Seasons Greetings

Well, we are now well and truly into the Christmas season. A time for family, for community and to celebrate the relationships that we have made over the years. Or possibly a time to crawl into bed, cover your head and hope it goes away soon (Bah humbug!)

So what does that mean for publishers and students alike?

Well, for students, it is a time to panic over deadlines and exams and struggle to complete the work before finally allowing themselves to keel over in a heap when the final page is printed or that last exam paper has been handed in.

For the publishers, it's a frantic time of trying to maintain the availability of their backlist and frontlist titles as people snatch up their books as gifts or take advantage of the post-Christmas sales. In addition, they are also getting ready for the New Year, and trying to get as much work done as possible before the Christmas break begins and so they can finally relax.

In other words, the publisher is doing what many people in a variety of professions are doing.

I am not trying to be cheeky, but I have found that since telling people what I am studying, I often get this blank look as if by doing this course and trying to enter this profession, I am somehow setting myself apart and that I am being dubbed as 'something else'. And while that can be fun, in an 'I-know-what-assumptions-you-are-making-and-they-make-me-look-good-so-I-will-bask-in-them-minion' way, it can get quite frustrating, especially when some of those assumptions are made with an element of coldness, as if a publisher (or publishing student) is somehow the devil to all creativity and we are lording over you all with our intelligence and judgements.

So if you give or receive a book this Christmas, remember the people who worked hard to get it into your hands. Remember the agent who had to persuade a publisher that the book was worth their time; the editor who had the difficult task of juggling and solving problems with people and product; the producer and designers who struggled and debated how it would look; the marketer who fought to bring it to your attention among all the others; those who had to decide on the budget and even those who used that budget the best way they could. And, of course, the author themselves who had to contend with writer's block, shaky inspiration and looming deadlines to create the world you are about to delve into.

May I take this opportunity to wish you very happy holidays, whatever you celebrate and may 2012 bring you all you desire.

And if nothing else...you get to rip pretty paper to pieces.

Teeter a bit longer

Well, after a few weeks of intense assignments and the stress of getting results back (all students are currently nodding their heads at the screen), I have come to understand and seriously appreciate the sheer volume of work and understanding that goes into printing a book or even getting a company to agree to it. I know I have stated this before, but it is very different between knowing something and understanding it.

Yes, even this comes under copyright.

I give you, for example, one of my latest assignments which involved examining international and domestic copyright legislation. Knowing that copyright exists and is sort of there by no means prepared me for the sheer volume of legislation that has existed since the eighteenth century. Yes, there might be one or two big laws that exist, but the number of Acts or Bills that have been passed to amend (or change) the law because of new developments is staggering.

For example, the Berne Convention is possibly the most widely acceptable piece of international copyright legislation. But not everyone agreed with it at the start and created the Universal Copyright Convention in response. This was amended but ending up more or less being abandoned after the Berne Convention was amended and became linked to the World Trade Organisation. This made it more appealing and therefore more countries became involved. In response, domestic copyright had to be altered in compliance with what this larger law had to say.

Pretty staggering to think of the things that can indirectly affect your life. These laws are the things that allow you to pick up a book and read it in any format, listen and share your music and even watch a film. Yes, not everyone follows these copyright rules but when you take into consideration that you originally had to go and APPLY for copyright rather than it automatically being given to you? That's pretty impressive.

In addition I've been re-teaching myself how to use spreadsheets and 'cost' a fictional book. Once again, I'm amazed by the sheer number of decisions that went into creating it, even with a title I made up! Paper type, jacket design, number of pages, illustrations and whether or not to use colour. The mind boggles.

It does lead me to wonder how people make these decisions every day of their lives.

And even after all that, I still have a marketing report to do. My understanding seems to never stop growing.

Run and hide?

So it seems that Amazon have decided to more or less extend their reach into the publishing and lending industries.

I would be lying if I said the move to publishing didn't concern me, especially considering where I am and what I'm doing. And I'm not the only one. Once the article was shared among my classmates, the majority of us had more or less become decidedly nervous. After all, Amazon can sell a number of books for incredibly low prices and if they can help authors publish books, does that mean that the publishing industry is finished?

Well...no. Not exactly. The misconception that is present in this article is that all you need to do with a manuscript is stick on a cover, slap on a price and tell people it exists. I'm not saying that Amazon won't attempt to sell their titles as best as they can but allow me to clear up one small fact.

That phrase 'It takes a village to raise a child'? It takes SO many more people than you realise to create the books that you read...in any format.

Here beginneth the lesson.

The text needs edited and checked for mistakes. Mistakes happen and authors change their minds about bits and pieces. Sometimes the amazing plot twist doesn't work with one character and has to be transferred to another. Or a fact needs to be double checked before it can be stated.

