The Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS), an integrated part of the University of Copenhagen, is an academically independent Nordic research and resource centre, focusing on modern Asia from a predominantly social sciences perspective.
NIAS Press is a globally focused publisher with the rigorous academic standards expected of a university press, but with the speed and decisiveness of a commercial publisher. Its lists cover all areas of Asian Studies, but it specialises in publishing innovative research on modern east and southeast Asian society.
This week, we'll be exploring NIAS Press in a series of three posts. In this first post, Adela Brianso Junquera talks about her working day.
Adela is a publishing assistant at NIAS Press. A master’s student of global health at the University of Copenhagen, she works part-time as a student assistant. In her free time, she is the co-editor of the global health blog, Eye on Global Health. Before moving to Copenhagen, she studied social anthropology and politics in Edinburgh.
So, over to Adela...
Showing posts with label My working day. Show all posts
Showing posts with label My working day. Show all posts
Monday 17 June 2019
Friday 23 June 2017
My working day by Eldes Tran
My working day is an occasional series in which publishing professionals talk about their jobs.
Eldes Tran is an assistant editor at Epigram Books, Singapore’s largest independent publisher of local stories for all ages. She mostly edits nonfiction manuscripts, but also some children’s books. Apart from editing, she also acts as a project manager seeing a book through all stages, including making sure the right illustrator is picked, the layout is balanced, and deadlines are met.
Epigram Books is Eldes’ first foray into book publishing, but she has been an editor for 11 years in the US and Asia. She started at newspapers Newsday and the Los Angeles Times, and later spent six years in Hong Kong with the South China Morning Post and New York Times.
So, over to Eldes...
Eldes Tran is an assistant editor at Epigram Books, Singapore’s largest independent publisher of local stories for all ages. She mostly edits nonfiction manuscripts, but also some children’s books. Apart from editing, she also acts as a project manager seeing a book through all stages, including making sure the right illustrator is picked, the layout is balanced, and deadlines are met.
Epigram Books is Eldes’ first foray into book publishing, but she has been an editor for 11 years in the US and Asia. She started at newspapers Newsday and the Los Angeles Times, and later spent six years in Hong Kong with the South China Morning Post and New York Times.
So, over to Eldes...
Friday 8 July 2016
A day in the life of Michael Cannings
A day in the life of…is an occasional series in which people working in the
publishing industry talk about their typical working day. Here, Michael Cannings, one of the founders
of Camphor Press, a British-Taiwanese publishing house specialising in books
about East Asia, in particular Taiwan, explains there is in fact no typical
working day in his life…
Friday 17 October 2014
A Day In the Life Of… Harrison Kelly, Managing Director of Flatcap Asia
Harrison at the Jaipur Literature Festival |
A Day In the Life Of...invites
people involved in book selling and the publishing industry in Asia to describe
a working day.
Flatcap Asia is a Hong Kong based arts and literary PR agency for Asia. The company
works with a range of global clients from the creative industries including BBC
World News, ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival, Random House UK, Harper Collins,
BAFTA, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the British Council. Harrison
Kelly founded Flatcap Asia in 2010.
“I usually start my day around 7am. I
have a bad habit of reading all my emails on my iPhone immediately when I wake
up whilst still sat in bed. If it’s a particularly busy day this takes up
valuable time as I usually have to re-read them all again in the office before
I reply.
On Monday mornings I like to arrive
at the office for around 8am. Flatcap is based in The Hive, a co-working space
in Kennedy Town, just a short 10-minute commute from my apartment on Hollywood
Road.
When I arrive at the office, I
re-read all my emails and reply to most of them before 8.30am which is when
Charlotte, Senior Consultant at Flatcap Asia, arrives. Charlotte and I will
then discuss how the campaigns for several of our clients are going, and set
out the priorities and tasks for the week ahead.
At the moment we are managing a title
campaign in the East Asian press for Tim Clissold’s latest book Chinese Rules
on behalf of Harper Collins. As the books pages in newspapers are increasingly
being cut, it’s our job as a PR agency to get the book and the author out of
the books pages and mentioned across other sections of the media where the
author may find a new readership – in the opinion pages, or the lifestyle pages
for example.
We often have to think of creative
angles to get a journalist’s attention and interest in writing about a book –
particularly if it is a fiction or literary fiction title, which is only
published in English and isn’t set in Asia or by an Asian author.
