The 16th of this month saw young publishers from around the country gather at Stationers’ Hall for the Society of Young Publishers 2012 AGM. 2011 Chairman Ella Kahn opened the meeting by summing up the years events and achievements and thanking the outgoing committee, followed by the voting in of new amendments to the constitution and introducing the new 2012 committee. This years Publishers Question Time Debate event covered the subject ...

The SYP are proud to announce the launch of the Kim Scott Walwyn Prize 2012. Run in conjunction with Book Trust and The Publishing Training Centre, the Kim Scott Walwyn Prize celebrates the achievements of women in publishing who are in their first seven years of working within the industry. The annual prize was launched last Thursday and you have until 5pm on Friday 2 March to send in your application. The prize has been running since 2003 an...

I started my marathon training in the first week of January. Every week I will be doing 3 training sessions as part of my 16 week training schedule in the build up to the 2012 London Marathon. I will be writing short pieces along with our Commissioning Editor, Rosy Locke for InDigital on how the training is going and maybe include a few pictures of how stupid I look at the end of some of the sessions. I will also post a link to my sponsorship pag...

Despite the freezing cold weather, the disrupted trains (surprise surprise) and the myriad of Christmas related tasks on everybody’s plates at the time of year, we still enjoyed a great turn out for the Northern & Midlands SYP Christmas Extravaganza. Once everyone had arrived, thawed their fingers and toes and braved the busy bar at The Brewery Tap for some local beer, we kicked off the evening with Meg from Radish who gave us a pass...

On a wet and windy Thursday and the Society of Young Publishers and the Society of Authors braved the weather and headed to a night of literary merriness at The Water Poet in Shoreditch. Filled with fairy-lights, large sofas and an accommodating bar, the venue was superb and had just the right amount of cosiness to it to make it feel like a really intimate setting. The compere for the evening was columnist and author Lucy Mangan who introduced...

On the 22nd April, at 9.45 AM, SYP Chair Andrew Turner and Commissioning Editor Rosy Locke will be running the London Marathon on behalf of the Society of Young Publishers to raise money for The Book Trade Charity. The Book Trade Charity provides assistance to over 200 people each year, covering a wide range of issues and problems that may be personal, financial or work-related. The charity can be traced back to 1837, providing support and ass...

For our November meeting, the London Book Club picked a novel by prolific Portuguese novelist José Saramago. Death at Intervals describes a nameless country, inhabited by nameless people identified only by their job title or social position. Here death comes to a sudden halt one New Year’s Day. With Saramago being a Nobel Laureate whose work has been translated into 25 languages, our expectations of the book were understandably ...

On Friday 11th November the SYP was honoured to hold its talk 'In the Job or in the Book' at the stunning Stationer's Hall. We rather sheepishly filled the 17th Century Guild Hall, a little overwhelmed by gilded walls and stained glass. The building was once the authoritative body of publishing that controlled all admission into the trade and now, rather fittingly, held our talk on how we got into, or intended to get into, the industry. The ...

London SYP Speaker Event 26th October The Larrick Inn Pub, Marylebone. Last Tuesday, in the suitably literary Larrick Inn Pub, lined with dated volumes and wood panels, the SYP had a 'Trends in Literature' talk. This was so popular that we not only filled the room but members sat on the floor, spilled out the door and clamoured for complimentary glasses of wine. The panel represented each section and stage of the publishing industry, from au...

When Liz Murray from LJ interactive remarked, to an impressive audience at Magdalen College Auditorium, that it now takes only one week for a billion tweets to be sent, it really rammed home how far Social Media has come since its beginnings as an elitist curio of the American Ivy League. Similarly, for an impression of the incredible breadth and adaptability that social media commands, you only had to look as far as the variety of speaker...