t let the idea be taken from you. I always think if you’re not sure whether you can say something, put it in an email − whether you have a grievance or you have something positive to present − and see where you go from there.
Once the idea is in motion, try and enjoy it otherwise things will happen and you won’t really realise how great they are. The press pick up for us has been incredible – we’ve been on the BBC, SKY News, ITV news, Radio 4 and there was a phenomenal Guardian piece that gave the crowdfund for the bookshop a double page spread. We never stopped to realise that all of these things are big. We need to be better at stopping and reflecting that this is huge. But we’re trying. We get so caught up in what we need to do next, and the duty of care we have to our authors, that we miss the amazing things happening in the present. After I was on SKY a ten-year-old black girl reached out to me and said ‘I’ve never seen myself in books. I saw you on the telly and you look like me. Now I’m writing a story.’ I cried when I got that email, because that is why we’re doing this.
'If long-lasting change is going to be seen, it needs to be with people being hired at higher levels.'
What more do you think the publishing industry could be doing to promote diversity?
Hire diversely at levels where change can be actioned. I love, appreciate and respect all the work internship schemes are doing to open the doors to people from different backgrounds, but if you want to see long-lasting change, it needs to be at the higher level: your commissioning editors, your heads of marketing, publicity, sales and rights teams. Otherwise, whilst you may be in the room, you might not have the voice. You may want to say things but because of your very junior, entry-level position you can’t, or if you do you know it will never get to the top of the chain. If long-lasting change is going to be seen, it needs to be with people being hired at higher levels.
We also need to stop passing the buck of blame. I have heard the same complaints over and over, ‘we don’t get anything diverse from agents, they don’t send us things,’ or sometimes, ‘retailers won’t support that’. Publishers need to stop blaming everybody else and admit ‘we’re not doing what we should be doing,’ and hire more inclusively. It’s important that you go into a room and see someone at a high level who maybe not even looks like you, but who doesn’t look like the homogeneous whole. It’s aspirational.
'Not everybody wants to go to work and present the case for diversity.'
How can white people become better allies to people of colour within the industry?
Listen. Do not talk over. Do not take. If someone wants to champion things in-house, support them. I’ve heard too many times about people who have had a great idea but soon got dropped off emails, excluded from meetings and their ideas were presented as other people’s. I do understand that in an entry level job you don’t have a lot of power, but you should be able to have an idea and see it through without it being taken from you.
Notice the one or two people who are the only people in your company from diverse backgrounds. Talk to them − not necessarily about diversity, because responding to that is not their problem or their job − but keep your ears open. I remember sitting in offices where I was the only person of colour and, whether it was intended or not, I become the sounding board for all diversity chats. But you also have an actual job to do and advising is not your responsibility. My friends say that too, that they have become a sound board for diversity − and what acknowledgement are they going to get from that? It’s so tiring. In a job in sales or publicity you end up being a diversity advisor and not everyone wants to or has the confidence to be as loud as Knights Of. Not everybody wants to go to work and present the case for diversity.
'The market was always there, we just weren’t speaking to them.'
Looking forward, what do you think the priorities should be for the industry over the next five years?
In kids publishing it will be maintaining attractiveness for a generation that is increasingly online, which doesn’t mean we jump on Youtube or Snapchat. It doesn’t mean invading that area which they see as their space; it’s more about finding the stories that entice them and publishing them well. We don’t need to pull them away from what they love. There is an audience there who we haven’t been serving. Sometimes the language used to talk about Knights Of is ‘you found a market’ − no, we didn’t. The market was always there, we just weren’t speaking to them. In Brixton there wasn’t a permanent bookshop space, but if you provide it, people come through the door. It sounds simplistic but it kind of is. It’s about creating the spaces in an authentic way, not just taking over, showing readers that we can serve them and that we will publish everyone’s stories.
'We have a duty of care to be relevant and accessible as an industry.'
We also need to allow people to write the stories they want to. I’ve heard awful things where authors have been told ‘this story isn’t Indian enough’ or ‘this story isn’t black enough’. What does that mean?! We can’t pigeonhole authors from diverse backgrounds to what people outside those communities see as authentic. If you are not in that community, how can you tell me what is or isn’t authentic?
We have to remember it is bigger than us. Books play a massive part in our lives; I’m sure we all remember the first books we fell in love with and the feeling of escape they gave. That’s why I work in kids publishing. That one book can be everything to someone. I hear often that we are all in this because we love books, which is great, but it’s important to remember it is also about the readers. It’s about a generation of readers we are trying to cater for, a generation of very different kids who are growing up in a world that is nothing like the one we grew up in. We have a duty of care to reflect their lives in books, and to be relevant and accessible as an industry.
Finally, can you tell us about one other woman working in publishing who inspires you?
Verna Wilkins, author and former Tamarind books publisher, is a constant source of inspiration for me. She sat with me late last year and offered so many words of wisdom on how to survive and thrive in an industry that can sometimes seem to be more interested in talking about its issues rather than solving them. She was one of the first black women to take up space in children’s publishing and has surely paved the way for me to even exist and have a voice in it today.