Mid-morning, I usually have a
conference call with one of our regional clients such as BBC Global News to
catch up with their team and update them on the PR campaign. Although we
specialise in literature, we represent clients from across the creative
industries whether it’s TV, film, journalism, theatre or education.
When lunchtime arrives – often all
too quickly – I tend to head into Central two or three times a week to catch up
with a journalist, a sponsor or a client. Public relations really is an
industry built on relationships, so it’s always good to meet up with colleagues
for a good chat and a nice lunch deal – of which there are many in Hong Kong.
At 2pm, I usually have a call with
the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival team in Delhi. Through Flatcap I consult as
Head of PR for the Festival, which is the world’s largest free literary
festival welcoming 250,000 guests, 800 media and 250 authors over five days. It
really is a huge logistical feat. My role is to set strategy and direction for
the traditional and social media campaign of the Festival. I’m fortunate to
have a brilliant team at Edelman India, another PR agency, that work on the
ground in India handling the campaign on a day-to-day basis.
The rise of literary festivals in
Asia is, in many ways, down to the huge success of Jaipur, which started with a
handful of authors back in 2006. I actually began my literary PR career at the
Hay Festival in the UK, before working at the Edinburgh International Book
Festival right before I moved to Hong Kong. There is an indescribable magic in
the air at literary festivals; it’s certainly an addictive energy for those
five adrenaline-fuelled days in Jaipur each January. I am looking forward to
visiting the Singapore Writers’ Festival later this month – but as a punter! –
and seeing Naomi Wolf and Suchen Christine Lim, as well as browsing the
Festival bookstore to discover the new contemporary voices of Singaporean
literature.
Mid-afternoon I catch up with Jan and
Louise who also work with me at Flatcap Asia. I don’t speak any other language
except English, yet the company works on a daily basis in both Traditional and
Simplified Chinese and so I am very fortunate to have great staff members who
can execute this non-English language media activity on behalf of our clients.
Around 4pm, London begins to wake up
and so when I see The Bookseller’s Morning Briefing ping into my inbox, I tend to take half an
hour out to catch up on the latest trade news from the industry as well as
having a look on Twitter to see what is driving the news agenda of the day.
Many in the publishing industry are
nervous about the rise of e-books and the demise of print. Regardless of age,
the data shows consumers still want print books. The key challenge for the
industry is maintaining a workable revenue model which accounts for the changes
in delivering published work to readers. I think it’s important to learn
lessons from what happened to the music industry in the early 2000’s. Thought
it’s hard to predict what publishing will look like in 12 months’ time, never mind
in 12 years, I do think print will always maintain its place and be consumed
alongside digital.
In many ways, for marketers, the
digital challenge creates an exciting opportunity as the traditional avenues of
reaching an audience for a book are suddenly been disrupted (or complemented?)
by other platforms, particularly social media, which allow readers to discover
books, authors or genres they may never have come across in a bricks and mortar
store.
Around 5pm, emails from our clients
in the UK begin to come through and so I turn my attention to that. One client
we work with a lot is BAFTA (the British Academy of Film and Television Arts).
Since last year, BAFTA has been hosting a range of activities in Hong Kong, aiming
to inspire the city’s next generation of aspiring film, TV and games
professionals. It’s been great fun supporting them on the ground here in Hong Kong.
Towards the end of the day I tend to
focus on more admin related activity. This can be boring things like sorting
out my accounts or general business management, through to more fun stuff like
pulling together coverage reports for our clients. I am working on two of these
at the moment, one for StoryWorthyWeek, an annual storytelling festival in Hong
Kong, and one for Susan Barker, the incredibly talented author of The Incarnations, which we
recently represented. A coverage report gives the client an overview of the
campaign to date as well as showing all the media coverage earned so far, as
well as the reach and value of the coverage.
I usually leave the office on time at
7:30pm when I will head out for dinner with friends or head out to see a
production by one of our theatre clients. There is a really strong
English-language theatre scene in Hong Kong, and thanks to groups such as
Liars’ League and Hong Kong Storytellers there is also a growing live literature scene
too.”
Twitter: @HarrisonJKelly / @FlatcapAsia
Wednesday 17 September 2014
A Day In The Life Of...Pete Spurrier, publisher at Blacksmith Books
A Day In the Life Of...invites people involved in book selling and the publishing industry in Asia to describe a working day.
