Welcome to UCLan Publishing

The Publishing House, UCLan Publishing, offers students the opportunity to gain an insight into the publishing world.  Doing a subject in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences gives you invaluable ‘Cultural Knowledge’ that can be brought to a variety of publishing projects. In addition to subject specialist learning, your degree also gives you some key ‘soft’ skills such as communication, teamwork and problem solving. Working within the Publishing House will enable you to use these skills in ‘realistic’ working situations. Becoming aware of these skills and abilities is an essential factor in your future professional development.

We support the following teaching and research activities in the University of Central Lancashire:

The production of real commercial books

Publishing students, whether undergraduate or postgraduate, learn by doing. When it has been established that there is a gap in the market, uclanpublishing works with students on programmes across the University to produce and sell a real book. This year two main projects are being undertaken:

A Lancashire cookery book
Publishing students will produce a Lancashire cookery book with a difference. There is a call in the Lancashire Evening Post for the general public to send in local recipes for publication in a new weekly series. Publishing students will use these recipes to make a book about the region’s culinary specialities together with stories about the people themselves. Waterstone’s and Borders have already expressed a firm interest – put in your order soon!

Letters to Kenya
Very soon we will be launching a creative writing competition for schoolchildren in the UK to write letters, poems, and short stories on the theme of 'Africa'. Publishing students will produce a book based on these letters called Letters to Kenya. The book will be on general sale, with profits going towards buying desperately needed books and teacher resources for schools in Kenya.

The teaching of innovative undergraduate and postgraduate programmes

Many programmes across the University contribute to the work of uclanpublishing. However, most of the ground work is done by the following programmes:

Insight into Publishing
This is a module run by the Centre for Employability Through the Humanities and aims to give undergraduate students a chance to work in a 'real' publishing house. They will work in teams and learn how to commission, edit, produce, market and sell real publications. They will also have the chance to visit bookshops, fairs and publishers, attend events hosted by agents, authors and publishers and even help to organise conferences.

MA Publishing
This brand new programme is run by the School of Journalism, Media and Communication and is the only course of its kind in the North of England. This is a vocational programme, and is aimed at postgraduates who wish to pursue a career in publishing. Students will be working closely with industry partners, including Canongate and Faber&Faber, to ensure graduates are fully prepared for the challenges of a dynamic workplace.

MA Writing for Children
This is also a new programme run by the School of Journalism, Media & Communication. We are living in a 'golden age' of children’s books. Every publishing house now has a separate children’s division and has made a substantial investment in this area. In this unique programme, students will have the chance to study classic and contemporary children's literature and produce their own, with input from some of the most well known authors, publishers and TV producers of today. The course is aimed at students wanting to pursue a career as professional children’s writers, those already in employment related to children’s books such as bookselling, teaching, nursing, librarianship and those wanting to get a better understanding of children’s books.

Hosting and organising events

We are working with publishers, librarians, agents, booksellers and other book organisations to host and organise a series of events for students, the trade and the general public. These are being added to daily but so far include:

A Lancashire branch of the Federation of Children’s Book Groups
Together with local specialist booksellers, librarians and writers we will be establishing and hosting a branch of the respected Federation of Children’s Book Groups. This is a nationally recognised charity which is over 40 years old. Groups organise a variety of book-related activities for children in their localities, often in conjunction with their local schools and libraries, including bringing authors and illustrators to meetings and storytelling sessions. The Federation produces a regular newsletter and numerous specialist booklists. The Federation also organises the National Share-a-Story Month each year in May, holds an Annual Conference in the Spring  and coordinates the well-established Red House Children's Book Award.

Talks and signings 
We aim to host a series of lectures, workshops and talks from nationally and internationally recognised book trade specialists and authors. Just a taster of a few we are planning:

• The children’s author, John Connelly, came on 5th October. This event was in conjunction with Borders and a number of local schools
• Adele Geras, author of over 90 children’s and adult books will be visiting
• David Roche, Group Sales and Marketing Director of HarperCollins, will be here later in the year
• Barry Cunningham, otherwise known as 'the man who discovered Harry Potter', will talk about what it was like to begin the biggest phenomenon in books

A conference on crossover fiction
We will be hosting a conference on crossover fiction in 2010. Crossover fiction (defined as adults reading children’s books) is a phenomenon which has had profound effects on the children’s book trade. We will be playing host to some of the biggest authors and academics in this field and announcing the creation of a crossover fiction prize.

A series of debates on digital publishing
The book trade is going through a revolution. Not since the invention of the Gutenberg Press has there been a more important time for innovation. We intend to host a series of debates where members of the book trade can talk openly and freely about their hopes, plans and fears about the digital future.

Innovative research in knowledge transfer areas

Research in new areas such as digital and crossover fiction will underpin a lot of the work of uclanpublishing. This will be undertaken by both staff and students on many programmes within the University.

CPD training for the book trade

We aim to help the book and publishing industries progress by offering fairly priced training for trade professionals. We will be working with a number of publishing houses to establish training needs and delivering programmes usually via a week long residential.

If you would like to know more about us and our projects, please do not hesitate to contact Debbie Williams, RWE Manager, at djwilliams1@uclan.ac.uk.