Hopefully during this time of year, around March – April, your group is at the stage in your project where you are ready to go to print. Some groups may not need a printer – either choosing to go with an Ebook edition or using an online-based platform to host their project. Choosing a printer can be a challenge. Are you printing in colour? Black and white? Do you choose a domestic printer or European, or Asian? What are the costs and delivery time? What kind of quality and format are you expecting to print in? These are questions you have to consider when choosing a printer. Depending on your funding, your group might have to go with a UCL-approved printer. Such is the case if you are relying on the money assigned to each group by UCL — a total of £222.

Depending on the quote the printers offer, the format of your book, and the size of your print run, this might prove to be slightly problematic. Extra funding, via crowdsourcing or sponsorship, will give you more freedom and allow you to choose a printer that fits your needs. That is money you have 100% control over.

This is the option my group went with. Through crowdfunding, Works In Progress raised more than £3000, which has allowed us to choose Clays, an established printer that offers quality printing. We even have the funds to print in hardback!

Before going to print, you obviously need to have your manuscript ready. The printer you choose will provide the specs and information on how to prepare the file you are sending to print. If you have the money for it and your manuscript includes images like Works In Progress, you may choose to do a print test before going through with the actual printing. A print test via Clays is a 16-page text section printed digitally on the same type of paper that will be used in the actual book. This allows your group to check what the images will look like on the page and give you time to fix any potential issues that may arise such as colour, size, or quality. For Works In Progress, as a transmedia project, the book also has QR-codes that link to our webpage and that we would like to make sure work properly before sending the book to print. The print test lets us do that.

Finally, when you have chosen a printer and have prepared your manuscript in the proper format (Works In Progress is printing in hardcover B-format), make sure that all your dates are in order. From the time you deliver your final manuscript to print, it will take approximately three weeks, though this may differ from printer to printer. Your print schedule will affect when you are able to provide potential retailers with their stock or deliver the book to your end customer. If your group is having a book launch or presenting the book at the London Book Fair, the print schedule will affect these dates as well.

Going to print can be a stressful time, and there is a lot to consider, but if you find a printer that matches your needs your group will be just fine!

List of UCL-approved printers:

Belmont Press

Duncan Print

Formara Printers

Optichrome

SLS Print

Stephen Austin

Sterling

UCL Services

Find out more about Works In Progress via our Twitter or Facebook pages!

The editing process can be a delicate one. As can the relationship between author and editor. Therefore, it requires a great deal of communication, and it is important to strike a balance between honesty and constructive criticism, The story you are editing is your author’s pride and joy. Remember and respect that.

In our publishing group, we are making a collection of short stories, and consequently are dealing with multiple authors for the same project. That means we are juggling several authors with the same concerns and same deadlines, and making sure they all feel taken care of.

Personal experience has shown me that most authors are grateful for the feedback and find it hugely helpful, especially when it comes to the grammar as they themselves are often too close to the project to pick up on every mistake no matter how many times they go through the text. Structural editing is a little bit different. When you start suggesting ways that the text could be changed concerning plot and characters, authors tend to be a lot more conservative and hesitant. Sometimes, they will flat out reject the suggestion.

When it comes to structural editing, checking for consistency and accuracy is high on the list of priority. As editor, you want to make sure that the pace of the story flows naturally and that the narrative is convincing from a reader’s perspective. If you then want to make structural edits that concerns the plot and characters, make sure you have a reason to do so and explain to your author why these edits will make their story a better one. That is what it comes down to: will the changes you make as an editor make the story a better one?

Sometimes, there is a need to make cuts. This can be due to a word count or it can simply be pieces of text that are unnecessary to the story in its entirety. Some authors are (grudgingly) okay with making cuts. They recognise that there are patches of the story that might look clunky and could be smoothed out. Others are very hesitant. They have put so much work and effort into every word in every sentence, the thought of cutting any of it is absolutely appalling. This is where you as editor have to be firm. Explain to the author the necessity of what you are doing, and pick pieces of the text you are sure—or as close to it, anyway—are non-essential. Every story has pieces redundant text, even if the author would beg to differ.

Different editors take different approaches, and I’m not convinced there is a “best way to edit” so to speak. In my opinion, the most effective way is to establish a good rapport with your author, and to communicate your concern and interpretation regarding the text. If your author trusts you, they are more likely to listen to your advice and suggestions, and to let you go about your job and make the necessary cuts and edits.

Our group is still in the midst of the editing, and while it is a process, it’s coming along nicely. There are, admittedly, a few hiccups along the way, but we are working it out as we move along, and the further into the process we get, the more convinced I am that the finished product is going to be nothing short of amazing!

For more information about the Works in Progress project or other inquires, contact us at:

Email: WorksinProgress2015@gmail.com
Twitter: @WorksInProg2016

What do you think of when I say London Underground? Packed stations, delayed trains, and commuters rushing to their next appointment probably all come to mind. But there’s an aspect of the London Underground that often goes unnoticed and unappreciated: buskers. Whether they’re bringing you the classics, original songs, or instrumentals, buskers add a sense of culture and entertainment to our daily commutes. But how many of us actually stop to appreciate their music and get to know their stories?

