Publishing By Degrees

So what’s next for Children’s Digital Publishing?

Over the past few years e-book sales in the UK have been on the rise, in 2015 e-book sales grew by 4% based on the previous year, although this increase has slowed compared to double digit increases in 2013 and 2014 according to Nielsen BookScan data, so although slowing, there’s life in e-books yet. More impressively however are the sales of children’s print books which were on course to increase by around 12% in 2016, the biggest increase in over a decade.

I’m interested to explore the opportunities are available to publishers regarding children’s digital publishing; what the barriers are, from attitudes of consumers, as well as digital limitations. By exploring these things I hope get a sense of what might be next for children’s digital publishing.

This ‘digital debate’ has been hotly contested at recent publishing events over the past few years, The London Book Fair, Bologna Children’s Book Fair and The Bookseller Children’s Conference all have digital streams to their programming. Speaking at The Bookseller Children’s Conference, Nicolette Jones, Children’s Book Editor for the Sunday Times, despite regularly and enthusiastically reviewing children’s apps claims she’s ‘never seen a picture-book app doing something a book can’t do better’.

48313532-95C1-4EBB-9158-5251E225C194

Public attitudes towards digital publishing and the use of digital devices is tenuous with nearly half of parents surveyed in a recent Channel 4 poll fearing their children were ‘addicted to screens’. A sales boom of cheap digital devices means that British children have ready access to the online world more than ever before. With this comes fears of unsecured access to sexual and violent material, as well as the potential for online bullying and online grooming. Despite this 74% of parents strongly agree or agree that it is important for their child to learn to use technology from an early age to get on at school, according to National Literacy Trust survey.

Like Nicolette Jones I agree wholeheartedly that children’s digital applications should not and simply cannot replace the picture books, however, I still believe that they have have the power to enhance the reading experience for some. In particular adding a dual modality to children’s stories, adding sounds to the reading experience can be useful for children and/or parents with visual impairments who can enjoy an enhanced version of the story together, as well as families who perhaps have low literacy levels could be read to by an app, potentially translated into other languages for families who first language isn’t English, who perhaps can’t get good quality book in their native language?

Tom Bonnick of childrens publisher Nosy Crow (who have been praised for their children’s digital products) has said because digital apps are expensive to make publishers need ‘a lot of faith’ to see the succeed in the market. He says ‘A good app uses interactivity to enhance a story and to drive a narrative forward. And a bad app would be one where interactivity distracts from the story, where you can move away from story and reading, and just kind of play a little game on the side.’ I agree its not the job of digital apps to retell the story or simply add unnecessary flourishes as Tom mentions, but to provide more accessibility and diversity, making the reading experience available to all.

I’m excited to see where these digital opportunities take children’s publishing over the next few years, many publishers have already dipped their toe in the water but I want someone to take the plunge, perhaps get in over their head, to explore what the possibilities really are.

Live Publishing Project: Turadh

Since January, I have been part of a wonderful group who have been working hard over the last few months to get Turadh, an ethical and wellbeing magazine based in Edinburgh, ready for publication. This experience has been incredibly worthwhile and not only will we soon have the first issue as a physical copy, but it has also helped open my eyes to another side of publishing.

At the beginning of the Publishing MSc at Edinburgh Napier University, when I thought of a career in publishing: I thought of books. Magazines weren’t something I had ever considered, despite spending a small fortune on them every month. However, within the first day of the course we had already been given the opportunity to attend MagFest, the international magazine festival held in Edinburgh, later in the month. Fast forward a few months to where we were given a choice in modules, and I immediately chose the newly structured Magazine Publishing option. So, why the change in heart?

The Magazine Publishing module now gives students the opportunity to work in a much smaller group than previous years, meaning we would have a more practical experience creating our own magazine. The Turadh team is made up of five students, meaning that we were all able to pitch in and got more of an opportunity to improve upon the technical skills that we had built in the first trimester of the course. Our small group now have experience creating a layout for a magazine, checking resolution of images, communicating with collaborators, and editing content so that it suits a house style, among other skills.

Given that one of the aims for Turadh was to give local artists and businesses a platform to showcase their work, the fact that we have been able to use content from so many amazing local contributors has been unbelievably exciting. Seeing how this magazine has transformed from obscure ideas of pastel theme colours to a magazine full of recipes, guides to the city of Edinburgh, and much more, has been such a rewarding and educational experience.

I will soon be beginning a placement at Foodies magazine in Edinburgh, an exciting opportunity that the Magazine Publishing module has helped me to prepare for: both with technical skills and also with the experience our team now have in working with collaborators, such as illustrators and writers. The skills I have learned creating Turadh have been vital in acquiring this placement and have also opened my eyes to the magazine publishing industry, and the opportunities it presents.

