X Close

Centre for Publishing

Home

Where book lovers unite

Menu

Archive for the 'Thought of the Week' Category

Reading Week Round-Up

By Helena, on 13 February 2017

Happy Half-Term/Reading Week (however you choose to see it) everyone! This also serves as a casual reminder not to come into school this week 😉 But, as ever, the Publishing world is still out there and we still have news (not fake, we promise) to share…

Course Updates

Dissertation Proposals are due on Friday 24th February (i.e. Friday of next week). Make sure to email your personal tutors with any questions or concerns!

Course News

The UCL Publishers’ Prize has closed their submissions box and is preparing for the judges! Thank you from the team to everyone who has submitted – more news should be coming soon, so keep an eye on their Facebook, twitter, and website! (As well as this, ebook versions of the past prizes will soon be available at your favourite online retailers! All proceeds support the prize, both present and future)

Other than that, it’s reading week! Go have fun!

Industry News

The Faber and Faber CEO has opened up about his opinions on the house’s success following their win of independent publisher of the year

So you might have seen that J. K. Rowling and Piers Morgan were locked in a twitter battle over the last few days – and now the Big Green Bookshop in North London has decided to give Piers Morgan the chance to read the entirety of The Philosopher’s Stone… through tweets. Need a crash course in how to be a tweeting activist and one of the most popular authors on earth? Follow @jk_rowling (we love her)

Thoughts about translation from the Jaipur Book Festival

Need some thoughts about writers to watch in Spring 2017 for any essay/research/interest purposes? Publishers Weekly have some ideas

The CWA Short Story competition is open for submissions here. They’re looking for crime and mystery (ooer)

In a similar vein, cat-burglars have abseiled into a warehouse full of rare books and made off with £2m worth of tomes – reported the Guardian

Lots more fun news on BookBrunch!

Buzzfeed Listicle Fix

Thoughts about Viet Thanh Nguyen’s book The Refugees and its application to 2017 America

Fifty Shades Darker (the film version) is out – and it’s insane

Which unimportant Harry Potter character are you?

Want to win books/get them discounted?

Here

Here

That’s it from us this week! As ever, please let us know if you have anything you want us to write about, any news to share, or any comments!

Love,

Helena and Emily

Publishing and the ‘D’ Word

By Caroline A Murphy, on 19 February 2015

By Marianne Tatepo

Of the thousands of online witticisms causing the SYP 2014 Conference hashtag (#sypconf14) to trend, one tweet stuck with me to this day: “It’s kind of hilarious how few people have chosen to attend the #sypconf14 session on diversity.” (Miriam H Craig, 12:15 PM – 8 Nov 2014, @miriamhcraig).

You’ll have heard of the ‘d’ word. For some it may be equated to ‘race’. But diversity is not colour, gender, or ability specific. Was the ‘diversity’ session at SYP aimed at those few minority groups (ditto about such print issues by The Bookseller)? Many will be most aware of their own underrepresentation: diversity is being able to scan a room and see, or hear about both others like you and those unlike you. A room where each attendee can’t think to themselves “there are other people like me AND unlike me” is not diverse – the same goes for an industry. Still: it’s difficult to tackle the issue of diversity if none of those concerned are included in such discussions – so here’s my own input, following on Caroline Carpenter’s piece.

My contention is: a diverse industry is one inclusive of those who have had to deal with marginalisation or disparities at a range of possible levels. Mental health issues; lack of social mobility; gender or racial imbalances or discrimination; physical impairment or disability; and other major factors that may lead them to feel there are no ‘people like them’ around.

Identity is not one-dimensional. On the one hand, there were a plethora of others like me at SYP’s 2014 summit: literature or humanities degree bearers, and probable Student Finance benefactors, who are only mediocrely digitally skilled. On the other hand, it was honestly disappointing to have to acquiesce to some of the facts outlined in The Bookseller’s November issue regarding the status quo of variety in publishing – even ten years on, post-Web 2.0.