Notes From the Underground is a project that aims to publish a book that will uncover the world of London busking. Inspired by projects such as Humans of New York and books such as Athol Rheeder’s London Street Performers, Notes From the Underground will interweave interviews and photographs to provide an intimate insight into the lives of London buskers.

Over the next few months we will be journeying through the London Underground and researching the community in order to find the best buskers out there! We are very excited to confirm that we will also be talking to some of the winners of “London’s Big Busking Competition” that took place in September 2015. We hope to uncover their backgrounds, influences, and future aspirations. And hopefully bring attention to some amazing talent too!

In the book, buskers will have their own profile. This will include photographs, as well as stories and anecdotes that we uncover through our interviews. Alongside these profiles, we’ll also be writing features that include the history of busking, top tips, and a calendar of events in order to provide more information on the busking community.

We are aiming to release the book in April 2016. However, we will also be documenting our progress and providing sneak peeks into the project via social media. So don’t forget to follow us!

Facebook: Notes from the Underground

Twitter: @notesunderbook

Instagram: notesunderbook

Thanks for reading!

Group 2 xx

BY ISABEL POPPLE

Hands up if you’ve heard of the UCL Publishers’ Prize…

Publishing students: if your hand isn’t in the air, then what have you been doing for the last eight weeks? I’m worried about you, truly.

Non-publishing students: the Publishers’ Prize is a writing competition for UCL students. Any student enrolled at UCL can enter, and the shortlisted entries get to be published in an anthology that actual people can buy and read – your writing gets read by lots of cool people, there’s a big prize for the overall winner and, you know, accolades.

Next challenge…

So, hands up if you’ve heard of the UCL Publishers’ Prize for Young Adult Fiction. No? Well, that’s because it’s new this year. Ta-da!

The UCL Publishers’ Prize for YA is an offshoot of the main prize. We’re working alongside each other, but this secondary prize is celebrating the breadth and depth of YA (that’s code for Young Adult). Why is it called the Publishers’ Prize, you ask? Because it’s awarded by UCL’s publishing students, that’s why. And why YA? Well, why not? Many of us are young adults, and plenty of those of us who aren’t, still like a good young adult novel – and we want to celebrate and encourage new writers in this genre (if you can call it that, though really YA is so much more than just a genre…).

The Competition…

I hope you’re all eager to learn more. Yay! Please enter!

Ok, so you have to be a current student at UCL. It doesn’t matter what discipline you’re studying, what level or stage you’re at, or how old you are. You have from now until 22 January 2016 to send us your work. Your entry must be no more than 4,000 words long (I probably should have mentioned that before: it’s a short story competition), it must be your own work, and cannot have been published elsewhere before. You email it as a Word document to us at: uclpublishersprizeya@gmail.com (both saved as with the email subject line: SURNAME_YAPRIZE). You can send us up to three different stories, and you can enter the original Publishers’ Prize too, but only with a different set of writing.

What exactly are we looking for and what is YA? Well, what do you think YA is? It’s not that easy to define when you get down to it! That’s because the best YA is diverse, smart, boundary pushing; it can be fun, it can be dark; it can be light or intense, romantic or adventurous – and with any luck it’s all of these things and more. You decide. After all, you’re readers as much as we are (at least, I hope so) and you know what you look for in a good story.

We are seven UCL Publishing students: Michela, Naomi, Mia, Natalya, Sarah, Kara, and Isabel. Follow the prize on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or visit our website. Over the coming weeks we’ll be announcing the prizes and the judges. We promise you won’t be disappointed – last year’s judges on the main prize included bestselling crime author Peter James, Waterstones fiction buyer Chris White and Lee Brackstone, the creative director of Faber Social – and more. So we’re aiming just as high this year.

And the prize? Well now, that’d be telling…

We look forward to reading your work and discovering what hidden writing talents this year’s UCL students have to offer!

If Isabel’s writing interests you, then follow her on Twitter @bookythought!

So my group have the (lucky? unlucky?) position of being the first to have an update on our Publishing Project. Our project involves looking at the back issues of The Bookseller to chart the development of the now booming Children’s market. We’ve had loads of ideas since the very first meeting but unfortunately, because we haven’t had our meeting with our project leader at The Bookseller yet… I can’t tell you what those ideas are.

I can tell you that we have already done loads of research at the British Library, after some mishaps with cards and complex ordering systems, and have already found some amazing things, including:

• First reviews of Game of Thrones!
• E-book predictions
• A lot of Harry Potter mania from the early 2000s
• Madame Doubtfire in 1987
• Adverts for Noddy and The Railway Children
• The first announcement for Sophie’s Choice

So for now… we’ll just get back to research…

Got enough books there Amanda?