SYP Scotland held its relaunch on Thursday, 29 October at the Publishing Scotland offices in Edinburgh. The event attracted around 60 publishers (a third) and university students (two-thirds), a promising turnout on what was a rather wet and dark night. Scottish Chair Dayspring MacLeod began the evening with a few words of welcome, with publicity officer Fiona MacLeod introducing speakers Angie Crawford, buyer and marketing officer for Waterston...

10 years of Amazon.co.uk ‡ Amazon's labour relations ‡ Amazon's relationship with publishers According to November’s edition of the Ethical Consumer, Amazon sold 16% of all books sold in 2007 in the UK, compared to Waterstone’s 20%. Indeed, as The Bookseller has noted, Amazon already had 5% of British book sales after only two years of operations. Although Amazon has rapidly expanded into other businesses, it proved v...

10 years of Amazon.co.uk ‡ Amazon's labour relations ‡ Amazon's relationship with publishers The distribution centre had a high staff turnover during the years, until the time came when I was one of the few left from the original Slough staff. Labour relations have never been one of Amazon’s strong points. During the time I was there, Amazon successfully fought off one attempt at unionisation. Billy Bragg even offered his s...

Dear Readers, As some of you might be aware, we had a conference on Saturday, the 22nd of November. It was the SYP's Annual Conference - our biggest event of the year. It was held at the venerable UCL, and called 'Publishing 2.0: The Reader Revolution'. Details and write ups will follow in due course, but here, from the camera of intrepid photographer Rebecca Bruce, is a slideshow of pictures from the event ... If you were at the event, an...

Perhaps you’ve always dreamed of becoming an editor. Perhaps you like the sound of it but aren’t really sure what’s involved. At the Oxford SYP’s September speaker meeting, experienced commissioning editors Sarah Caro (OUP) and Al Bertrand (Blackwell) uncovered the truths and myths of commissioning to an audience of aspiring (and actual) editors. The first thing we were told is that it’s not imperative to have a d...

Trade publishing is a white middle class ghetto. And if its workforce does not start to bear a closer resemblance to the population as a whole it risks becoming culturally irrelevant. That was the stark conclusion of In Full Colour, the first investigation into diversity in publishing, which I edited earlier this year on behalf of the Arts Council decibel project. Among the statistics revealed in the survey were: * While only 8% of the indust...

To raise money for the BTBS, The Society of Young Publishers decided to have a quiz recently. It was such a success, we're going to have another! It took place in Fitzrovia, and we raised just over £300 for said Book Trade Benevolent Society. The winners were, ironically, The Society of Mature Publishers, whilst the wooden spoon was wrestled from JFL's Jolly Foxy Ladies (and Hound can testify that they were foxy) by the determined efforts o...

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Greetings from your editor, Gurdeep Mattu. I know we've been a bit quiet on the InPrint Online front recently. We've actually been busy redesigning the concept of InPrint Online, and now, we are launching You're currently sitting on the front page of the new site mini-site, with the URL: http://inprint.thesyp.org.uk It is split into several sections, navigable using the left hand nav bar. Some articles will be members only, but for the time be...

As we head into the month of the London Book Fair, the Book Fair War of 06 suddenly sprang back into my mind. Well, that event, and the chocolate fountain at the LBF Thirty-Fifth Birthday Party that year. And the girl I’d definitely met before, but when I said that to her, she said ‘you’ll have to try harder than that, I’m afraid.’ Anyway. The venerable institution was shipped to London’s Docklands, an...

The Column was what this was supposed to be called, when it launched, two heady years ago. I was new to publishing, working at Robert Hale in Clerkenwell and didn’t quite take as long to get over hangovers as I do. But still, no quarter, no surrender. The naming was supposed to mimic a kind of 1922-esque Modernism; perhaps it sounded good to someone who not that long ago had turned in a dissertation on T. S. Eliot. The art of the retrosp...

Hi, this is a quick note from your new editor - Gurdeep Mattu. I've spent the last two years bringing you InPrint in paper format, and seen it go from a 12pp A4 newsletter to a 32pp A5 magazine that was slick, well-designed and full of content. We even got ourselves a cover designer! But no more. Now I am here. Of course, the paper format's transformation couldn't have been done without the Editor, Rebecca Strong, and her commissioning zeal, ...

This month the SYP was delighted to be joined by two speakers, both highly prominent in the world of book prizes and awards: Ion Trewin, long time employee of Orion, editor of a Booker winner (Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally), former chair of the Booker, and present administrator. Ion is also an author himself (mostly non-fiction/political). Danuta Reah, crime fiction writer, who also writes with the pseudonym Carla Banks. Danuta is for...

‘How many debut authors have you read this year?’ This was the question posed by Cathryn Summerhayes, an agent from David Godwin Associates, as she kicked off the evening’s discussion. She continued by observing that in today’s competitive market most book-buyers are attracted to an already established writer on the shelf, and as agents and publishers, we must strive to persuade the consumer to take a chance on something n...

