So I've been off the radar for a while now because I was entering the stressful time that is the end of the year. With deadlines looming everywhere I barely had time to sleep let alone blog. But it's all over now.

So I had two major projects on the go at once and one smaller one bubbling away in the background. The big ones were NPD, a massive group report and presentation proposing a new project to a board of investors, and a day of pitching for journals where we had to take on the role of a publisher and a society. And the one in the background was adapting a fixed layout ebook frmo the reflowable one I had already handed in for my digital publishing module.

So let's start with the biggy - NPD (New Product Development). In a group of seven working as the Art Architecture and Design division of a publishing house we had to come up with a project, write a report about it and pitch it to a board of investors.... all in 12 weeks. Each person in the group took on roles such as head of editorial or finance but with only seven of us there was a lot of doubling up. I ended up as Managing Director of the group for reasons I'm not quite sure of and with the Project Manager we were in charge of overseeing the welfare of the project and of the group. It was a lot of hard work and a lot of stress but

 
Picture
_ I just spent a lovely sunny weekend as a volunteer at the Chipping Norton Literary Festival, mainly as their (wo)man on the ground tweeter, and had a great time.

The festival is only in its second year but it already has a huge fan base and had some big names authors, including Lionel Shriver, Fern Britton, Richard Dawkins and Val McDermid. Working with a variety of local partners, the small committee are able to put on a great event and I was glad to be involved as one of the many eager volunteers.

I started work on the Friday which was the day that the festival sent children's authors, including Sarah McIntyre and Susie Day, into some of the local primary schools where they gave really exciting talks featuring, among other things, swords and superheroes. I didn't go out to the schools but was in charge of coordinating everything, making sure the right author went to right school in the right car with the right volunteer. So that took some doing but, except for one missing author scare, everything worked out alright. The best bit about the day for me was getting to settle down in the corner of Jaffe & Neale bookshop with unlimited tea organising and tweeting and looking at the books. If you ever have


 
So as you already know, I spent two days this week at the London Book Fair. I have already talked about the talks I attended and my experiences as a volunteer (which I have since received much praise for) so this post is just going to be a nice summary of the fair and the messages I took away from it.

First thing's first, digital is everything. The digital section was a hive of activity everyday and the 20 minute digital seminars were packed every time. From HTML5 to new platforms, innovation and new techniques were everywhere. Everyone in the publishing industry, no matter what sector, needs to keep up to date. You don't need to be an expert but if you don't at least keep your toe in the water you are going to get left behind.

No where was this more evident than in the talks about transmedia and gamification. A book can no longer just be a book, just as a game or tv show can no longer just be a game or tv show. Boundaries are blurring and you will find publishers in unexpected places and game developers everywhere else. One of the best pieces of advice I heard was that pretty much everything now

 
So I turned up for round two at the London Book Fair but this time I was on the other side. Decked in my LBF t-shirt I started my duties as volunteer - by drinking free tea and eating free pastries during the briefing. But once the important stuff was out the way I headed to my designated room to get ready for the day's talks. As there were no talks in my room until half 11 I helped my friend who was in charge of the room next door. This room was the home of talks about children's literature including a few discussions on equality and representation in children's books that got heated. But for more on that go and follow @charlieinabook - a must-follow for anyone interested in YA literature and social media communities.

So finally it was time for the talks in my room to get going. First up was Gamification for Publishers which was a panel talk looking at how publishers can use gamification and transmedia to enhance their products and get access to a wider audience. But it's not only the publishers that can benefit as game developers can use the collaborations to build on their audience too. The key messages I took from this talk were that gamification covers more than you expect and that there is a level of game-like interaction in almost everything now


 
So this week I am taking the opportunity of free student tickets to visit the London Book Fair. 

We entered Earl's Court this morning and were completely overwhelmed. It was huge and full of stands from all kinds of publishers from all over the world. We decided to try and get to grips with it before the first talks. Instead we just wandered to the digital section and played on the phones and tablets while eating the free biscuits.

So the first talk I attended was on Open Access, obviously, and was called "Academic Publishers: Still Open for Business?". With three speakers, one from Elsevier, one from OUP STM and one from CUP HSS the talk gave a comprehensive overview of OA post Finch Report. Then each publisher highlighted how they were implementing OA before taking questions. The main things this talk highlighted were that people still don't understand CC licenses (something that comes up time after time at these events) and that the key to OA is sustainability. But it wasn't all doom and gloom as the overwhelming feeling of the speakers was that there is still a place for academic publishers and that OA could bring new opportunities, creating healthy competition as titles become easier to launch. 

 
So last week was a busy week for all of us on the journals module.

First we had a visit to Wiley Blackwell where we had a workshop on society journals. We learnt about how societies choose publishers to take over their journal publishing and the process of bidding for a journal. We learnt about how to put a bid together, some of the key things to take into account and how to make good on the things you promise. There were a lot of things I hadn't thought about before like securing jobs, trying to make the transition as smooth as possible and the challenges that complacency and habit pose when trying to propose changes. It was also interesting to hear that a lot of problems come from the fact that decisions to change publishers are often made high up in the hierarchy and that the people who are actually involved in the day to day running of a journal are often not given much or any input in the decision even though it is them that will have to deal directly with the changes.

It was a really interesting session where we heard from everyone involved including editorial, marketing, finance and the often forgotten production. All this was in preparation for our second assignment where we have to write a specification from the point of view of the society and present a bid as a publisher. It sounded scary when I first heard about it but now I feel a lot more ready for it.

