About Us

PCG’s mission is to work with your business to deliver sustainable revenue and market share growth globally across Print, Digital and Blended learning formats through bespoke Consultancy Solutions.

Values

Global network – PCG is a global network of publishing professionals, with expertise in all areas of your business. Our team includes sales and marketing professionals, business strategists, distribution experts and publishing experts all with a mission to develop and enhance those aspects of your business you are particularly focussed on.

Passion – with over 100+ combined years in the industry, our passion speaks for itself. Our passion is to deliver growth, innovation and creative solutions for your business.

Integrity and diversity – honesty, transparency and fairness are integral to how we work. We recognise the value of everyone in your business and ensure that all appropriate stakeholders are listened to throughout our consultancy process

I’ve worked with Simon over a number of years in the various roles he has held at Pearson. I’ve always found him to be an open and engaging colleague, with a positive outlook. He has excellent industry knowledge, particularly in the academic and schools publishing sphere (covering print and digital formats, for everything from traditional textbooks, to courseware, assessment platforms etc). Given that extensive knowledge base its not a surprise to me that Simon is now looking to utilise those skills in a consultancy role for his next challenge. I can see how his knowledge and experience would add value to authors, publishing houses and aggregators (retailers, libraries and wholesale) in rights management, strategic sales management and planning and content marketing’.

David Prescott, Chief Executive, Blackwell Ltd

As a business we have worked with Simon for many many years. He has in depth knowledge across the educational and academic publishing channels embracing the multitude of complexities needed to bring a book to market and reach its desired destination and commercial goals. On a personal level Simon is an approachable, honourable and sincere individual who is able to make and take difficult conversations and decisions, not just the easy ones. His advice and guidance should prove constructive to anyone trading in this commercial channel’.

Simon Morley, Buying Director, Gardner’s

Simon’s role as Chair of the Governing Body came at a time when the school was going through significant change and striving towards school improvement. Simon led the school’s governing body to ensure all of the team played an effective and active part in the development of the school. His attention to detail and determination, ensured only the best outcomes. Simon’s relationships with all stakeholders was a key factor in his aspirations, resulting in the excellent reputation the school holds in the community today’.

Annette Mashru, Headteacher, St Andrew’s School, Chinnor

‘We started working with Simon Pollard and the team at PGC in 2022 and it has been such a pleasure. They are energetic, polished, flexible, and friendly, and the knowledge they have passed on to our member publishers is invaluable for them in growing their sales. With a team that has such widespread knowledge we know that we will continue to collaborate with PGC with future projects.’

Vikki Reilly, Business Development Manager, Publishing Scotland

We have been working with PCG since July 2021. Simon Pollard and his team have been nothing but highly professional:
Simon has been able to gather a team of experts who, each in their specialty, have all provided very valuable insights and advice, as and when we needed it.
There has been a strong drive from Simon to reorganise our marketing and sales activities overall, something the PCG team has done very well, while keeping within the agreed budget.
Most importantly, Simon has been able to bring energy and enthusiasm for marketing and sales, a field that, as technology people, we had never really had an interest in.

Sabine Guerry, CEO, CloudPublish

Raintree was delighted that the PCG team brought energy and enormous insight into tackling our ‘Ask’, “how do we better understand our performance with Amazon and strategically grow sales”. They provided us with a clear and focused set of strategic priorities which we will now as a business employ. It’s been a pleasure to get to know Simon and the team and we would recommend their services to any business looking to understand how to improve performance with Amazon.

Doug Pocock, Managing Director, Capstone International Publishing and Raintree

We were delighted to have the opportunity to work with Simon on our plans for developing an open access textbook publishing programme. Simon took the time to listen carefully to the brief and presented us with detailed plans for his approach for our input before proceeding. He brought in expert colleagues to cover particular areas of the work and scheduled regular catch ups along the way. This considered and thoughtful approach ensured that the report we received covered everything we needed, and we now have detailed information and plans for a marketing and dissemination strategy that will help us as we develop our programme. It was a pleasure to work with Simon and his colleagues and we would recommend PCG highly.

Lara Speicher, Head of Publishing, UCL Press
“Since March 2020, Simon has been working with BIC to help further develop our strategic partnership engagement, grow and diversify our membership base, and investigate new revenue opportunities. Simon is easy to work with, knowledgeable, highly professional and reliable. He is an expert in stakeholder management – building and maintaining strong relationships across the various sectors of the book industry, and has quickly become an advocate of BIC’s vision, strategy, activities and agenda. Despite the impact of COVID-19, Simon has succeeded in recruiting new members for BIC, which is a testament to his professional tenacity and dedication. I would not hesitate to recommend Simon’s services to anyone in the book industry.”
Karina Urquhart, Executive Director, Book Industry Communication Ltd (BIC)
“Simon worked on a project for Kogan Page, investigating new sales channels to sell directly to senior decision makers within universities. I was impressed with his professionalism, market insight and approach to working with stakeholders across the business. Simon’s approach was collaborative and he helped us think through our requirements, and formulate a clear strategy, goals and sign off stages for the project, which was delivered successfully and was extremely beneficial in informing our wider sales strategy. I would highly recommend Simon’s consultancy services to anyone in academic and professional publishing”.
Rex Elston, Sales and Business Development Director, Kogan Page

If you would like market-leading expertise and the right level of support to grow your business we would love to hear from you.
Please leave your email details on our contact page or give us a call on 07909 974 729