So I am back after Christmas and there is lots to catch up on. I had so much spare time that I have raced through a few books that I will tell you about soon. But despite my reading frenzy I still haven't got my reading to buying ratio right yet as I read 4 books but got given/bought myself 11.... I also enjoyed a break from work but I am back and ready for round (semester 2) and will be spending much of this week in the library reading around my dissertation topic - open access - which it turns out is now something I have got my dad interested in. I don't know if that's because he's genuinely interested though or whether I just bang on about it a lot and he's just had to get interested to survive. Either way I'm ready to go so get ready for another semester of work placement worries, interesting talks and seminars and assignments (boo).
My year starts with a 2 week work experience placement with TQMI management consultants beginning on the 7th so get ready to hear all about it.
I'm sorry this has taken so long but I have had a pretty busy week and between deadlines and Christmas shopping/baking I haven't had a chance to post anything.
So last Friday was my last day at Wiley-Blackwells. It started like any other with me reviewing new submissions and then moving onto compiling monthly stats reports for a few journals. But then after lunch it got very last-day-of-term-y. I had mentioned to my supervisor that I was interested in Open Access and she very kindly managed to find a load of presentations from an Open Access day they had had recently, to explain to the staff the details of OA and how Wiley was going to adapt to it. She printed the slides off for me and talked me through them which was incredibly kind of her as well as being very interesting.
As a big thank you for everything, which was definitely necessary because I have learnt so much on this placement, I brought everyone a box of chocolates and a Christmas card. This obviously meant that we needed to take an extra long tea break to eat the chocolates so I was late to the closing HR meeting because we had got chatting.
But I did make it, tea in hand, and I was glad I did because as well as the general thank-yous we also got a certificate! This is now up on my wall as my pride and joy.
So that's it. The end of a great 9 weeks at Wiley and a stressful first 12 weeks at uni. I'm going to go and take a well earned break so all that's l
Today was a good day as we finished and printed out one of the three big assignments we have to hand in before Christmas. That's two down and one to go as earlier this week we handed in our mock new title proposal and presented it to the class. So the last one to go is a marketing report due in next week and then we are free until next year, hooray!
But it was also a good day because we had our last guest speaker of the semester in the form of Ruth Killick, Publicity Director at Profile Books. She gave us an insight into the life of a publicist and some good hints and tips for a good publicity campaign. Basically it seems it all comes down to planning and timing and making sure your information is up to date. And despite all the exciting new publicity opportunities opening up with new technologies and new markets it doesn't mean a thing if you don't generate any sales.
So even though the semester is coming to an end, things aren't winding down yet and I'm looking forward to next year.
Penultimate day at Wiley and this picture sort of sums it all up really.
Day began as ever with the JSAP submissions then I moved onto finishing collating the results to the open access nursing survey.
Then I moved onto something new. I had to write an application to get the journal Zoonoses and Public Health classified under an additional category on the ISI database. I had to write up the aims of the journal and show how they align with the definition of the category and then include tables showing the citations in and of the journal. These tables show related journals and if they are categorised in the same category this would help the case for getting the journal into the new category. However, the data I brought up wasn't particularly convincing but my supervisor said that was ok.
I finished the day by finding referral information for a couple of health science
Yet another guest speaker, oh Brookes you do spoil us.
This time it was publishing marketing and sales consultant Ruth Readshaw. She came to talk to us about 'Getting the Right Sales and Marketing Mix' in education publishing particularly.
Ruth began her career as a teacher and then moved into educational and academic publishing using her experiences to really engage with her market. This seems like a great idea as sales is a sector of publishing where personal relationships are so important so if you can relate to the people you are selling to, teachers and headmasters, then you are going to do pretty well.
We were also told about the importance of using all the marketing tools at your disposal but making sure they are using them correctly for your target market. She also touched on some of the big concerns such as the importance of relevant and up-to-date data, the role of digital in marketing and the tipping point when all direct mail is done online.
So another great speaker who has really given us an insight into the actual industry. It's so useful to see how the things we learn in lectures are applied to the real world and makes me feel that I could actually survive in publishing. We'll see how that turns out.
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:
When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.
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.
So this is the scene at my house today. We are all crammed round the table working hard on all the projects we have due in the next couple of weeks.
I think this specific moment was us working on marketing plans for hypothetical books.
We have been getting through the work pretty well but there have been a lot of Facebook breaks and yes that is half a cake, the other cake fueled the work.
So we are 20 cups of tea/coffee in and hopefully after another 20 we will all be finished.