Friday 8 December 2017

What Do You Do On A Publishing Masters?

I’ve told you about why I chose to do a Master’s in Publishing, but what does it actually entail? Although I can only speak for my course at Oxford Brookes, there are similarities across the courses available in the UK.

I’m doing my Master’s full-time, which means it’s going to take 1 year. This year is split into 3 semesters: semester 1 runs until Christmas, semester 2 runs until May with a break for Easter, and semester 3 runs until the last day of September of 2018 a.k.a. the due date of my dissertation.

Semester 1

Semester 1 at Brookes is completely decided for you, which is actually really nice because nobody wants the stress of choosing modules when they first rock up onto a course. These modules are:

  • Editorial Management + Content Development
  • Sales, Marketing, + Consumer Insight
  • Design + Production
  • Dissertation

Everything is hands on and directly applicable to the industry. For example, the main assignment for editorial is to work as a group to propose a new title to a publishing house. For marketing, we’re creating a marketing plan from start to finish. For design and production, we’ve already made a book cover using PhotoShop and InDesign and are now working on typesetting the inside of the book. Aside from these assignments, guest speakers from the industry are constantly coming to talk to us in our lectures, but everyone teaching on the course has been involved in the industry for years too. Basically, everything you do is relevant.

Semester 1 also has 2 days a week free, ideal for part-time work/internships. I get weekly emails with work experience and internship openings, most of which have been advertised exclusively to Brookes (at least at first). With Oxford being such a publishing hub itself and also being very well connected to London, opportunities are frequent, diverse, and flexible.

Semester 2

Semester 2 is the time for optional modules, which specialise in certain areas of publishing. There’s digital ones, where you can make websites and ebooks, there’s children’s publishing, academic publishing, magazine publishing…

I’ve recently chosen my modules for next semester and settled on the following:

  • Fiction and Non-Fiction Publishing
  • International Rights Management
  • History and Culture of Publishing

I’m really excited to get stuck into these modules - I have been since before I started! I’ll report back about them when I’m actually doing them.

Semester 3

Semester 3 is a bit of an odd semester, because it’s really only there to give the period of time between semester 2 and dissertation deadline day in September a name. There’s no classes, it’s just time dedicated to researching and writing the final major project or dissertation (whatever you choose to do). It’s also a great time to fit in some internships/work experience because of the ability to be so flexible.

If you have any questions about anything to do with studying publishing, please do let me know!
Happy reading,
Zoe