The other big event this week was the deadline for assignment one which was a 2000 word article on an issue in journals publishing. I chose to do mine on peer review and particularly the role private peer review companies like Rubriq could play in the system. While these companies have good intentions, I argue that they do not solve any of the problems in traditional peer review, such as issues around bias and quality, and that they may in fact add new problems. It was particularly interesting reading around the debate over whether paying reviewers is a good idea or not. On the one hand it's a nice gesture that acknowledges the work put in by the reviewers but on the other hand many of them are reviewing not for profit but through a sense of duty to the academic community and to further their own careers in which case formal recognition they can put on their CV and use in funding applications would be better than cash. I didn't know there was so much debate around peer review and I really enjoyed learning more about the debates in this area and the alternatives being offered.

So while everyone else on our course is getting excited about children's books and digital breakthroughs I am spending my time learning about peer review and journal bids and really enjoying it.
 
Picture
So for the last nine days Oxford has been (more) full of authors, journalists and avid literature fans for the literary festival. Not one to be left out, I got involved as a volunteer.

As a volunteer I was part of a team responsible for setting up the rooms, checking tickets, running the microphones around during the questions and tidying up at the end. Doesn't sound that exiting but came with the perk of being able to attend the talks you were stewarding for free and occasionally meeting an author (even if you don't recognise them and ask to see their ticket - embarrassing but we've all been there right). This was really good as it gave me a chance to go see talks that I might not have gone to and that I would have missed out on. And of course you get access to some of the beautiful colleges that are closed to the public.

So between the two days I worked I saw:


 
So this week saw the last of the lunchtime digital seminars put on by the university. I didn't get to attend as many as I wanted so I haven't been blogging about them regularly. So to catch up, here is what I had to say about the ones I did make it too.

Charley Darbyshire - Educake
Educake is an online homework resource for GCSE science students. Teachers can use the tests available as homework for their class and then can see the results and the students' progress online. Charley taught us about the difficulties of education publishing and keeping material up to date and appealing. This is especially hard with a digital subscription-based product as there has to be incentive for people to keep buying it. The product needs to be valuable enough to justify the investment you are asking of your customers. It is no longer the case that the customer-publisher relationship ends once the money is handed over, now the relationship is long term as you have to continually work to guarantee reinvestment.
So the main issues are pricing, justifying and defining value and maintaining good customer relationships, very different to a one off print purchase of a textbook.

Tom Scholes - Managing Director of Grove Street Media
Grove Street Media are a new media company that develop apps, websites and games. Tom taught us just how important good usability is and how extensive testing is just as important as the development in achieving this. You have to try things out to learn where they need improving. He also pointed out the problems that arise from customers not being entirely clear what they want. Many come and ask for expensive apps when a website would do just because they feel they should be. This is also the case with social media, everyone has heard of it and so everyone thinks they should be using it. But you have to match the format and the marketing to the product or you will miss your market. Tom then showed us some of his skills by building a basic game live in front of us that involved a giraffe and Kim Kardashian racing across the wild west.
So it's important to know exactly what you want, listen to developer's suggestions and test your product with real people.

So I've learnt a lot from these sessions about surviving in the real world of digital publishing. I've spent a lot of time in the classrooms learning the skills and building ebooks but I have absolutely no idea how to use these skills in the real world so it was great to hear from the people out there doing it now.
 
So last week was the last of the course organised publishing seminars and our guests were John Seaton and Martin Toseland who between them have over 35 years of publishing experience.

John Seaton as a freelance literary agent focused on the author side of publishing, stressing the importance of a good, long-lasting author editor relationship. Keep your authors happy or they will walk. He also talked about self-publishing and how important it is becoming now that agents themselves are often not accepting unsolicited manuscripts, instead heading to the net to find the next big thing. But it isn't all E L James as John told us a story of a friend who found her book sales suffer when she was picked up by a publisher. Low ebook prices got the blame as the publisher raised the price. It all comes down to someone really championing the book. Without someone, be they publisher or author, really supporting the book and shouting about it, it won't make it.

Martin Toseland has worked with backlist management at Faber and Canongate so he told us about how you manage a backlist and the importance of print on demand. Publishers can now keep books with small but steady sales in print whereas before they would be lost, along with what little income they bring in. This also stops obscure classics being lost and means they can be kept on reading lists around the country. One thing that is a problem sometimes though is a sudden increase in sales on a backlist title but no explanation as to why. Without knowing why the sales patterns have changed it's hard for publishers to react properly. And with backlist work there is a lot of risk and again it comes down to championing a title to keep it in print.

So the overall message was be enthusiastic and fight for the books you want to see in print be they your own writing or books you don't want to see go out of print (although this isn't the end anymore as POD means that works out of copyright can be brought back as backlist titles, even if it's by a different publisher).
 
So last Thursday the publishing department ran a Working in Publishing day where people from the industry, many who are alumni of the course, come in and we students were given a chance to ask them questions about getting jobs.

The day started with the usual housekeeping/welcome talk but then we got down to the job hunting skills. There were 4 workshops run in the morning of which you could attend two. I chose one on prospecting employers and then one on how to write a cover letter because I thought these would go pretty well together. It meant I missed out on interview techniques but a friend filled me in later. The workshops were helpful and gave me a few tips I hadn't thought of before as well as introducing me to publishing recruitment agencies. But basically it comes down to be proactive and get out there finding jobs and make sure you can spell. Pretty sound advice really.

After a quick lunchbreak we began the "speed dating" session where we each got 15 minute slots face to face with some of the professionals. It was chaos