Mare Nostrum is an experienced, full-service publishing company providing dynamic distribution, sales, marketing, data management, and consultancy services.
With over 20 years of experience, our creative, multi-lingual team uses its local expertise and extensive network of trade partners & academic contacts to help clients achieve their goals.
We’ve helped over 25 presses generate in excess of three million (GBP) turnover in EMEA in the past year. More recently we have expanded our reach into the markets of Asia Pacific.
We understand our markets and we understand your unique requirements as a publisher.
We get the best out of every title published.
Services
Since Mare Nostrum was established in 2003 we have built up a complete range of client services, working closely with our publishers to help them achieve their goals.
Services
- Distribution
- Sales
- Marketing
- Data Management
- Consultancy
Territories
- UK
- Europe
- Middle East
- Africa
- Asia
- Australasia
Some of our clients:
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Sage
Partner since 2005Through the increase of our campus presence since 2016, we’ve increased textbook sales as a proportion of growing territory sales.
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Birkhäuser
Partner since 2018We’re now providing sales, marketing, and distribution for Birkhäuser, Ambra, Detail, and De Gruyter Art in the UK & Ireland
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Harvard Business Review
Partner since 2012 through Ingram Publisher ServicesIn the previous year we grew sales in continental Europe by 18%.
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Thieme
Partner since 2009Since taking over their sales, marketing, and distribution for the Uk and Ireland in 2014, we have grown Thieme’s unit sales by over 156%.
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Emerald Publishing
Partner Since 2016In our first year we helped Emerald Publishing achieve overall growth of 26% across our territories.
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Brill
Partner since 2007Since partnering with Brill to sell and market their digital products we have grown sales by over 50%.
What we do
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Distribution
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We aim to have all active titles in stock so that we never miss a sale. We use a combination of sophisticated algorithms and our nuanced understanding of the market to make stocking decisions. Our dedicated team carefully monitor shipping, print on demand turnaround, and stock levels to ensure we can fulfil last minute adoptions, supply author events, or respond quickly to publicity spikes.
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Sales
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Our multilingual sales team maintains regular contact with online vendors, library suppliers, bookshops, libraries, distributors, and academics. This allows us to nurture an effective and mutually beneficial relationship with them on your behalf, and to maximise sales of your front and back list titles.
We have many years of experience marketing and selling a wide variety of both print & digital products, and have a broad knowledge of the different business models used. We work closely with our customers to grow sales, provide editorial with insightful market information and feedback, and improve the client publisher's market share.
Over a decade of collaboration with respected partners means that we can offer our publisher clients established business relationships, alongside our market knowledge and intuition.
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Marketing
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A key element of Mare Nostrum’s marketing activity is based around an extensive, up-to-date, end-user database which has been cultivated through direct links with professionals, researchers and academics. We offer customised marketing campaigns and work closely with relevant societies & associations to promote special member offers. We attend conferences, book fairs, and exhibitions to sell our client’s books, expand our database, and engage directly with consumers to assess the markets and support editorial.
We endeavour to work closely with client's authors and can assist them with launches, social media, and special sales opportunities. We also send out review, publicity, and inspection copies and ensure that our clients' seasonal catalogues are regularly sent out to academics, libraries, and vendors.
Where required we can build a satellite version of a client publisher e-commerce site to capture the local sales resulting from our direct marketing campaigns.
We pride ourselves on maintaining a regular dialogue with our clients, thus allowing us to co-ordinate and tailor our marketing work to their requirements.
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Data Management
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Our data management team will work closely with you to maximise the clarity and suitability of your data for our markets. We use our specialised knowledge of the industry to interpret the most appropriate and effective way to distribute accurate metadata — via our technology partner — to data distributors and key accounts, ensuring that your titles are constantly visible.
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Consultancy
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We have experience with various consulting projects, including market research, print-to-digital solutions, and sales & marketing strategies. These ventures have been specific to certain territories or sometimes much broader in scope, and are typically collaborations with small and medium-sized enterprises.
If you would like to discuss a potential consultancy collaboration, or to find out more about our experience, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
How we do it
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We believe in the personal touch
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We think face-to-face contact is a key element of sales. We call on academics to win & retain adoptions, and feed the information that we gather campus calling back to our clients to build their territory knowledge. Our long-standing personal relationships with key online vendors, booksellers, distributors, librarians, and academics help us understand why & how buying decisions are made.
