So this week we had two guest speakers, Simon Winder from Penguin and Simon Littlewood from Random House, and I attended another OPuS event, this time on mergers and acquisitions. So I heard from Penguin and Random House and mergers, you'd think that would give me a lot to write about.

But no, because this week we were also introduced to Chatham House rules which say:

Basically we were asked not to publish anything anyone said. So I can't.

But I can sum up that the talks were really useful and that it was really interesting to hear from representatives of some of the big name houses on some of the big topics like the role of digital, the role of agents and the phenomenon of 50 Shades of Gray. I also learnt a lot about the businessy side of things from the mergers and acquisitions talk, things that I thought would be boring but that a few anecdotes made very easy to understand and genuinely interesting.

So yeah not the most detailed of blog posts but it's the best I could do. Perhaps it's best to sum it up with - you had to be there.

Last night I attended an event called Unbound Live @ Oxford. I wasn't sure what I was letting myself in for but I was pleasantly surprised.

Unbound are a crowd-funded publisher. This means that authors put forward their ideas straight to the audience, either via the website or at live events like the one last night, in the hope that the audience will pledge some money to fund the book's publication. It's basically Kickstarter for books where higher pledges not only help the book but get the pledger a cheeky extra, like a first edition copy or

Another day, another guest speaker. This time it was Meredith Walsh from Penguin Group UK's production department to talk to us about green print production.

I'll be honest, I hear green I expect self-righteous preachy environmentalist so I wasn't sure about this talk. But again I was pleasantly surprised. Meredith was really down to earth and managed to balance business and environmental issues in her talk. Her attitude seemed very much - this is how it is, fact. And you could see why.

In her role at Penguin, these environmental issues have just become another aspect that needs to be taken into account alongside timing and budget. The publishing sector is so reliant on the paper industry, which has been so affected

So this Tuesday there were two guest speakers at uni to give us an insight into their two very different publishing careers in travel publishing and as an author. While initially I wasn't particularly enthusiastic about either of these topics, I am very glad I went.

First there was Stephen Mesquita who came to talk to us about travel publishing. He took us through the history of travel publishing, how it evolved from the Victorian era to the world of Tripadvisor and Google Maps that we know today. It was interesting to see how, more than a lot of other books, travel guides really rely on visibility to attract their audience. Branding and design play a big part in sales decisions and so a presence in physical book shops is important. And it's because of this and the rise of free online content and user-generated review sites that travel publishing has been experiencing a steady decline in the last ten years.

But despite the doom and gloom attitudes surrounding the travel publishing industry at the minute, I found the talk really interesting because it was showed

Tonight was the second of three publishing seminars put on by the University. This evenings speaker was Matt Kibble from Bloomsbury, previously of ProQuest, who came to talk about working in the fabulous world of digital publishing.

He took us through his various job titles over the past 12 years and what his roles actually involved as well as explaining what goes into a company who provide digital content for the academic library market (JSTOR for example).

He explained how his role was a mix of market research, rights negotiations, project management and presenting financial business plans. He basically does a bit of everything as he sees the projects through from start to finish. For example he was telling us how he was involved in creating a digital archive of Vogue for academic library use and how he had been involved in every step from getting initial permissions to organising the launch of the final product.

And you don't have to be particularly techy to get into this kind of work. As long as you know what other people are doing and can talk about it you don't actually have to do any of the techy stuff yourself, as Matt proved by explaining his background as an academic.

The main thing I took away from this talk is how un-established this sector of publishing is. Matt talked about the problems in terminology and definitions within his work because it is a hybrid market that is not quite publishing and not quite product management but a mash up of the two. So all the roles within this industry haven't been defined yet and are constantly developing and people are having to adapt - something perhaps shown most when Matt could not answer a question about what qualities people looking to go into the industry require. He didn't know because nothing has been established long enough to become the rule yet.

So yes very interesting to learn about all the hybrid

Last night I braved the cold and the rain and made it to the town hall to attend a talk on Gothic publishing put on by the Society for Young Publishers (SYP). It was cold and it was dark and that made the beautiful but deserted old building seem just that bit spookier...but then there were friendly faces offering sweets so everything was fine.

We heard from four speakers: Prof William Hughes, Dr Marie Mulvery-Roberts, Anthony Mandel and Dr Sam George. All of these guys are literary academics obsessed with all things Gothic. From Dracula to Twilight they covered the history of the gothic genre and how it has faced tough prejudices from the press.

Right from the start Gothic was seen as sensationalist and despite being a bestselling genre it was never really taken seriously. And this can still be seen now when you look at things like Twilight and the new emergence of American vampire dramas on TV. They're popular but very few people take them seriously.

So it was interesting to hear from people who do take Gothic seriously, or at least seriously enough to teach it, publish books on it or start journals about it.

But I think what I took away from the evening was a realisation of just how big a deal the Twilight books are. They paved the way for a new found interest in vampires and all things Gothic with the classics enjoying a revival thanks to recovering in the Twilight style. It also encouraged fan fiction style titles to appear such as the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies  style titles and the infamous 50 Shades of Grey, which has made its own mark on the publishing industry.

So you might not like it, you may not have even read it, but Twilight has had a massive impact on the publishing world- scary stuff indeed.

So this week has been an especially busy one for me as I have attended two talks promoted by the university as well as attending the university. Firstly there was a talk on Monday on publishing in South Africa and the research possibilities available in the field. Then on Thursday I attended a talk on open access put on by the Oxford Publishing Society (details here).

So the South African publishing talk was organised by the publishing department at Brookes as part of their growing links with Pretoria University. The two speakers were Prof Archie Dick, who specialises in research into the reading habits of slaves, freed slaves and the working classes in South Africa from the 18th century onwards, and Elizabeth le Roux who focuses on university presses in South Africa and how they were affected by apartheid.

Both of these research areas were really interesting to learn about, especially from people who are so passionately involved in the field, but I couldn't help but