After a sell-out 2018 series, BookMachine Unplugged is back in 2019 and ready to inspire you with real insights into what is working in publishing right now. There will be 6 events this year, all included in your BookMachine Membership. Each will zoom in on a vital area of the publishing industry and feature 3 expert speakers taking to the stage.
Meet publishers, editors, marketeers, designers, techies and more - all in a strictly social and informal setting.
We’re told that publishing should be more innovative. We get it – innovation will help build a robust industry for the future. But where do we start as individuals who already have more than enough to do? We’re too busy commissioning, editing, designing, promoting and selling books to make time for breakthrough thinking.
Vera Sugar is a marketing executive at Singing Dragon (an imprint of Jessica Kingsley Publishers), publishers of authoritative books on complementary health, yoga and yoga therapy, Chinese medicine and more. She is also co-chair of the PAW (Planet + People + Animal Welfare) working group at Hachette.
In 2018, The Literary Consultancy offered a pilot initiative for aspiring editors, with three short seminars giving an introduction to the basics of copy-editing, proofreading and substantive editing. Within the first two days, we had over 100 expressions of interest: clearly, the demand for this kind of training is there.
Wednesday 13 November saw another packed house at the Century Club in London, for the last BookMachine Unplugged event of 2019. Hosted by BookMachine Editorial Board member Sophie O’Rourke (Managing Director, EMC Design), the evening gave us a chance to focus on design in its broadest form: not just about the visual aspects of book design, but about design thinking as a concept. Sophie’s panellists were Belinda Abbott (Head of Faculty, Design Thinkers Academy), Dean Johnson (Design, Technology and Innovation Consultant at activrightbrain), and Donna Payne (Creative Director at Faber & Faber).
Cassie Jane Buckley is Diversity and Inclusion Executive at Oxford University Press. In this article she reflects on her work and career development in diversity and inclusion at OUP.
Claire Maxwell is a freelance publicist, former journalist and a member of BookMachine Works. She’s worked in the communications department of various publishing companies in the UK including Canongate Books and Icon Books, managing huge campaigns and securing national and regional publicity for a number of authors.
Helen Harradine is well known to many of our readers as a regular attendee of BookMachine events. Helen is celebrating her fifth workiversary with Inspired Selection this week! Here are five key lessons she has learnt from working in hashtag#recruitment for half a decade.
When the incredible text of Greta and the Giants landed on our desks, we knew that it wasn’t just an opportunity to publish a great book. It was an opportunity to look at how we publish books in general. Was there a way that we could do business (and still, let’s be honest, make money) but also be kinder to the environment?
“Programming is like writing a book… except when you miss a single comma on page 126, the whole thing makes no sense” – Programmer humour
Many talented publishers think that they could never learn to code. They might think that it is too technical or too dry. They might assume that their proficiency with language has no application to computers. But programmers and publishing people have more in common than you might think. Programmers and writers both need to distill complex problems into clear, readable and actionable messages. Coding can be as aesthetically driven as any other art form and like writers the best programmers have technical ability and creative flair. So, what are some of the most common ways that coding overlaps with publishing?
Anna Woodbine is an independent book designer and illustrator, based in the hills near Bath. She works on all sorts of book covers from children’s to adult’s, classics to crime, memoirs to meditation. She takes her tea with a dash of milk (Earl Grey, always), loves the wind in her face, clompy boots and that lovely, damp smell after its rained. Find her at thewoodbineworkshop.co.uk.
Karen Sullivan is the founder of the independent publisher Orenda Books (and Orentober!). Karen moved to the UK from Canada at the age of 21 and worked for a small independent publisher before forging a career as a health editor and writer. In this interview Karen explains how Orenda’s autumn marketing campaign Orentober began, and what its aims are.
Amazon has eclipsed Google and is now the # 1 destination for product search. With few shoppers looking beyond the 1st page of Amazon’s search results (one study found just 30% clicked to page 2), it is no surprise that Amazon SEO is a hot topic. One not just limited to those in the market of bookselling either.
Melody Dawes is the Managing Director of Just Content. With 20 years’ experience in educational and academic publishing, she set up Just Content in 2013, offering publishers and content providers an on-demand solution for outsourcing at scale. Here we interview Melody about her business.
Crip Collective is an informal Facebook group for disabled people working in the publishing industry in the UK (including emerging writers and publishing students – all welcome!). The group is there to provide mutual support, share resources, and discuss the challenges we face in the industry.
For a popular topic in the industry today, metadata is easily misunderstood. I believe that is because everyone has their own subtly different definition of what exactly “metadata” means – and for good reason. Metadata in action is very context dependent, and really can look and act differently depending on the application.
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