My coursework focused heavily on editorial, supplemented with classes in design, digital skills, and more.

Comprehensive course in professional book editing, including editorial management, acquisitions editing, substantive/developmental editing, and copyediting. Issues specific to both fiction and nonfiction books will be covered.

Learn how to improve the clarity, coherency, consistency, and correctness of other people’s writing through application of grammatical and stylistic guidelines. Study grammar, usage, punctuation, and style. Narrow focus on editing at the line and substantive level, with little to no attention given to broad development of a manuscript.

Explores the relationship between an editor, a writer, and the work in the process of developmental editing—also known as global, substantive, or comprehensive editing. Examines historically significant editor/author relations, how the editorial process and relationships have changed over time, and how editorial expectations shift based on the expectations of the publisher, the constantly changing global marketplace, and the introduction of new technologies.

Gives technical writers practice in technical editing by exposing them to samples of a variety of documents from the files of organizations in the surrounding community. As a community based learning course, it requires students to interact with community partners in collaborative student teams.

Comics Editing is an exciting, all-consuming, and messy business! Find out what it takes to be at the center of this fast-growing field where the editor must master the art of collaboration, above and beyond the necessary deadline crunching, art directing and grammar pedantry. This course will demystify the role of the comic book editor by immersing students in every stage of the comics creation process. The end result? A class anthology comic and a deeper understanding of the inner mechanics of making and editing comic books. Guest speakers and recorded interviews with industry all-stars will punctuate class lectures and weekly exercises.

Provides a detailed overview of the publishing process, organized around the division of labor, including introductions to contemporary American publishing, issues of intellectual commerce, copyright law, publishing contracts, book editing, book design and production, book marketing and distribution, and bookselling. Based on work in mock publishing companies, students prepare portfolios of written documents (e.g. book proposals, editorial guidelines, design and production standards, and marketing plans). Guest speakers from the publishing industry and field trips provide exposure to the industry.

Comprehensive course in professional book marketing. Issues specific to the marketing of fiction and nonfiction books in a variety of genres and markets will be covered. Students will do market research, produce marketing plans, write press releases, write advertising copy, and develop related marketing materials.

This course gives students hands-on training in digital skills, and surveys some of the most important developmental trends in writing in various computational environments: webpages, computer programs, word processing programs, multimodal essays. Students learn core principles and methods of web design, template modification, program modification, DIY training, choosing a domain, loading digital objects to servers, the medial history and present-day uses of authoring software such as traditional word processing and non-linear, multicursal reading pathways.

Provides a strong base in the software used in the book publishing industry, focusing on Adobe InDesign. This class also explores Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat, as well as XHTML and e-book design. The course considers audience expectations through a range of hands-on design projects.

The city of Edinburgh will be our classroom as we focus on building critical skills for understanding and working within an international book environment, particularly in Scotland. This two-week course incorporates guest lectures, hands-on workshop visits, event participation, and small group discussions in addition to traditional classroom time. Time spent observing and analyzing the book processes and agents within the Scottish publishing industry will be interspersed with bookish site visits and attendance at the Edinburgh Book Festival. As the world grows increasingly globalized and interconnected, so does the publishing world, so that to be an informed and experienced publishing professional in the United States, it is ever more important to know how the publishing industry operates in international contexts like the UK. It is an excellent opportunity to get hands-on experience with the Scottish book publishing industry.

Students will learn about qualitative and quantitative book publishing research methods and work through stages of their final research paper for the Book Publishing Master’s Program. Students will emerge from the course with a measurable, right-sized research question, a methodology plan, and sample paper outlines that refine their critical thinking skills. There will also be an industry-based research project that students develop and carry out.

Study the techniques commonly deployed by writers and publishers of young adult and middle grade literature.

Offers an in-depth examination of how a book gets selected for publication by those in the traditional role of gatekeeper: literary agents and acquisitions editors. Topics discussed will include selecting book projects from authors, submitting those book projects to publishers, negotiating terms for contracts, managing translation and film rights (called subsidiary rights), overseeing author book publicity and marketing, planning and managing an author’s long-term career, and navigating career paths for aspiring agents and acquisitions editors.