Everyone who has gone a reasonable way through school has been introduced to the idea of writing an essay – defining a topic, building up arguments, and drawing a conclusion. If you’re lucky (or well-organised), you will also have time to re-read your essay, refine your language, add new examples and improve the final product. Writing a non-fiction book is an extended and expanded form of this process, with a lot more people involved.
Editors and publishers might help you to refine your topic and draw conclusions, copyeditors and proofreaders correct and improve your language, and marketing people distil your message into bite-size chunks. Working for a university press puts us in the middle of this all, surrounded by people who are making new discoveries and refining theories every day, and attempting to get their ideas out to the community.
The idea behind this blog is to talk about all the different aspects of publishing – sourcing ideas (new books), refining and developing them (editing) and connecting them with the market. We’re interested in what you have to say as well – on the role of books, the dissemination of ideas, anything that touches on the scholarly communication process. Welcome to Sydney Publishing.
