As a member of the University of Edinburgh’s PublishEd society, I heard about the, at the time, upcoming Society of Young Publishers annual conference. I am hoping to possibly work in a publishing house after graduation, so I bought a ticket to the conference, hoping to learn a little bit more about the industry since it can be a bit elusive to understand.
The conference was at Central Hall in Tollcross, a beautiful building (with a beautiful bathroom too actually). This year’s theme for the presentations was Building Bridges and Breaking Walls and included amazing speakers from publishing houses like Publishing Scotland, Canongate, Black and White Publishing, Edinburgh University Press and many more. All the panelists and presenters were very enlightening and displayed great excitement when talking about the work they do. I scribbled away, taking notes on every piece of advice or information given and found the conference very useful in terms of getting a better understanding of the current environment of the publishing industry. The following are some of my notes from the conference, in hopes that it would be of some use to anyone else wanting to know more about publishing:
Publishing is a very social industry and you have to learn about people to know what to pitch to who
Many submissions are sent through email and there is a challenge of actually considering all the submissions since there are hundreds of them. The editorial team will usually focus on opening emails from literary agents they trust and who know what they like.
Brexit: There are a lot of unknowns of how it will affect the publishing industry.
There is a good deal of elitism in genres as people will not read a book if it is categorized in a genre they are prejudiced against (common with Sci-fi).
Genre is a necessary evil since it hinders a book, but genres are also inherent since people love categories. This comes into play when a book shop has to place books in certain sections of their shop.
The genre should not be included in the marketing description of a book since it will put off some people from giving the book a chance.
There is a significant lack of diversity in children’s publishing currently.
You should email yourself a copy of your manuscript before sending it out so that you have evidence with a date stamp on it that the story was your idea and you have ownership over it.
The biggest barriers to a small publishing house going international is cost, ambition, and getting the rights to books.
The publishing industry is very much centered in London.
The best, most important person to sell a book is the author.
Book launches are very important since it is a time when the publishing company and author can connect with the bookshop.
These were just some of the big take away’s I got from the conference. I had a great time and look forward to attending more publishing conferences in the future. Of course I walked away from the event with a few new books to read (you can’t leave a publishing conference without at least one book).
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