The strength of our MA Publishing (Book and Journal) pathway lies in the range and depth of our teaching and learning. No other course can compete with the rich variety of education, training and practice that we offer. It provides future publishing managers with a complete set of knowledge and experience bases that will equip them for a successful career in publishing. Our courses are run by experienced professionals well grounded in the processes and challenges of the publishing industry.

Course structure

In phase 1, your learning is focused on the professional competencies and practices in publishing. You will learn about:

• How publishers choose what they publish
• The working relationship between editors and authors
• The collaboration between editorial, marketing and production
• How books are promoted, marketed and sold
• Interpreting markets and building routes to the market
• How books are designed and produced
• The technologies that underpin book production
• The impact of digital technology on production and publishing
• Publishing law and contracts
• Distribution channels for selling books

In phase 2, you will widen and deepen your understanding of how publishing functions. You will learn about:

• The publishing business
• The business operations of publishing houses
• Publishing finances and management
• Doing research for publishing
• Project management

In phase 2 you will also be able study two Electives.  

In phase 3, if you are progressing through to a Masters Degree, you will be concentrating on doing research and writing up your dissertation. Your dissertation will focus on an issue or challenge in publishing that you have identified through an extensive literature research. 

The entire teaching and learning programme is supported by a programme of visiting speakers, whose lectures will illuminate further what you have been absorbing in the classroom and through groupwork.

Visiting Industry Speakers

Lectures from visiting industry leaders are one of the highlights of the course. Our speakers are carefully chosen for their ability to make the subject of their lectures lively and interesting for the students. 

The visiting lectures programme is crafted to include not just the range of publishing that exists in today ’s world, but also the full range of functions. The programme gives the students a chance to observe and reflect on what kind of publishing they want to enter, and what kind of job.

Our visiting industry speakers often pop up in other parts of the course – as speakers on the Conference panels, and as advisers on the students’ research projects. Many are also from companies represented on our Industry Forum.

Our visiting lecturers for the 2007-08 academic year have included

• Will Atkinson, Sales Director of Faber & Faber
  
• Stephen Barr, Managing Director of Sage Publications
  
• Mark Bide, Director of Rightscom
  
• Steve Connelly, Director of Digital Learning at Hodder Educational
  
• Timo Hannay, Publishing Director of Nature Group
  
• Hugh Jones, Legal Counsel to the Publishers’ Association
  
• Jessica Kingsley, Managing Director of Jessica Kingsley Publishing
  
• Richard Knight, Chief Executive of Nielsen BookScan
  
• Sophie Rochester, Associate of Colman Getty
  
• Alyssum Ross, Director of Business Operations for Hodder Education
  
• Claire Round, Marketing Director, Random House
  
• Nicholas Spice, Publisher of The London Review of Books
  
• Bryn Walls, Art Director of Dorling Kindersley
  
• Andrew Welham, Deputy Chief Executive of the Octopus Group

Other book industry speakers included Andrew Franklin, managing director of Profile Books, and Tony Lacey, editorial director of Penguin Books; both were panelists at the Publishing Innovation Conference.

Assignments

In Phases 1 and 2, students will work on assignments which take the form of individual written reports and group work. In group-work each group tackles a challenging publishing problem and demonstrate analysis and solutions through presentations and reports. One of your reports in Phase 2 will be the research proposal for either a publishing work-study issue, if you are exiting at PG Diploma, or for a publishing issue or area you wish to study for your MA dissertation.

The major assignment in Phase 2 allows the student groups to produce a publishing artefact, such a book or a magazine, or to run the annual publishing conference.

All assignments mirror the real-life demands of publishing.

International Summer School

Early in Phase 3, during May, we take our MA students on a week’s visit to another country to sample and learn about how publishing works there. We arrange visits to publishing houses and book shops, and to professional organisations connected with publishing. We have visited Moscow and St Petersburg, Athens, Paris, Stuttgart, Krakow and Warsaw, and most recently (2009), we went to Milan.  In May 2010 the course plans to visit the publishing industry in Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

This week is a real learning and cultural experience, and a thoroughly enjoyable one.