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We think every book matters
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We get the very best out of every book we represent and design tailor-made sales and marketing plans for all our titles. Our books range from undergraduate textbooks, professional business titles, library reference works, academic monographs, and mainstream trade titles. Whatever you’re publishing, we’ll work with you to reach more readers and maximise sales of every title.
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We're strong collaborators
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We want you to feel like we’re a branch of your own company, but without any of the associated costs. Alongside detailed reporting on your performance each season, we can evaluate market conditions, or assess the reception of key titles — all to help your editorial, sales, and marketing teams benefit from our knowledge and experience.
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We innovate
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We pride ourselves on offering a highly personalised, proactive service. Whether it’s an attention grabbing promotion, designing one-off flyers for a specialised event, or a niche special sale, we’re always thinking creatively about how to reach the right audiences and make the sale. Our in-house CRM, which we’ve been maintaining for many years, helps make our direct marketing as targeted and intelligent as possible.
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Authors matter to us
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Whether they want a book launch in Melbourne, or flyers in Madrid at short notice, our friendly and experienced team are happy to collaborate with territory authors to share knowledge & networks, and work out what’s best for your books. We want your authors to feel like they’re in safe hands.
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We're sales channel experts
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Our dynamic team finds creative solutions to sales channel challenges, responding quickly to guarantee maximal sales in this rapidly shifting arena. We’re equally confident managing major accounts like Amazon or Gardners, staying ahead of the changing library market, and working with specialist independent bookshops to ensure the maximum reach of your books.
Mare Nostrum in numbers
Countries our team sell to
Campus trips in 2018
Universities supplied with digital platform products to date
Average open rate for our marketing campaigns in 2018
Titles we represent
Vendors supplied in 2018
Turnover generated in 2018
Active academic contacts on our database
Growth for new distribution client in 2018
When we began to move into e-book publishing Mare Nostrum came up with a very nuanced and clear analysis of what was happening in the market, and how we could successfully mould our publishing to maximise sales. Following a long series of discussions we formulated an approach which resulted in immediate individual and collection sales; within two years our e-books sales were in excess of 10% of our total.
Richard Hart, founder, ex-Managing Director, Hart Publishing Ltd
The transition was handled professionally and quickly. I am delighted with Mare Nostrum's level of engagement on the sales and marketing level, taking on board both the print and digital sides of the business. We are in constant communication and there is continual feedback on sales leads, marketing opportunities, as well as editorial. This knowledge of the market and close relationship with Thieme has helped grow the business.
Louisa Turrell, International Sales Director, Thieme Medical Publishers
We have seen solid and consistent sales growth even through difficult market conditions and Mare Nostrum have been integral to our success. Their trade know-how, marketing reach, and academic calling is underpinned by responsive customer service and administration.
Martin Vicars, Export Sales Manager, SAGE Publications
I have managed our relationship with Mare Nostrum since becoming the Brill European Sales Manager in 2007. I have found them to be very thorough and professional in their approach, and thanks to this collaboration Brill now has a much greater market penetration and understanding of the territories they manage.
Eva Wantzen, European Digital Sales Manager, Brill Publishing
Mare Nostrum provide an excellent service for publishers and the team are a pleasure to work with. They enjoy good and close working relationships with the customers and provide refreshingly straightforward and reliable feedback from the market.
George Banbury, Sales & Marketing Director, Perseus Books Group UK
Mare Nostrum’s high level of service, collaborative sales approach, and specialized market knowledge are of great value. They are a group of strategic thinkers entrenched in all facets of academic publishing and highly committed to the goals and targets of the publishers they serve—so much so that they become a vital member of your team.
Marit Vagstad, Sales Director, Channel Sales, Palgrave Macmillan
Get in touch
Concerned about POD price and quality?
We can find you the right partner.
Want to sell your digital platform internationally?
Our territory-specific digital sales teams will support you.
Ebooks? Metadata distribution? Campus calling? Publicity? Bookshop events or trade shows?
Let’s talk about the options — we can devise a tailor-made package to meet your needs.