In November 2007, Amazon released the Kindle in the USA. While not the first ereader on the market, this quaint looking gadget, with its small vertical screen above rows of round buttons, disrupted the global publishing industry. An industry already threatened by the rise of self-publishing and beset by blockbuster mergers and acquisitions was now facing a growing imperative to release books in digital formats. It was within this dynamic environment that the first intake of students joined the Master of Publishing at the University of Sydney.

Fiona Giles, the driving force behind the establishment of the degree, told me that the Master of Publishing was set up to fill an obvious gap in postgraduate coursework offerings by universities in New South Wales. She said, “At the time, in 2007, there were only two postgraduate coursework alternatives in the Sydney region, and neither were full master’s programs.” The University of Technology Sydney had a Graduate Certificate in Editing and Publishing, offered since 2002, while Macquarie University had a Graduate Diploma in Editing and Publishing, offered since 1989. Outside the university context, Macleay College began offering a Diploma in Book Editing and Publishing in 1988 (but the degree was stopped in 2017).

The Master of Publishing at the University of Sydney aimed to cover three areas of the publishing industry in depth: books, magazines and online publishing. Giles said, “The online component at the time was also supported by the Master of Digital Cultures, which Chris Chesher was developing in parallel with the Master of Publishing, so for a few years we shared some of our units. This made our degree distinctive from the other degrees and resulted in broader options for graduates when seeking work following their studies. As online publishing became even more important the balance changed slightly, but the idea was still to be comprehensive in this way.”

Traditionally, publishing skills were acquired on the job as an apprenticeship. Individuals, usually with an Arts degree, would start as editorial assistants and work their way up to become editors and publishers. Professional development and in-service courses first appeared in the 1950s in the USA, while the first university-based degrees were established in the early 1960s in the UK. In the global context, as John Maxwell writes in his 2014 article, “publishing education arose in the 20th century in response to a need for trained employees in a stable industry with a well understood set of competencies and skills”.1 These requirements changed at the beginning of the 21st century, as a result of the digital disruption and acceleration of technical developments affecting the industry. Since then, the publishing degrees have operated in a constant state of flux as new skills are required from graduates. This has certainly been the case with the Master of Publishing at the University of Sydney, which has continued evolving at the level of individual units and the whole curriculum.

The degree started with four core units: MECO6914: Making Magazines, MECO6916: Editing and Manuscript Preparation, MECO6917: Book Production and Publishing Business and ARIN6912: Digital Research and Publishing. In addition to these units, students could select electives from across postgraduate units offered by MECO, English and other departments in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

Since the beginning, with the exception of MECO6914 taught by Megan Le Masurier until 2012, the degree has relied on sessional staff for teaching, while being overseen by the degree director. Giles mentioned staffing as the ongoing challenge through the life of the degree. She said, “We’ve had amazing lecturers from the publishing industry who have taught for several years, before other commitments no longer made this possible. It’s just a shame we haven’t had the resources to offer any of these highly qualified individuals a continuing position.”

The key industry professionals who have contributed their expertise and knowledge and taught generations of students include Gregor Stronach, Andrea Duvall, Leigh Reinhold, Sam Cooney, Lucy Cousins and Matt Coyte (MECO6914); Nicola O’Shea, Deonie Fiford, Roberta Ivers, Louise Thurtell, Richard Walsh, Craig Munro, Joanne Butler, Rochelle Fernandez and Claire Linsdell (MECO6916); and Rowanne Couch, Anna Maguire and Franscois McHardy (MECO6917). Maguire said, “Staying across industry trends and with a deep knowledge of how the publishing industry works, gave me an understanding of what knowledge and skills new entrants would require and enabled me to give students a holistic understanding of the business of publishing.” Apart from sessional staff, many other professionals have shared their expertise as guest lecturers. Being taught by industry specialists has been crucial for the success of the degree. As Maguire said, “Many things work well in theory, but first-hand knowledge is key.”

Over time, gaps in the curriculum became evident and more units were added. The importance of learning basic industry software such as Adobe InDesign for book and magazine publishing led to the introduction of MECO6930: Publication Design in 2011. Initially, Megan Le Masurier and Fiona Giles collaborated with a freelance designer, then with the Sydney College of the Arts, which was running a similar unit. Eventually, MECO6930 became completely housed within MECO and replaced ARIN6912 in the list of core units for the Master of Publishing. The unit has been a huge success and remains popular beyond the publishing degree, with Digital Media and other students keen to learn the theory and practice of graphic design. It has been taught by many talented graphic designers including Katherine Sorrenson, Julieta Ormeno, Sharon Metzl, Fleur Anson, David Corbert, Sonia Blaskovic, Gary Humphries, Robin Austin, Matt Caulfield, Sharon Brown and Amanda LeMay.