A cover needs to be designed. We DO judge books by their covers (try to deny it. I dare you.) and a well designed cover takes time to be thought of, created and chosen. Yes. Chosen. There's always a couple of options created and tweaked before the final one goes to print.

The manuscript needs to be designed. What goes on the page? Any pictures? What about the typeface or font? Should it be spread out or a bit more squished?

Some hype has to be created. Even a self-published author will tell you how important marketing is. There's no point in making a book that nobody wants. Booksellers need to know it exists. This marketing technique applies throughout the process.The amount of marketing each title gets depends a great deal on who is writing it. People need to want the book and many will buy something because they recognise the author's name.

Printing needs to be sorted and booked months in advance. This is important. Printers are not sitting around waiting for the manuscript and twiddling their thumbs in between. They have jobs to do and schedules to keep. If the printing deadline is missed, it will be a while until you can get another one.

In addition, the production decisions need to be made. Type of paper, binding etc. It is the printer who helps to put the book together and it takes a long time to make these decisions, especially if you are on a budget.

And for all you tech-savvy people, there is also someone who has to translate this digitally. It does take a bit of effort to make a manuscript into an e-book that is compatible with various e-readers. And it may not even be a publisher creating it, but they will still work with the print publisher's schedule so that everything is released at around the same time.

A lot of work, and every individual in the publishing process is probably working with another five or six books at various stages of completion.

Amazon will have to deal with these same issues and are competing against some very old and prestigious publishing houses. Like it or not, reputation is everything and having a particular publisher interested in your book can be a lot more appealing than you might imagine. I won't deny that this move won't affect the industry in some way but to imply that it is finished now that Amazon has joined the show is a bit premature.

We shall just have to see how it plays out.

Frustration and facepalms

Let us be clear about something.

I love Young Adult books. I think they are fun, interesting and are often a lot better written than most Adult fiction. But in the last week, while doing some research for a group activity and my publishing project (more on that later) I came across something that I really don't like.

Young Adult genres.

This may sound confusing to some who have not heard my rants about this so allow me to explain. While researching a specific genre within the banner of 'Young Adult', I was struck by how difficult finding information on the topic was. Not YA fiction (that was present in abundance) but rather the sub-genres that make it up. Simply put, YA is being treated like a genre rather than an age bracket.

'Young Adult', supernatural romance or something to heat your home in the depths of winter?

Now this is irritating on many levels, apart from making my research incredibly difficult. With the sheer growth of YA fiction because of 'Twilight' (love it or hate it, it did impressive things to the teenage market), you would think that it would start being treated as part of the bookshop as opposed to something that's tagged onto the end of the children's section under the title of 'Young Adult'. It's too broad a term to make navigating it easy. Why not sub-divide it into 'Fantasy', 'Horror' or even the elusive 'General fiction' (which also bugs me but that's another story) and recognise YA for what it is?

Even if the range is not that large at present, just a handy little label on the shelves would be helpful. Yes, trends come and go but as anyone who has bought a book knows, there are some fundamental genres that go on regardless. Vampire romances may be in decline, but romance and horror still appeal, so the excuse that 'Teenage tastes change' just doesn't cut it. Especially when there is so much crossover with many adults  buying YA fiction and older titles being rejacketed for a younger generation. Even some adult fiction would quite happily sit on a teenage bookshelf if it were only marketed properly.

So go check out a bookstore and maybe stand in the middle of the teenage/YA section and loudly bemoan the fact that everything is clumped together with no clear distinctions.

And if you want to start a camp-fire with the 'Twilight' series then I have no problems with that.

Prologue

'Once upon a time, there was a girl who decided to stay in university a bit longer than most. While she was there, she found that she was encouraged to blog about elements relating to the course. Having no idea how to do that, she decided that perhaps it was time to stop reading blogs and perhaps start writing some of her own.

But before she could venture off into this strange new world, it was perhaps best to introduce herself to those who might choose to read it...'

My name is Laura and I'm a Publishing Studies student at the University of Stirling. Ever wondered exactly what the point of a publisher is, or even what they do? This blog is an opportunity for me to explain to you exactly how my course works and just maybe, allow some of you to understand what the people behind the pages actually do to get those shiny books and e-books to the stage where you are reading them.

And also the occasional ramblings that might or might not be related, who knows?

Don't tell anyone, but these aren't as scary as you think!

This is not an advert for aspiring writers to contact me and ask if I will publish them. I'm just learning myself and there are certain channels that one must go through in order to get a respectable publisher or agent. My blog and I are not one of those channels.

But feel free to join me at any time.