When I heard about the Manga Invasion evening, my first thought was of the holiday resort where three Leicester football players were arrested a couple of years ago. As a Leicester fan myself, I was more than a little surprised by the idea that the scandal should be celebrated and even discussed via a panel. Luckily, just as I was collating my end of season videos to demonstrate a club history otherwise free of such incidents, I became aware of...

Every mass-murderer has a mother. If she abandoned her child at birth, or subjected them to an unstable home, poverty, or abuse, then she would inevitably be cited as a contributing factor to the killer’s unnatural psyche. This seems logical enough, particularly if, like Kevin, he is just sixteen years old: she must have done something wrong. But Lionel Shriver’s We Need To Talk About Kevin, made up of haunting, retrospective lette...

Digital download I imagine most people reading this article will have heard of digital downloading. Once the province of music singles and albums, audio is rapidly catching up. www.audible.co.uk was launched in June 2005, with www.audible.com already well established and www.spokennetwork.co.uk launched in May 2006. Other companies will inevitably set up their own digital download systems, but it is worth looking at these two pioneers. The she...

What was the size of 14 football pitches, hosted 7,225 exhibits from 101 countries, had around 285,000 visitors and was crawling with 12,000 journalists? The Frankfurt Bookfair 2005! Joyce Aravena, Sales Director of the FBF for the past eighteen years, complete with PowerPoint presentation, hosted August’s Speaker Meeting, and terrified us with the magnitude of the fair! The SYP were approached by Colman Getty, who publicize the FBF,as the...

'Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need - simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.' Jerome K. Jerome, 3 Men in a Boat This year’s punting party was a roaring success. The sun shone, there was food aplenty, and the Pimm’s flowed as freely as the river. After gathe...

Survival International, the largest and oldest charity working for the rights of tribal people worldwide, is helping to fund the Gana and Gwi ‘Bushmen’s’ court action against their forced removal from Botswana's Central Kalahari Game Reserve. These Bushmen and their neighbours, the Bakgalagadi, have been evicted by the authorities from their homes; their water has been cut off, they have been forbidden to hunt or gather food, an...

Note from Web-editor: Have you read this book? If it inspired any strong reaction in you, or you want to respond to a point raised by members in our book club, feel free to post your thoughts on the SYP forum. ------------------------------------------------------- It is said to be one of the most frequently adapted works in the literary canon, enjoys popularity as a GCSE favourite and has been belted out as an operatic, haunting Kate Bush numb...

Note from Web-Editor: This piece was commissioned for InPrint magazine in February 2006 to tie in with that edition's Valentine's Day theme. But for any innocent romantics out there, you'd better stop reading now... ------------------------------------------------------------------- If Valentine’s Day seems nothing but a tawdry enterprise designed to extract maximum cash for annoying questions – ‘So, did the postman come for y...

'Those pesky kids!' 'Daphne!' 'Scooooby!'… they cried as the SYP "Scooby Doo" team trooped around the West End on a hot summer eveningfor the BTBS Walkies. For thoseunfamiliar withthe Walkies, it is one of the mostboisterously enjoyableevents in the book trade's social calendar. This annual event is a fundraiser for the Book Trade Benevolent Society and involves a sponsored fancy dress walk around publishing houses in the West ...

Note from Web-Editor: While all publishers celebrate anniversaries, and although last year Penguin's 70th inevitably eclipsed Vintage's 15th, we couldn't help but be impressed at the energy and imagination with which the latter conducted the celebration of its comparatively tender years. This included the repackaging of fifteen backlist titles and branding them as Vintage Future Classics in a national marketing campaign. The event at Foyles was...

Note from Web-Editor: The London SYP-ers are a well-travelled bunch, and enjoy nothing more than spreading the literary love - so we thought you might appreciate a report of what happened when we met our Irish cousins late last year... oh, and keep an eye on the Events page for upcoming expeditions. ---------------------------------------- On the first Saturday in October (2005), the Society of Young Publishers (SYP) flew to Dublin to have a ...

A decade ago, talking about books took place mostly in the classroom, in living rooms, in coffee shops - any public place where people of similar interests could physically get together to talk. Other kinds of book discussion that did not involve face-to-face human interaction took place between the pages of books, magazines and newspapers, predominantly in the form of essays and reviews, interviews with authors and letters to the editor. These c...

This year, the Guardian is boasting that the longlist for its Guardian First Book Award is the ‘most diverse yet in ethnic origin and theme’. Authors that made the grade come from Iran, Thailand, India, Malaysia, the US, Kent, Oxford, Neasden, Doncaster and Co. Tyrone and the themes of their books vary even more (transsexuality, mythical lands, tourism and the loss of an identical twin, to name but a few). But how much is this a refle...

This is how Kate Mosse likes her books, and her latest novel, Labyrinth, has all of the above in abundance. Set in the city of Carcassonne, a restored medieval city in France, the narrative moves seamlessly between modern times and the thirteenth century. Centred on two female protagonists, Labyrinth is a grail adventure novel for girls, defining a new genre in literature and filling a gap in the market between Dan Brown, Wilbur Smith and Umberto...

