Inside the Selection Process

May 01, 2025

Photograph © Dunja Opalko

Imagine that you have the power to work with the world’s most talented illustrators and craftspeople to create the most beautiful books. A book-lover’s dream, right? So of course there’s a catch. You can only create 50 books – out of all the books in the world, ever – every year. How do you choose? How?

This is the burning question that haunts the dreams of every Folio editor. ‘How do we choose a Folio book? It’s something we’re always questioning,’ says Publisher Tom Walker.

‘At Folio we all get involved – it feels democratic. That’s an unusual model, and it gives a genuine breadth to what we publish. It allows us to follow more offbeat and intriguing book choices, as well as to make space for the big hitters we all know and love.’

Folio’s editors play a key role in book choice. There’s plenty of data available, Tom points out, but the numbers only tell you so much. Choosing a book is about knowledge, judgement, enthusiasm, taste… and long, long discussions, sometimes in the pub or a bookshop. Which authors are exciting us most right now? Which do we think readers would love to see as a Folio book? Which demand illustration?

lllustrations © Marie-Alice Harel, from Howl's Moving Castle

‘Some authors just lends themselves to a more highly designed book. Anything by Haruki Murakami has an edge of style which you just know will have a cultish appeal all of its own.’ But Folio’s editors, he points out, aren’t the only people at the company constantly searching for the next perfect book. Everyone else – whether they work in finance, customer service, HR or marketing – is regularly invited to throw their ideas into the pot. ‘Because we are an employee-owned business, everyone really cares about we do,’ says Tom. Any book which makes it to the final stage, he says, will always have a Folio champion; someone within the business – whoever they are, whatever they do – who cares deeply about it. ‘Folio is, above all, by readers for readers. A few years ago, our CEO Joanna persuaded us to publish Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman: it’s a book that really matters to her and has made a big difference to her life. Having someone with that connection to a book helps us to perfect our version.’

And, of course, Folio’s large, knowledgeable and highly engaged community are a crucial part of the conversation. ‘These are not just any readers, so what they tell us is very significant,’ says Tom. And when Folio asked that community to nominate a book to celebrate the company’s 75th anniversary, the 5,000 books they proposed were eventually whittled down to, rather appropriately, The Neverending Story by Michael Ende.

Folio readers who need a particular Folio book in their life don’t wait to be asked. They are constantly in touch, by social, email and phone. ‘I think that’s what sets Folio apart: we are interested, we listen, we look outside our own walls and we take ideas seriously,’ says Tom.

Choices also need to fit into the bigger picture. Folio publishes around 50 books each year and Tom’s team needs to ensure there is a breadth of genre, and a genuine diversity of authors, illustrators and introducers. ‘It’s very important to me that we push the boundaries and experiment with what can work as a Folio book. That, to me, is one of the most interesting parts of what we do.’

He recalls the incredible success of Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, which Folio published in 2019. ‘It’s still one of our bestsellers. I knew about it through the Studio Ghibli film, but I was completely unaware of its underground cult status. The obsession that people have around that book! People absolutely adore it – as do I now. I don’t think I had any sense of how successful it would be. I’m always taken aback by success, and just overjoyed, frankly, by people’s adoration for certain books.’

When experimentation goes hand in hand with commercial success, that’s great, says Tom. When it doesn’t, that’s also fine so long as the book we’ve created is a wonderful thing. And it always is. In 2024, Folio published the first ever illustrated edition of Gitanjali by Nobel Prize-winning author Rabindranath Tagore, a love poem not only to a higher being, but also to the concept of what it means to be in love.

‘It has not yet sold out, but it has the most gorgeous woodcuts by Anagh Banerjee, a wonderful Indian born, New York-based artist. I know that anyone who picks up that book in 50 years’ time will think: “Folio did something very cool there.” I’m so happy that we’re able to think beyond the purely commercial.’

And that makes sense, because although Shakespeare is one of Folio’s bestsellers right now, so is Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park. As Tom points out: ‘When we make that decision to publish a new book, the most important thing is that it’s a book that matters to readers – whatever that book might be.’

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Inside the Selection Process