Jenn Risko
Jenn Risko is the Co-Founder and former Publisher of Shelf Awareness, the book industry’s leading media company. She has over 35 years of experience as an entrepreneur, sales and marketing maven, and builder of companies, products, audiences, and culture.
She departed Shelf Awareness in August 2024 to take a break and begin looking for a new adventure.
She calls this phase: In Search of the Next Jenn.
Accomplishments
I built, ran, and grew Shelf Awareness for 19 and a half years. It was my job to know everyone in book publishing and bookselling, both in the US and abroad, and establish deep, mutually beneficial relationships. I recruited and directly managed the senior team including the CFO, COO, and VP of Sales and Marketing. For 90% of my time there, we had year over year of revenue and profit growth.
I created all of the products after Shelf Pro, including Shelf for Readers - a weekly consumer facing newsletter that has helped indie bookstores sell hundreds of thousands of books. The technology and deployment of this had never been seen before in the publishing world. We became the first book media company to diversify our revenue from BTB to include BTC as well. I invented all of the advertorial products: Dedicated Issue, Maximum Shelf, Galley Love of the Week. Pre-Order Eblast has helped millions of book lovers pre-order upcoming books. Following the success of Shelf for Readers, we used our tech and know-how to develop a services part of our company that has greatly helped regional associations improve their services with holiday catalogs and other mailings.
Some things I am good at:
Strategy
Marketing
Sales
Parallel Parking
Cooking
Baking
Knitting
Gardening
Some things I deeply care about:
Indie bookstores
Women In Publishing
Banned Books/Censorship
A Women’s Right to Choose
Some things I like:
Bread
Smoked butter
Flaky salt
Woobies