Online Graduate Programs. 2U partners with some of the world’s leading colleges and universities to offer online graduate degree programs to students everywhere. Each accredited online degree program features live face-to. Graduate Programs in Publishing: Are They Worth It? If you’re considering graduate programs in publishing, you may be wondering just how relevant those courses are. After all, in an industry that is so heavily learned on the job, how much good could something a professor tells you in a classroom do? As a relatively recent graduate with an M. A. Its trials and its benefits will be laid out in terms of my experiences, and perhaps you’ll come to the same conclusion I did. As one of many English majors with daydreams of entering the publishing industry, I found myself facing a common dilemma. All of my classmates aspired to be the next Tolkien, Rowling, Austen, Bront. If this was not their goal, then chances are that they wanted to be editors buried in a sea of riveting manuscripts, finding the next “big hit” in the slush pile. If they were feeling daring, my classmates dreamed of sitting behind a desk in a sparkling high- rise chatting about marketing efforts and release parties. I was one fish in a sea of many. I’d taken on an editorial position at my college’s yearbook, started an e- magazine that was doing moderately well, and had an editorial internship at a high- profile New York food magazine. Still it seemed this was not enough if I was to compete with at least several hundred people for an entry level, low- paying assistant job. I needed more. It was a part- time job in college that led me to the answer. Working in the digital publishing department of the University of Michigan’s Scholarly Publishing Office (now known as Michigan Publishing) I found my passion: I loved ebooks. That love encouraged me to search for graduate level coursework in publishing, specifically in e. Pub. For those not well- versed in the jargon of the digital publishing world (it changes often), e. Pub is the digitally packaged format of most ebooks. Think of your e. Reader as having the ability to x- ray that box to different depths, viewing one page at a time. This is in a sense an epub document: layers of chapters and other materials, all laid out in order. It was uncommon to find a graduate program that offered coursework in traditional publishing and the new digital counterpart. At the time I was applying, only the first few e. Readers had been released. I was still using a rather clumsy Sony e. Reader that required multiple calls to a technical help desk and a backdoor to older computer software just to operate. As of this writing, only 5. Searching within those programs for “electronic publishing” at the master’s level yields only 2. Graduate Programs in Publishing: Are They Worth It. When I searched for a school in 2010, I knew of only four full digital publishing graduate programs. For students who choose not to pursue the MS Publishing degree, the department offers three 12-credit certificate programs. These programs are designed for professionals who would like to extend their knowledge of the. The most notable results are NYU’s School of Continuing Professional Studies, Emerson College, Pace, and Columbia. When I searched for a school in 2. I knew of only four full digital publishing graduate programs available. My choices at the time were whittled down to two top contenders. NYU and Emerson both had strong, long- standing ties to the publishing communities in New York and Boston. Both offered a traditional publishing program and both boasted strong connections to the publishing houses for whom applicants dreamed of working. I visited each program’s campus, read up on their histories and notable alumni, and examined the courses I’d be taking. It was after scouring the course selections that I made my decision.