To get a sneak peek of our magazine and for any updates on publication details, you can visit turadhmag.wordpress.com

Learning to Understand the Publishing Industry

So far, MSc Publishing has offered me many opportunities to in and out of class to learn more about how the publishing industry works and how to navigate it. At Magfest, The SYP Conference, and London Book Fair I had the opportunity to hear from many different people sharing their own insights and of the industry and how they work within them. Each speaker was mightily passionate about their work and spoke so energetically about upcoming projects, underscoring the importance of having passion to work successfully within this industry

Of the many talks I attended at London Book Fair, one which stands out for me was that of Guy Gadney discussing his upcoming project, adapting John Wyndham’s 1953 sci-fi novel The Kraken Wakes into an interactive game. A columnist for The Bookseller, Gadney explored the ideas of storytelling and narrative and discussed his project’s website toplayfor.com, and using AI characters as a storytelling device. During the session’s Q&A portion, Gadney was asked to give advice on how to be noticed in one’s preferred industry. Gadney stressed that it was always important to speak up to your favourite creators and let them know of your passion for their work and the industry. Furthermore, he stated that it is important to be aware of what you’re good at or where most of your skills lie, even if you have not yet had any experience working in the industry. Knowing what you can do despite a lack of experience highlights your passion for the industry and the effort that has already been put in for selling your skills to employers.

When it came to applying for placements this trimester I consciously put Gadney’s advice to use as I found it was a great starting point for structuring my emails. I did my best to come across as enthusiastic in my applications, but I found that could be difficult when I was contacting a publisher’s generic email address and I didn’t have at least a contact name to work with. Fortunately, I did have a recognisable contact in the form of Fraser Allen, CEO of White Light Media, content creators, marketers, and publisher of their very own project Hot Rum Cow. I had recently witnessed Allen talk during a marketing session at The SYP Conference, as well as previously buying a copy of Hot Rum Cow at Magfest. I explained how I enjoyed his talk and the magazine. I then explained that I believed my skills were mostly editorial, but I was open to any placement opportunities they could offer. I thanked him for his time and sent the email. The next day I received a reply thanking me for my email and my interest in the company while offering to pass on my email to the editorial director to try and arrange something. A few emails later I had secured a two-week placement in June.

Suffice to say, I am very glad of the opportunities and advice I’ve been given so far during this course. Putting professional advice to practical use as I have just described is a validating experience and makes me more aware of my own development in understand how to communicate within the publishing industry.

The Importance of Print: Neilsen Book’s UK Children’s Summit

Back in March I was able to attend the London Book Fair. This is staged annually where Publishers from all over the world can interact. Alongside some of the most prestigious international publishers negotiating sales, there is also a number of extremely interesting talks and seminars going on from various industry officials over the course of the three-day event.

Children’s publishing plays a major part in the fair, with many prominent publishers in this industry present (pictured above is Usborne’s amazing stall). On the final day of the fair the Neilsen Book’s UK Children’s Summit, which I was lucky enough to be able attend, was held. They presented the latest data concerning the children’s book publishing industry and we were able to gain an insight into how the industry is progressing in this area.

The day was packed with insightful talks: from industry experts like Steve Bohme, the Research Director at Neilsen Books, to Joanna Feeley from TrendBible, who detailed how trends such as how our house layout can affect reading habits. These all gave a specific insight into a different area of the industry, and one that made a particular impact on myself was Cally Poplak’s, of Egmont Publishing, presentation on their research project ‘Print Matters More’. This presentation detailed Egmont’s most recent study, which was conducted in partnership with Foyles, in order to gain an insight into how children can be encouraged to read more.

The project was aimed at fifteen families with a child who was a reluctant reader. They were given a £10 voucher for their local Foyles every week for six weeks, during the summer holidays. In return, the families promised that they would spend 20 minutes every day reading together. According to Poplak “Being read to is a key factor in becoming an independent reader” and this was evident in the data presented. The children throughout the weeks went from being reluctant readers, because of factors such as a disinterest in books or struggling with the level of content, to clearly engaging with books and enjoying the time that they spent reading.

Seeing the way these children began to connect with reading in such a short space of time, not only within the allotted being ‘read to’ time but also individually, was unbelievably heart-warming. It was a showcase of how both being read to and the whole experience of choosing a physical book contributed to their enjoyment of reading overall.

The take away from this talk was definitely that given the opportunity, all of these children began to not only enjoy reading so much more but also their reading skills improved vastly. It was clear to see the connection in how well readers connected with books when they were also being read to by an adult regularly. It was incredibly interesting to identify how the experience of picking a physical book from a bookstore affected these children’s desire to read, not only with parents but eventually on their own. These children were not only reading more but also for enjoyment, rather than finding it a chore as they had often found before. ‘Print Matters More’ gave an inspiring insight into the barriers behind children’s reluctance to read, and what the Children’s publishing industry can perhaps do to remove these barriers.

