“You will not believe how full this place will be once the Fair starts,” Katie Morris, the event manager for the London Book Fair (LBF), told us when we first visited the Olympia venue two days before it started. She was right: no one could have prepared any of us, the four NYU M.S. in Publishing: Digital and Print Media students who were helping at the 2017 London Book Fair, for what happens during those three amazing days. On Sunday, Olympia was completely empty except for the crews setting up stands. As soon as LBF started, the halls were filled with publishers and agents talking about the latest news in the industry: Penguin Random House’s $65 million deal with the Obamas, what Brexit means for the British publishing industry, and all the titles that were generating buzz in the International Rights Center.
Liate Stehlik
London Book Fair 2016: NYU in Wonderland
“It’s still stories—and the authors who create them—that make publishing important, not the format.” This comment from Baroness Gail Rebuck, Chairman of Penguin Random House UK, echoed the theme prevalent throughout the Quantum: Publishing & So Much More conference that preceded the London Book Fair, not to mention the fair itself. [Read more…] about London Book Fair 2016: NYU in Wonderland
Summer Publishing Institute: The Book Session Begins
The next chapter in the NYU Summer Publishing Institute program—the book session—opened with a keynote address from Michael Pietsch, Chief Executive Officer of Hachette Book Group USA. With over 35 years in the industry, Pietsch progressed from what he called a “supple-elbowed” intern needed to operate the newly-acquired Xerox machine at David R. Godine to editor to publisher to a CEO who, remarkably, still sets aside time to edit books by James Patterson, Stacy Schiff, and Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning best-seller, The Goldfinch. [Read more…] about Summer Publishing Institute: The Book Session Begins
“Ten Things You Might Do to Get a Job” (And More!)
“You may well have signed up for this summer institute because you want to edit fiction or nonfiction,” Tom Allen, President and CEO of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), told the students in his keynote address at the beginning of the book session of the NYU-SCPS Summer Publishing Institute (SPI). “But in a few weeks, you’ll learn what that [editing] entails,” Allen counseled, and then added:
“You’ll also gain insight into the breath of jobs in this industry in finance, production, rights, marketing, to name a few, that directly affect the success of books. In publishing, it takes a village. It really takes a village. I urge you to be open to the many—what I think will be unexpected—opportunities that you come across that will offer you a fulfilling career within the community of literate, engaged, and interesting people.”
After this brief appeal, Allen then launched into a discussion of the effects of the digitization of books on the publishing industry. When more than half of the SPI attendees told Allen they read on digital devices, it would have been remiss for him not to focus a majority of his talk on this topic. Still, I wondered, if digital was so important, why would he have urged us to stay open-minded to all the opportunities that the publishing industry affords? As I listened to the panel discussion that followed on the future of book publishing, I had a far better understanding of what Allen meant. [Read more…] about “Ten Things You Might Do to Get a Job” (And More!)