Emerson had the most enticing electronic publishing classes in that they covered a variety of coding techniques (Javascript, HTML, CSS, EPUB, etc.), which would be useful in my professional development. Although the official e. Pub program would be new as of my graduating class, they’d been offering courses in some form of digital publishing for almost a year. They also weren’t constrained to books read on e. Readers either. There were courses in basic web development and in content management systems as well. I was sold and in September 2. I started my first semester at Emerson College in the heart of Boston. Entering a Publishing Based Graduate Program: Coursework. Emerson has a very holistic approach to teaching. Many of the students enrolled in their program are actually publishing professionals or interns, so all of their courses occur at night. This class structure also means that Emerson can actually employ current publishing professionals to teach. My courses were taught by professional copy editors, editors, designers, associate publishers, writers, and e. Pub developers. This made my teachers both busy and incredibly up to date. I ran no risk of getting old information, and I highly encourage asking about this when considering publishing programs. How relevant will they be to your work? Here’s the great news for those who love literature and are considering a graduate program in publishing: you see an entirely different side of print and digital media through a wide range of classes. During my time at Emerson I took a multitude of courses that applied to traditional and digital publishing. On the traditional side I took courses like Copy Editing, Book Editing, Magazine Publishing Overview, Book Publishing Overview, and a course called Applications for Print Publishing, which was more or less a course in Adobe Photoshop, in. Design, and Illustrator and how they’re used in publishing. The traditional publishing courses are well thought out and developed over time. Each brought something entirely unique to the table and provided hands- on experience in the running of and tasks associated with the day- to- day publishing business. In one course, Book Editing, I not only learned how to draft a well- conceived book proposal, I actually worked with authors, both aspiring and established, giving them constructive feedback on their manuscripts at varying stages. At one point we were even asked to read through a manuscript, summarize it, and make a recommendation as to whether or not it should be published, only to find out that the manuscripts we’d used were real and some had, in fact, been published. One of the teaching strategies that best prepared me for the much coveted role of “editor” was actually a part of this course. Our professor would have us discuss the flaws and points of interest in a manuscript without the author present. Then he’d invite the author in to talk with us, answer our questions, and hear our advice. The difference between the two talks was astounding. When the authors are absent, it’s easy to be harsh and jump to conclusions about their meanings. Anyone who has ever taken a classic literature course can attest to the unending interpretations of motifs and themes in a Jane Austen novel, but chances are that she was only aware of a small number of these implied meanings when she wrote the novel. It’s the same situation with a current manuscript. Having an author and publishing students meet immediately clears up misunderstandings and helps bring attention to flaws in the writing. It opens up a world of possibilities that the author hadn’t considered. However, having the author present is limiting to the discussion. We learned that criticism could quickly shut down communication unless it was tempered with notes on what worked, questions, and constructive feedback. No matter how flint- mouthed we’d been when the author was not present, we’d quickly find ourselves softening in an effort to keep the author engaged. It was and is one of the best lessons I took from Emerson and has kept me from embarrassing myself professionally with brash statements or rude, poorly thought out comments. What you say counts, sometimes more than you mean it to. There is an interesting phenomenon in graduate coursework for publishing when it shares a program with a strong writing program. A surprising number of students who enroll in the program aren’t actually there for publishing. They are writers who, either wary of limiting their degree strictly to writing, or unsure of their abilities, will decide on a master’s in publishing rather than one in writing. While I’m sure none would readily admit it, they are far more interested in taking the writing courses than the publishing classes. This can create an interesting problem. Writing classes fill up quickly, leaving some declared writing students without a place in their own courses. On the other side, the teachers in the publishing program then have a hard time justifying adding new and interesting courses when they can’t fill all of their other classes. This can strain the administrative faculty who are receiving pressure from their students and from admissions to create a current and interesting curriculum as they are abruptly stonewalled when adding new courses. If you do choose a publishing program that is tied to a strong writing program, ask how cross enrollment works and how your program ensures that you will get priority in publishing courses over students in other programs. Emerson has considered the idea of dealing with this issue by actually separating the programs, which would require that publishing students get special permission to take writing program courses and vice versa. Electronic Publishing: Where Does It Fit in? On the electronic publishing side, I had the pleasure to take an electronic publishing overview, a course dedicated entirely to building books in e. Pub, web development, and writing for the web; I even had the ability to develop my own coursework on Javascript in ebooks, coursework that was later adopted and adapted to be part of the college’s curriculum. This program faced a new and distinct challenge that the traditional publishing program had not had to face in a long time: keeping up. Epub was and is a rapidly changing standard that can be unforgiving in its changes. By the time a curriculum is created and approved, chances are that something’s changed in e. Pub. One month into my second semester, and my e. Pub course, the e. Pub standard changed from e. Pub 2 to e. Pub 3. None of the professors were entirely sure what to do about it. The standard was so new that they didn’t always feel that they had the necessary experience to teach it. Masters Degree in Publishing Studies (MLitt) Graduate Programs . We focus on the history of the book and publishing studies in the 2. Scotland, the UK and globally, including digital publishing, graphic novels and games, contemporary literary publishing, children’s publishing literary awards and book festivals. Our work has been funded by a number of funders including the AHRC, RSE, British Council, Nesta, and Creative Scotland, working with partners including Glasgow Life, the Saltire Society and Publishing Scotland.
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