Internship Insights: My Placement with Ann Crawford

Recently, I began an internship with publishing consultant Ann Crawford. Ann has a wealth of experience and contacts in the UK publishing industry which she has decided to bring to consultancy. She also works on editorial and marketing projects for several businesses. This seemed ideal for me, as someone who would like to learn more about the nooks and crannies of Scotland’s publishing industry.
A capable pair of hands indeed, Ann is also multi-skilled and passionate about many different creative projects. As a result, the placement has several aspects to it. One aspect is assisting Ann with her editorial duties in anyway necessary, such as research, looking into promoting and marketing, and compiling databases of contacts. The other is helping her to establish an online brand, business plan and website for her consultancy company. A role that I have been playing a very specific role in is designing the look of the company’s brand.
One of the most interesting things about working with Ann is that she has done a lot of publishing work for companies and institutions that aren’t publishing houses, but do make use of publications. She currently works on projects for companies in this way. There are certain challenges in working with businesses like this, which has broadened my interpretation of the publishing industry considerably. This is of great benefit to a publishing student who will soon be looking for work in a competitive industry.
Something Ann has been keen to do, on the side of all her other work, is use publishing to benefit those in need. Together, we found a common interest in investigating ways that publishing can help people who have found themselves homeless. To this point, we have been plotting a project that we hope may take flight well beyond the realms of an internship project. It has meant a lot to me that this is a project Ann is willing to share with an intern.

Logo design work space – but no sneak peaks!

Working with Ann is refreshing in many ways, and particularly because her passion for all things publishing is an unstoppable force in itself! It is easy to become jaded or stressed with publishing and its many deadlines, but Ann’s outlook on the work is a breath of fresh air and is certainly an outlook that has had an impact on me.

From the beginning of this placement, I have been overwhelmed by Ann’s kindness and her enthusiasm for hoping that I will able to learn from her. Though it is early days in this placement, I certainly have already learned from Ann and know that I will continue to do so.

My Placement at Luath Press

Over the two-week Easter break, I was given the opportunity to complete a work placement at Luath Press, a small but established publishing house based here in Edinburgh. Named after Robert Burns’ collie Luath, the press is located just a few steps away from Robert Burns’ first lodgings on the Royal Mile. For a small, independent publisher, Luath publish across a diverse range of genres; they cover fiction and poetry in their titles, as well as art, history and guidebooks — their sole aim being to publish well-written books worth reading.

On my first day at the placement, I was greeted by Jennie, who has been taking care of events and publicity at the press, while also running a second-hand bookshop in the nearby West Port area. Jennie guided me up to the office, which is based on the top floor of the building, and is brimming with stacks of books and paper. After allowing me time to get settled into what was to be my working environment over the next couple of weeks, Jennie explained some of the work I might expect to be doing during my time on the placement, before setting me off on my first task as an intern. I began with some design work on some bookmarks which were to be used for an upcoming launch event for Anne Pia’s Language of My Choosing. With guidance from Jennie, I tweaked the text and layout of the bookmarks in InDesign, and checked that the measurements were correct before they could be sent to print. This allowed me to put some of my InDesign skills from the course into practice in the publishing workplace, while also receiving useful feedback and advice along the way. After the bookmarks were approved by Jennie, I was then given a manuscript to proofread. As I have a particular interest in the editorial aspects of publishing, this was a brilliant opportunity for me to practise my skills and learn as much as I could about the process in a hands-on way.

For the rest of my first week, I continued proofreading the manuscript between other tasks that required more immediate attention. Alongside continuing my editorial work, I also drafted an invite for an event taking place the following week, and collected the required contact information to which the invites were to be sent. After the invites were approved by Jennie, I then emailed them out to the list of contacts I had compiled, including a link to the Eventbrite page to allow recipients to register to the event. I was also given a poetry manuscript to proofread by Jules, a former Napier student now working at Luath who always made the time to answer any questions I had. As the poetry manuscript was to be sent out to the typesetter that day, Jules asked me to check for any possible minor errors before it was sent out. Therefore, I checked that the page numbers in the contents page matched up to the corresponding page numbers within the body of the text, and likewise with the titles of the poems. In the run-up to the events taking place the following week, there were also several smaller tasks that required immediate attention in between my ongoing editorial work, such as delivering books and posters to the venues in which the events would be taking place. Through this variety of tasks, I began to better understand the importance of prioritising workload in the publishing environment; it can often be a balancing act in which the most immediately urgent tasks must be given priority over less pressing work.

