Helena Markou

Senior Lecturer & Subject Coordinator, MA Publishing (via distance learning)

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Personal Profile

For over six years, Helena lived in Oxford and lectured in Publishing and Digital Publishing on the campus undergraduate and postgraduate courses at Brookes.  During this time, she also completed the PGTHE teaching qualification and delivered a masters-level course on Digital Book History at the School of Advanced Studies, University of London.  In 2015, she moved to Scotland to undertake doctoral research on longselling trade non-fiction at the University of Stirling, funded by the Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanities.

 

Postgraduate Teaching

  • Marketing and Sales Management for Publishing (Tutor)
  • Digital Production & Workflow Management (Module Leader & Tutor)
  • Editorial Management, Funtions & Strategies (Tutor)
  • Data-driven Marketing for Publishing (Module Leader)
  • Children's & YA Publishing (Module Leader)
  • Independent Study (Supervisor)
  • Management of Journals (Module Leader)
  • Dissertation (Module Leader & Supervisor)

Research

Helena is the Subject Coordinator for the distance learning MA Publishing Studies (VA68) at Oxford Brookes University, working part-time and remotely from her home in Scotland. 

Helena's professional career spans publishing, bookselling, and digital consultancy. As Publishing Innovation Manager at Blackwell she completed a Knowledge Transfer Partnership developing and launching the UK's first custom textbook service to incorporate chapters from multiple copyright holders. Prior to this she worked in International Sales at Taylor & Francis and was Head of New Business at Perini Networks. 

Helena is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Stirling on longselling books in the UK. 

Working Title: The Shelf-Life of Books: An Exploration of the Lifecycle and Longevity of Books in the UK in the 21st Century

Topic:  With 180,000 new titles now published each year, there is fierce competition for space on bookshop shelves.  This research aims to identify and investigate longselling titles within UK trade publishing (namely the books you find in high street bookshops).  It will first establish an overview of the typical lifecycle of books across genres, using quantitative data analysis.  Then seek to identify and explore the cultural significance of those titles that, against all odds, remain on bookshop shelves.

Through this research data analysis methods will be developed and the themes of longevity, obsolesce and the impact of online bookselling on the UK publishing industry explored.

Research interests: bookselling, publishing, product development, consumerism, book history, book culture, creative industries, digital publishing, digital book history, digital humanities.