Publishing News | Publishing
New members of Industry Advisory Board
New members of Industry Advisory Board
We are delighted to welcome six new members to our Advisory Board at the Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies (OICPS) at Oxford Brookes. They are Mary Cannam, Commercial Director at Faber & Faber; Jacob Pienaar, Managing Director at Pearson Heinemann; Nigel Roby, Managing Director and owner of The Bookseller; Ian Russell, Chief Executive of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP); Rebecca Smart, Managing Director of the Osprey Group; and David Taylor, Group Managing Director of Lightning Source UK.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 23 Sep 2010 around 5pm
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Philip Pullman and Colin Dexter launch Oxford bid to become UNESCO World Book Capital
Oxford has formally launched a bid to become UNESCO World Book Capital in 2014. Since 2001 UNESCO has nominated a World Book Capital City to acknowledge the best year-long programme proposed by a city to promote books and foster reading. Successful programmes involve cooperation with local, national and international professional organizations representing writers, publishers, booksellers and librarians as well as communities and groups which encourage and promote reading. Oxford and its surrounding county of Oxfordshire have unparalleled resources and world renowned publishing and bookselling enterprises in place to support a programme of this kind, and there are probably more major, culturally diverse, authors based in or around Oxford than in any comparable city in the world.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 17 Sep 2010 around 8am
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Blog to the Future?
A variety of current developments are creating questions over present models of publishing and scholarly communication. Will new journals continue to be launched? Will open access developments such as subject or institutional repositories reach a tipping point at which libraries will start to cancel journal subscriptions? Is the journal article too static a mechanism, by comparison to the ways in which scholars are able to interact using blogs and wikis? Steadily emerging is a new future for the journal as part of an overall network of knowledge creation and scholarly communication.
Angus Phillips, Director of the Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies at Oxford Brookes, has published an article entitled ‘Blog to the Future?’, about the future of journals publishing, in the October 2010 issue of the Journal of Scholarly Publishing.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 14 Sep 2010 around 3pm
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PMT walk the Thames
Jonathan Davis and Gareth Watkins (MA Publishing 2008-09) write about their charity walk along the Thames in the summer of 2010.
On 17 July 2010, four members of publishing Men Together (PMT) - established on a crisp autumnal induction day at Oxford Brookes in 2007 - set off on a 100-mile, 7-day walk along the Thames Path. Journeying from London to Oxford, they raised money for and awareness of Booktrust UK (http://www.booktrust.org.uk) and their programmes to support literacy at all levels of development. It also helped that their charitable activities are vaguely publishing-related, as there’s nothing better than helping support the readers of the future! As publishers we all believe in the importance of higher levels of literacy: not just to sell books, but because it is a lifelong skill that some children (and adults) never get to experience fully.
Further details on our Alumni page
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 02 Sep 2010 around 12pm
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SHARP conference, Helsinki
The 10th Annual Conference of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP) took place in Helsinki last week, 17-20 August 2010. Themed 'Book Culture from Below', the conference sought to explore new perspectives on book and publishing history by focusing non-canonical and marginal books, readers, authors, and publishers over the centuries.
Jane Potter of OICPS gave a paper entitled 'A Certain Poetess': Recuperating Jessie Pope (1878-1941)', the much-maligned 'friend' of Wilfred Owen's 'Dulce et Decorum Est', whose patriotic verse in periodicals such as Punch and the Daily Mail sit in glaring opposition to the work of the celebrated 'soldier poets' of the First World War. Potter drew on and expanded her Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/98109) entry on Pope to argue for a more subtle consideration of this writer's life and work.
Podcasts of the plenary talks and photographs from the daily events may be found at: http://www.helsinki.fi/sharp2010/index.htm
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 25 Aug 2010 around 7am
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Diversity in Publishing
Unber Sheikh, a student on the MA in Publishing, writes about her time at Oxford Brookes and her participation in initiatives to encourage greater diversity in publishing:
When I applied for the MA in Publishing I underestimated the profound impact it would have on both my personal and professional development. Before applying I, like many, had felt the effects of this country’s worst economic downturn through an unexpected period of unemployment. During my job search, I came across the MA in Publishing at Oxford Brookes University and applied hoping that it would help improve my situation. It’s one year on and I can honestly say that I have no regrets.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 16 Aug 2010 around 3pm
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The future of books – PM programme BBC Radio 4
Angus Phillips, Director of the Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies at Oxford Brookes, was interviewed on the PM programme on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday 20 July about the growth of ebooks and the future of the publishing industry. He was interviewed alongside John Sutherland, Emeritus Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London. The discussion was in response to the news from Amazon in the US that for the last three months, sales of books for the Kindle outnumbered sales of hardcover books.
You can read some of the comments in response from listeners at the PM blog here:
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 21 Jul 2010 around 9am
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Survey about Publishing Skills - Play Your Part in Shaping Future Skills Now
Play Your Part in Shaping Future Skills Now
Skillset, the Sector Skills Council for Creative Media, are running a Workforce Survey to help them produce the most comprehensive profile of working life in the UK's Publishing and Creative Media Industries. Play your part in shaping how they support the training you need to survive and thrive in these challenging times. Whether you are an employee or a freelancer working in UK publishing, tell them about your skills needs, experience of training and recruitment, future plans and working patterns.
Click here to fill in the Skillset Creative Media Workforce Survey: http://www.skillsetworkforcesurvey.com/
The survey should take approximately 15 minutes to complete. Please feel free to forward on to other friends and colleagues working in the industry.
(If you are an Internet Explorer 6 user, click here for instructions on instructions that will help you gain access: http://www.skillset.org/research/activity/workforce/article_7779_1.asp )
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 21 Jul 2010 around 6am
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OICPS in China
The 11th China Communication Conference was held at Peking University on the 9th and 10th July 2010. The overall theme was New Media, Diverse Cultures and Global Communication, and Angus Phillips, Director of the Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies (OICPS), was a plenary speaker. With the overall title, ‘The Future of the Book in the Digital Age’, he spoke in particular about how publishers need to change their way of thinking to develop content which can be delivered on different platforms, and how new media can be used to promote reading and the sale of books, whether in print or digital form.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 15 Jul 2010 around 11am
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Honorary doctorate for Felicity Bryan
The literary agent, Felicity Bryan, was awarded an honorary doctorate by Oxford Brookes University at a ceremony last week. She started her agency over twenty years ago and represents a range of famous writers including Karen Armstrong, Penelope Hobhouse, and Rosamunde Pilcher. Through a recent management buy-out two fellow directors now share ownership of the business.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 02 Jul 2010 around 11am
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