Based
in Hong Kong, but selling into all the major English language markets, Blacksmith Books publishes China-related non-fiction: biography;
business; culture; current affairs; photography; travel. Founder Pete Spurrier is the company's publisher.
One of the best things about working for
yourself is that you can set your own schedule. I started Blacksmith Books 10
years ago, and two years ago I moved apartments from Sai Ying Pun, an old
district in the city centre of Hong Kong, to a rural village in the New
Territories. The office remains in Central though, so after getting up,
checking messages and dealing with anything urgent, I walk down the hill from
the village and catch an express bus into town, avoiding rush hour. The journey
takes 40 minutes and ends by taking a raised highway around the edges of
Victoria Harbour, a good start to the day.
The Blacksmith office is on the top floor
of an old walk-up building on Hollywood Road in Central, which is a great
location, very convenient for meeting people. As an older building it has large
windows, high ceilings and more natural light than newer ones. We do have
decent tea and coffee but if people would rather not walk up the five flights
of stairs (it is hot and humid Hong Kong after all) I’ll go and meet them in a
nearby coffee shop.
New authors in particular often want to
come up and see our office, which is a good idea from their point of view, and
our printer will sometimes drop in with blueprints or proofs for checking.
We publish about 12 books a year, at any given time each book is at a different stage of
editing, design, production, launch, distribution or promotion, so there is
always a lot to do. During the course of the day I’ll be talking to authors,
editors, translators and designers on one side of the publishing process, and
bookshops, shipping companies, distributors and journalists on the other.
Emails come in at a frightening rate,
including manuscripts which I move to a separate folder for reading later and
then completely forget about.
If I have time, I’ll write a blog post or
put something on the Facebook page, but I still find that traditional media
usually works best for promoting books. Sometimes I’ll accompany a writer to a
radio interview, or go on air myself, and I’ll come back to the office to find
that orders have come in just because of that.
One of our new titles is the Yunnan
Cookbook, and this was a particular challenge to bring to completion, as it
involved two authors, two sets of photographers, an illustrator, a designer and
an editor – and because production went on for so long, everyone involved was
living or travelling in a different country by the final stages. Of course
email helps, but at the point when we were choosing photos and finalising
layout, one of the authors was incommunicado in the mountains of Yunnan, buying
cattle in an ethnic minority village. Then, when she came back to the nearest
town with internet access, she found that her email provider had been blocked
in China. We got it all sorted in the end.
Our niche subject is Asia but it’s been
good to find that readers around the world are interested in it. As our
distribution has widened – we have just started selling into Australia this
year, for instance – I find I’m spending more time co-ordinating shipments of
books overseas. Once or twice a week I’ll go to our warehouse, on the western
side of Hong Kong Island, to organise boxes of books to be collected by a
freight forwarder or sent to the Kwai Chung container port. If the quantities
are larger, pallets will be sent to the port directly from the printer.
Our biggest overseas market is the US, and
books take five weeks to sail across the Pacific from Hong Kong, through the
Panama Canal and up to New York. Our American distributor needs all details of
new books eight months before their launch, which is often quite difficult to
supply. I have to work backwards, taking shipping and printing time into account,
and always keeping this production schedule in mind. I also have to keep track
of how quickly books in print are selling, and order reprints at the right
time, while watching cash flow to make sure it’s not too early to do so.
Another equation I have to juggle is
deciding how many books to print each time: trying to balance the number of
pre-orders from bookshops in each market with how many books I can keep in
store in the warehouse, while still getting a decent unit price for printing a
high enough volume. The printer helps out by keeping some in the factory until
they can be shipped elsewhere, but not for too long. I am envious of other
cities where space is cheaper to rent.
Before leaving the warehouse I’ll also fill
a bag with books to be posted out later to mail-order customers. Because it’s
so hard to sell books in mainland China, we don’t charge postage to anyone who
lives there, so a steady stream of mail orders come in.
Back in the office, if it’s Friday, I’ll
try to devote a couple of hours to getting the accounts up to date. Long ago,
before Blacksmith started, I was a partner in a previous publishing business
that went bust, and that was an expensive but valuable lesson. Now I try to
make sure that I’m always up to speed with which clients are paying on time,
which aren’t paying at all, which books are making money and so on. I used to
think accounts must be boring, but when it’s your own venture, they become
strangely engrossing.
When all the columns add up, I punch the
air in victory – everyone else will have gone home by then. And then I lock up
the office and go out for drinks.
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