As I began my second and final week on the placement, I was introduced to Luath’s director, Gavin MacDougall, along with a fellow intern who had just started at the press. After providing an overview of Luath’s history and development, Gavin checked up on my progress on the placement so far, and provided me with a checklist of tasks to focus on for the remainder of my time there. As this was a lengthy checklist considering my limited time at the press, it was agreed that it would be most useful for me to focus on certain tasks based around the manuscript I was currently proofreading. Over the course of my final week, I finished my proofreading of the manuscript (helped along by continuous one-to-one feedback with Jennie), drafted a press release for the title, as well as an AI sheet and a blurb. I also wrote a reader report for the manuscript in which I detailed what I considered to be the strengths and weaknesses of the work, and any improvements I thought could be made going forward. By focussing the majority of my work on this one particular manuscript, I felt I gained a well-rounded, practical insight into the various elements involved in the pre-publication process of a single title.

Over the course of my time at Luath, I was given the perfect opportunity to put all I have learned so far on the publishing course into practice. I feel I gained a well-rounded insight into the day-to-day dynamics of a small, independent publisher, and learned that no day is ever the same — adaptability is essential. And also, you will get used to the sound of bagpipes everyday!

Many thanks to everyone at Luath Press for this wonderful opportunity.

The Printed Book

In March at this year’s SYP 101 conference, Jenny Brown gave the opening remarks and discussed themes and trends occurring in the publishing industry. One theme was the rise in printed book sales. Brown pointed out that Waterstones made the first profit this year since the 2008 financial crash. There has also been a decrease in ebook sales which has resulted in bookshops like Waterstones removing e-readers from most of its stores.

But why?

There are two popular theories regarding the price of ebooks and the general physical medium coming into vogue.

Take a stroll through Amazon and you’ll see a surprising amount of ebooks being higher or similar in price to a printed book. For example, at the time of writing this Zadie Smith’s Swing Time is priced at £6.29 for the paperback version and £8.99 for the Kindle edition. Fumio Sasaki’s Goodbye Things: On Minimalist Living is £6.99 for the paperback version and £6.49 for the Kindle version. J K Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is £3.85 for the paperback but £5.99 for the Kindle. Even if an ebook version is a little cheaper people still prefer a printed version as they feel the difference in price isn’t large enough to outweigh the benefits of owning a physical book. Another reason is that to read an ebook you have to own a device to read it on, keep it up to date and charge it. Whereas a printed book can be read anywhere, for as long as you like and keep in your bookshelf until the end of your days. There is also a concern that ebook technology will become outdated and all files could become inaccessible.

The second theory is the rise in the physical medium. In the last five years there has been an increase in Polaroid, camera film, record player and vinyl sales. These are all mediums which have modern digital alternatives, but people have become fascinated with the more ‘vintage’ and ‘real’ options. As printed book sales increased so did vinyl sales, and 2016 saw the highest vinyl sales in 25 years. As we are saturated with digital media, people crave the singularity and simplicity of a device made for one purpose. This suggests a future not dissimilar to the one portrayed in the 2013 film Her, directed by Spike Jonze. Her is set in the not too distant future; a world where the 1950s and 2050s have somehow come together to create a tactile high tech land. Theodore, the main protagonist, has a job at a bespoke letter writing company that specialises in writing and sending physical love letters to people for any occasion. In this world paper seems to be a rarity and so unused that being given a physical letter is not just a nice surprise or gesture like it is today, but a beautiful precious rare object.

Another interesting conversation is the immediate future of the printed book and its rise in popularity. Will is stay? Will it go? Will it become something else entirely? At this year’s London Book Fair, I attended a talk discussing Graphic Novels: The Last 10 Years and the Next. When discussing the next ten years of the industry it was suggested that the printed graphic novel would remain the primary medium and digital mediums would be used to accompany the printed versions. For example, a graphic novel could be packaged with interviews with artists and writers, as well as preliminary sketches and character development. Could this be the norm for the future of publishing as a whole? Could the printed book come with a code or link to a file for you to download the accompanying content? Or will there be a special box delivered to your house containing beautifully packaged extra content goodies? Of course, there are already books which provide extra content in a similar way, but the question is could this be a standard requirement for every book to have some sort of added insight into the writing, design and publishing process? Something that goes beyond stalking a Twitter or Facebook feed, something that only a reader has access to. Will social media campaigns be enough to engage the reader in the future?

For the moment, sitting at home listening to some vinyl with a french pressed coffee with a good printed book in hand (and an iPhone close by), is a good time. Which, honestly, is fine by me. However, I’m excited to see what the future brings and how the relationship between the publisher and the reader evolves.