University challenge

This week I had the pleasure of talking about careers and opportunities to third year Creative Writing students at Arts University Bournemouth. Questions after were specific and technical as to indie publishing strategy, structure and production. This was reflective of the course as a whole, which course leader Dr James Cole said he wanted to "provide everything he was never taught when he was at university" about the practicalities of the industry and how to make money as a portfolio writer. As part of this aim, Arts University Bournemouth prioritises guest speakers from the publishing industry, from all walks of life, to talk frankly about money in publishing.

Indeed, when I was at the University of York (studying Theatre: Writing, Directing and Performance), I would have relished the opportunity to speak frankly about making money in the arts and the resilience it involves with an industry expert. University can be a bubble which does not reflect the outside world – writing that gets top marks on an essay, will not impress as marketing copy for a publisher and so forth. (We did get a third year visit from a past graduate of my course who was working in Theatre Admin and advocating a minimum wage internship at her company, with flat share opportunities in London... the experience of studying in York and being encouraged throughout the degree to be creative and innovative did not seem conducive with this opportunity and I certainly didn’t find it inspiring.)

If I had had the opportunity to speak to a self-starter in the industry at university, I think my journey would have been a lot easier and a lot less uncertain.

In the current climate of arts university courses being classed as "low value" (see Sheffield Hallam University, where English literature has been removed from their offerings "because graduates struggle to get highly paid jobs"), it seems more important that independent publishers and freelancers work with universities to facilitate open conversations with their English and Creative Writing students. I remember leaving university and discovering that I wanted to be a publisher, but failed to receive an unpaid internship at the 50 publishing houses I contacted. The skills I learnt were self-taught and the opportunities I was given were self-made. If I had had the opportunity to speak to a self-starter in the industry at university, I think my journey would have been a lot easier and a lot less uncertain, with real life case studies of resilience to refer to for when the journey into publishing got tough.

I look forward to more collaboration within the education and publishing sectors and more transparency about money going forward. This seems the best way to shape excellent publishing leaders of our future.