When I joined the teaching team as a sessional lecturer in 2016, I developed a new unit, MECO6937: Making eBooks and Digital Magazines, using my research into multimedia publishing and my experience in the production of ebooks at Sydney University Press as the starting point.2 The unit’s double focus on digital skills relevant for both magazine and book publishing industries resulted in ongoing contradictory feedback from students who, depending where they saw their future careers, preferred a focus on one or the other. This was symptomatic of the degree as a whole. As Le Masurier said, “we were trying to cram too much into too few units”. Moreover, it became apparent that the majority of students were interested in book publishing.

Anna Maguire and I spent many hours at the Taste Café in the New Law Building brainstorming how to meet the demand for more units focusing on book publishing and how to update the degree in response to the industry’s needs. The publishing industry had evolved dramatically since 2007. According to a 2016 report on the disruption and innovation in the Australian book industry, “Major changes include the development of technology which enables digital publishing, distribution and retailing; the entry of disruptive players including Amazon, Google and Apple; the introduction of handheld digital reading platforms and devices; upheavals in the bricks and mortar retailing sector; and the rise of online and social media as important channels for promoting books.”3 Moreover, ebooks were continuing to rise in popularity, and the production of audiobooks was also on the rise. The legal context had also changed. Following the implementation of the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled in Australia in 2016, the Australian Inclusive Publishing Initiative was established to facilitate the industry’s move towards the production of “born-accessible” content. Accessibility and metadata became household terms.

In February 2018, after several long lunches, we came up with a proposal to review three of the existing units and create two new ones. We consulted broadly with industry professionals who provided feedback on the proposed outlines and learning objectives of the five units. The results of an industry skills survey run by the Australian Publishers Association in 2018 confirmed that the restructure of the degree was heading in the right direction.

Le Masurier supported, shaped and shepherded the proposal through the university approval system. The new version of the degree had two streams, one focusing on book publishing and the other on magazine publishing. MECO6916: Editing and Proofreading and MECO6930: Publication Design remained core for both pathways. Students interested in book publishing would go on to study MECO6917: Book Publishing Business and MECO6937: Book Design and Production (later renamed Producing Books in the Digital Age), and they had two new electives to choose from: MECO6943: Book Sales and Marketing (taught first by Maguire and then Rachael McDiarmid) and MECO6944: Manuscript Acquisition and Development (taught first by Rodney Morrison, then Bernadette Foley and Linda Funnell). Students wanting to enter the magazine publishing industry were required to study MECO6914: Making Magazines and ENGL6970: Reading Magazines and were able to select from journalism-focused electives such as MECO6915: Writing Feature Stories.

Students in both streams could also select a new unit on podcasting. As Le Masurier said, “It became clear to me that our publishing students needed to be skilled in multimedia. Four years ago, podcasting was clearly on the rise, and it was being used amongst all kinds of media organisations, including books and magazines.” Lea Redfern, who first started teaching podcasting at the undergraduate level, wrote and taught the first postgraduate podcasting course, MECO6941, in Semester 2, 2018. This unit has since become a highly popular elective for postgraduate students from the MECO master’s degrees.

Apart from the ongoing development of the curriculum, other key milestones included getting the degree accredited with the Australian Publisher Association in 2010, and the establishment of a separate degree director for each of the postgraduate degrees from 2013 onwards. As Le Masurier said, “Until then, Fiona Giles had administered all the master’s degrees. This separation of roles allowed for far more focused attention to be placed on each degree.” Le Masurier remained the degree director until 2020, when I took over the role.

The year 2020 turned out to be entirely different from what anyone expected. Following the discovery of the first case of COVID-19 on campus (see Chapter 19), we moved all teaching online in one week in the middle of March, along with the rest of the University. It was a tough year for both staff and students, but at the same time it was an amazing learning experience as we spent much time on Zoom looking into each other’s private spaces, collaborating online and making the technology work for us. So did the publishing industry around the world, with the move to working from home and the need to rely exclusively on marketing and launching books digitally. The importance of digital skills had never been more obvious.

The students of Publishing tend to come with a BA in English, communication or linguistics, though we also have had individuals with undergraduate degrees in acting, archaeology, creative writing, history, law and other disciplines. They are all united by the love of books and reading. The majority want to become editors and publishers of the next Harry Potter. Some want to be writers and undertake the degree to expand their understanding of the industry, or perhaps self-publish in the future. The ratio of students interested in magazine publishing has dropped over the years, reflecting the changing fortunes of the magazine industry in Australia.

One of the missions of the degree is to open students’ eyes to the variety of job opportunities across all sectors of the industry. Apart from the highly coveted trade book publishing, interesting and rewarding roles can be found in educational and professional book publishing, and of course working with authors wanting to self-publish. In Australia, the world of magazines has been beset by mergers and the loss of jobs. Despite this, new opportunities are emerging for niche content, targeting more selective audiences. As Le Masurier said, “There’s actually the secret side to the magazine industry: the business-to-business, customer magazines and indie publications have been flourishing.”