As both a hyperbole and simile: a love for publishing can sometimes feel like having Stockholm Syndrome – we’re captives of something we’ve grown to feel an attachment to, in spite of the perils presented (e.g.: ‘death of the book’ and other doomsday fear-mongering), and this often causes onlookers to equate our loyalty to insanity. At ‘budding publisher’ level, this translates into the sacrifices some must make in order to intern for periods of up to a year (dixit many of SYP 2014’s despairing attendees). The labour is often unwaged, and worse yet: there is no guarantee that you’ll reach Promised Land.

You’ll hear about books being rejected by publishers because the demographic depicted in said books is not that of ‘the reader’ or ‘the customer’ – that is to say, not white. To say that minorities aren’t ‘the reader’ doesn’t recognise the fact that they are often unrepresented in stories, despite the infinite amount of stories out in the world. Not reading every book that refuses to acknowledge you could be seen as a silent, peaceful protest of sorts – a sign of a malignant illness tainting the reading experience.  How can catering to a wider audience be achieved whilst simultaneously telling said audience – by way of ellipsis, by way of vacuum – that they don’t exist?

What you won’t hear enough about is people like Nikesh Shukla or Malorie Blackman – both of them catering to different age groups, but certainly to wider groups than many past and present writers did altogether. A diversity workshop, I believe, would have been most beneficial to future agents, editors, marketers, publicists… That is to say: anyone likely to unearth the next Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Junot Diaz, or John Elder Robison and whose instincts may be muddled by a one-dimensional idea of ‘the reader’.

What you won’t hear enough about is that the next generation of writers is tucked away in places like The Baytree Centre, in Brixton. In this all-women’s culture and literacy centre, young girls of BAME background aged 10-14 are attending Creative Writing and Reading classes voluntarily, and will soon submit their edited, original creative writing work to the Global Girls Project, with the hope to be published.

However, you will certainly hear about the commercial benefits of diversity. What you won’t hear is about the value of culture – especially in a melting pot like the UK. What you don’t hear enough is how good, loyal employees are the ones attracted not to the commercial aspect of the industry, but the fact that their presence is reflected in the workplace; that they are part of a community – just like ‘the reader’. The fact that when, finally, they get that book proof on their desks, more than once in a blue moon, they can read about ‘others like them’.

The momentum is now, and the opportunities are here: where there is a will, there is a market. If Nichelle Gainer could sell out for an illustrated coffee book like Vintage Black Glamour (£30 apiece) and even a major cultural institution like the V&A is doing a Black British Experience exhibition after recognising a “gap” in their knowledge… What’s stopping the publishing industry from recognizing the full scope of ‘the reader’?

Thought of the Week: “DO judge a book by its cover”

By Lucy Broughton, on 3 November 2014

You are probably more than familiar with the saying ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’, which for most instances is probably good advice. However, the more we learn on this course, the more I’m inclined to think that in the literal cases, we should judge books by their covers.

The cover is the first point of contact a consumer has with a book, and no matter how well it is written, or even how good the blurb is (which is also very important), they won’t pick up a book with a bad cover. Publishers know this, and spend a lot of time and money into making the best, appropriate, covers for their books. They design their covers specifically with the target audience in mind, and ensure that it is relevant for the genre of the book.

During the first week of the course we had a great lecture from Auriol on the book cover process, and even got some insight into how the iconic One Day cover came about. And from that point onwards we have continually been told about the importance of the cover, and the impact it can have on retailers stocking the book, and particular likes/dislikes based on the type e.g. supermarket or bookstore (Asda, anyone?).

One Day Cover

Even though ebooks are increasingly popular, the cover is still important – and publishers have had to adapt to this, for example, white covers don’t work online. But this is also an opportunity to get creative with the covers, because online it is easy to change them.

Moreover, as we have heard, one impact of digital is to make physical books more of a luxury item. A beautiful cover can make a book into something that you want to display – and consequently something you would buy in physical rather than digital format.

So, although a cover can’t tell you how well written, or how good a story is, it does tell you a lot of things. It gives you an indication as to the genre, it shows you how much effort the publisher has put into the book, and it makes you pick a book up (or click on a link).

 

Book covers sell books, so DO judge a book by its cover.