Commissioning and List Management
Dates:
A four-day residential course
Price:
£1,890+VATBook course online or phone +44 (0)20 8874 2718 for availability
"I would not hesitate to recommend it. The quality of the sessions was very high. I go away feeling inspired!"
Pearson Education delegate
"I thoroughly enjoyed this course and feel I have gained a great deal of valuable knowledge which will be hugely beneficial in my new role. I’ve developed an enthusiasm and confidence in my commissioning abilities and look forward to putting these skills into practice."
Hodder Gibson delegate
This is the definitive course for anyone who wants to learn how to build profitable lists.
If you are an editor with responsibility for commissioning and list-building in educational, academic or professional publishing, this unique programme will give you the best possible start. The course is supported by the top publishers in these fields and is considered by many to be an essential highlight on a good commissioning editor’s CV.
This is an intensive residential event, which is hugely rewarding for those who take part, not only in terms of the knowledge and skills gained, but also the networking and relationship building opportunities.
The course will teach you how to create a market-led proposal, and how to plan publications working closely with colleagues in other functions, particularly in sales and marketing. You will also get a clearer understanding of financial management, how costings work and ways of managing yourself and your time constraints to better effect.
The formal group sessions are each led by a different expert tutor, ensuring a variety of teaching styles, experience and pace. A case study is threaded through the four days. Working in a group, you will develop a full publishing project proposal, including all the detail from title and content, through financial details and routes to market. Finally, the groups will present their proposals to a 'Board of Directors'.
The residential venue provides an atmosphere conducive to learning and networking. After four days of hard work, you will leave the course tired but inspired!
Learning outcomes
At the end of this course you should be able to:
- demonstrate that you can develop a publishing list that meets company strategy and management goals
- understand how you add value to your business
- structure and present commercially attractive publishing proposals
- evaluate markets and exploit publishing opportunities
- find and keep valuable authors and negotiate author contracts
- understand and evaluate financials
- plan for profit and return-on-investment.
Who will benefit from this course?
Development editors, assistant editors, commissioning editors, research editors, production editors and managing editors who work in educational, academic, reference and professional publishing.
Programme
Day One
- What kind of publishing world is it?
- An overview of the industry
- Current pressures, challenges, threats, demands and opportunities
- The role of the commissioning editor
- An examination of the skills, knowledge and attitudes necessary to become a successful commissioning editor
- What a successful commissioning editor needs to know about market research
- Market wisdom rather than market knowledge
- Planning and managing your research
- Top tips and effective techniques
- Overcoming obstacles
- Working with authors
- How to most effectively manage the author or editor relationship
Day Two
- Finance
- Costings, margin and profit - a practical interactive session explaining financial terminology, how products are costed, how to improve their profitability and why your organisation makes the demands on you that it does
- Planning and investing in digital products
- Consideration of the many different types of digital products, from Visual Learning Environments (VLEs) to Wikipedia Commons, and how the approach differs from traditional print media
- Scoping the case study
- Title, costs, income and profit - delegates will have an expert advisor on hand to assist with decisions and spreadsheet preparation
Day Three
- Case study work
- Delegates work on their plans for commissioning, producing, marketing and selling their chosen project in preparation for the presentation on the final day
- Essential features of an author’s contract
- Key elements of the author-publisher contract and the responsibility of the editor to understand and communicate these clearly
- The marketing/editorial interface
- How this important relationship can be improved for optimum results by thoroughly understanding of each party’s pressures and concerns
- Building a successful list
- The editor's role in building a list within company context
- Building brands
- Managing demands of format revenue and time
- Building a profitable list
Day Four
- Routes to market
- An academic bookseller gives his views on how publishers and booksellers can work together more closely for mutual benefit
- Case study presentations
- Groups present their project proposals to a ‘Board of Directors’
- Feedback and conclusions.
Note that most of our short courses can also be run as in-company events.
- Dates: 30 September 2013
- Duration: A four-day residential course
- Price: £1,890+VAT
- A number of discounts are available
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