The November 2005 London Speaker Meeting gave much insight to those who have always wanted to know what it was like working for the ‘other side’. Our three speakers - Carole Blake from Blake Friedmann literary agency, Carole O’ Brian and Andrew Franklin from Profile Books - gave us the gossip on working for independent and conglomerate publishing firms. Andrew was made redundant from his job as director of Penguin and is happil...

Note from the Web-Editor (Tori Hunt):The SYP Conference 2005 was organised by the Oxford SYP, and boy what a great job they did. So for all those who will be trying to decide whether to sign up for Conference '06, you might find it helpful to browse throught the reviews of last year's workshops, below. These should give you a flavour of what delegates can expect this November (details for which are still being finalised, but keep an eye on the Ev...

‘Your voice is heard the moment you walk in the door if you want it to be,’ states Maddie Rowe, Editorial Assistant on the Historical Romance list since May 2005, describing how Harlequin Mills & Boon (H M&B) seeks to involve each employee, whether new or established. It might seem like a bold thing to say, but Maddie is currently working for her dream company – she adores romance fiction – and having come to the e...

The Society of Young Publishers can be – and in our cases has been – a life-transforming institution. Of course the SYP has great events, with carefully chosen speakers on important subjects for anyone beginning or furthering their career in publishing, but it was its other raison d’être – the social one – that literally made all the difference for us. Norman Franklin: Throughout the years, the Society has pla...

Ten entrepreneurial young publishers from around the globe are competing for the third annual British Council International Young Publisher of the Year (IYPY) award. The award celebrates the creative and leadership abilities of young publishers (aged 25-35) from developing markets, and ten finalists from Argentina, Colombia, Jordan, Lebanon, Lithuania, Mexico, Oman, Slovenia, South Africa, and Thailand have been selected by local juries as their...

When I heard that Bret Easton Ellis was giving a rare reading and interview on 10 October at the Royal Festival Hall, I phoned up immediately for tickets. I was curious to discover what he was like in real life, given his often violent and drug-fuelled writing. The woman I spoke to on the phone promptly informed me that she would also be going, and that she couldn’t wait to see what he was like either. ‘I think he owes all women an ex...

The desire to exploit the immediacy and audience scope that electronic publishing formats allow, in particular through the Internet, has brought with it not only a huge pressure on publishers to keep up, but also a boom in terms of new technology and employment. ‘Updated every minute of every day,’ or so says the header of the BBC News website. And the BBC, along with other major news sources, is not alone in the race to provide the...

The 24th Anarchist Bookfair was held at London's Voluntary Sector Resource Centre on London's Holloway Road last Saturday. As the conference closed police responded to a call from the landlord of the Coronet on Holloway after alleged anarchists refused to turn off a stereo system that was disturbing customers. A riot ensued as police officers, who had been policing a match at Arsenal, arrived in large numbers to deal with the incident. Around 50...

There's an ad out at the moment: don't judge a book by its film. If you've ever been disappointed by a big-screen version of one of your favourite novels, you'd probably be inclined to agree. However, although film adaptations are often a poor substitute for the real McCoy, there's no getting away from the fact that they are big business. In 2004, the highest grossing UK films, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason and Harry Potter and the Prisoner o...

The Society of Publishers in Ireland, or SPI, was born when three publishers (Susan Rossney, Rachel Pierce and Emma Byrne) came together in 2002 with the idea of establishing a networking organisation for the Irish publishing industry. Its aim was to bring together employees, owners and managers of some of the many publishing houses, and publishing-related organisations, operating independently of each other in Ireland. This would include larger ...

This year, members of the SYP working in publishing were fortunate enough to be invited to The British Council on Friday 11 March for the International Young Publisher of the Year pre-award drinks party. It was a great opportunity to find out more about the finalists and their extensive profiles, speak to them in person, and to meet those at the British Council who were involved with the award. The finalists were all aged between 25 and 35 and we...

It was half-past nine on the first morning of the 34th London Book Fair at Olympia: across the Grand Hall, bleary-eyed exhibitors were stifling yawns, slurping coffee and artfully arranging piles of business cards and boiled sweets on their stands. This year there were over eighteen hundred exhibitors, and as the doors opened visitors from all over the world piled into the exhibition's two halls as if it were the Harrods sale. Every part of ...

The London Libraries Development Agency is a small organisation with just 2 permanent and one part-time staff members, which is based in the heart of London in Westminster Reference Library, just off Leicester Square. The Agency is dedicated to the promotion and innovation of the capital's library services in whatever organisation they are based, but most people's experience of a library, once they have left the education system, remains with the...

Have you ever wondered if you chose the right degree? This article sets out to examine the importance of studying a directly-related subject with a future job in mind – does it make a difference or not? Emilie Connes: Everybody tells me this: if you want to work in publishing, don't mention that you write. I have often wondered why this is. Do prospective employers think you're going to take the opportunity to shove your manuscripts at the...

Setting up a publishing company was the reasonably simple part. A few bits of paper signed, a couple of small fees paid and suddenly a limited company is all yours. The only real pain was finding a name that wasn’t already taken. Even when one was finally found, it was a painful wait for it to be finalised. During that period of deep paranoia, the streets appeared to be rife with untrustworthy name thieves. Much to my relief, one cold morni...