In its current iteration, the degree provides students with core publishing skills and knowledge across the various aspects of publishing: commissioning and acquisition; editorial; design for print, digital and audio delivery; print production; budgeting and finance; and sales and marketing. While students may aspire to and end up working in a specific role, the degree gives them an understanding of the whole publishing workflow so that they are well prepared to work constructively with authors and other professionals in these inherently collaborative industries. To that effect, several of the units have a group work component to enable students to develop the all-important skills of collaborating and managing projects.

The internship has been a core element of the degree since the beginning. It allows students to apply and advance their knowledge and skills in an organisational setting, develop their professional identity, and foster professional networks prior to graduation. In 2018, we introduced a diagnostic test for students to take before they can apply for an internship, to make sure they are “job ready” for their time at a host organisation. As part of the unit, they write an industry report exploring a current challenge and its impact on graduate employability, and a reflection on the process of integrating degree and workplace learning during the internship. Over the years, MECO has developed close collaborations with a number of magazine and book publishers and other organisations who host our students, including Allen & Unwin, the Australian Publishers Association, Curtis Brown, Echo Publishing, Halstead Press, Pan Macmillan, Pantera Press, Sydney University Press, Spineless Wonders, Vogue Australia, Fashion Journal and many other publishers and publications. Our interns are highly regarded.

They are also highly regarded graduates. Our alumni have had jobs at Allen and Unwin, Murdoch Books, NewSouth Books, Pantera Press, Penguin Random House, Scholastic, Simon and Schuster, Sydney University Press, Walker Books, the Australian Publishers Association and the National Museum of Australia. Overseas, our graduates have worked for Bloomsbury and the Natural History Museum in London; Ediciones Uniandes, Universidad de los Andes in Bogota, Columbia; and Bonnier and Star Stable Entertainment in Sweden. In the magazine industry, we have had alumni working for NewsLifeMedia, The CEO Magazine, and many others.

Giving students the opportunity to get practical experience has also underpinned the University of Sydney Student Anthology project. The year-long student-led project has been running since the degree began in 2007. When Fiona Giles was developing the program, she consulted widely with industry professionals, writers and academics. Two people in particular inspired the idea: Drusilla Modjeska (then an honorary associate in the English department at the University of Sydney) and Catherine Cole (from the University of Technology Sydney program). Giles recalled, “I also consulted with Sydney University Press who were happy to publish the anthology and Gleebooks who were happy to assist with the launch and marketing.” The rationale was to provide students with a real-world publishing experience, within a committee formed each year as an extra-curricular activity. The project was managed by a casual lecturer – first Keith Stevenson, then Mark Rossiter, and later Gregor Stronach.

In 2016, I took over the coordination of the project. My association with the anthology goes a long way back. I was a student member of the anthology team in 2008 and have remained involved in some way in the final stages of production in every anthology since then on behalf of Sydney University Press. Remembering the difficulties in coming up with the title for a thematically disparate collection of works, the first thing I did was introduce an annual theme to the anthology. Phil Glen and Marc Fernando from the Digital Media Unit built a new website for us, which streamlined the submission process and provided a showcase for the collection.

While the anthology project has evolved over the years, the key objectives have remained the same. The students solicit work from the university student cohort in Semester 1. At the beginning of Semester 2, the fate of each work is decided during a long submission meeting. Then the editorial and design processes start. Each anthology features a foreword written by a renowned literary figure, with past contributors including Larissa Behrendt, Shankari Chandran, Ceridwen Dovey, Kate Forsyth, Maeve Marsden, PM Newton, Diane Reid and Mark Tredinnick. Since 2015, the launch has been combined with a welcome to the new publishing students and a call for new team members in Week 2 of Semester 1.

The project has typically attracted between ten and 25 student volunteers each year. Apart from the website, www.usydanthology.com, the anthology has a Facebook page, and Instagram and Twitter/X accounts. Being part of the anthology team is a lot of work but as Chelsea Sutherland, who participated in 2017 and 2018 said,

 

It’s a great learning experience, whatever field of publishing you’re interested in working in. It provides a fantastic opportunity to be actively involved in the entire publication process, from developing a theme to launching a finished book. The project offers hands-on experience in editorial, marketing, design and production, and gives you a chance to apply and hone the skills you’ve learned in class, and to step out of your comfort zone and develop new skills. The anthology gave me the opportunity to learn to design and typeset a book and piqued my interest in production, a career path I’d never really considered. It’s also a great chance to meet and work with other students and staff in the Master of Publishing and across the University.

 

Following the horrific fires in the summer of 2019–20, students decided to focus the 2020 anthology on climate change. And then the pandemic hit, which meant we had to move our meetings and all marketing online. The university campus was empty so there was no point putting up posters, not even on the usually busy Eastern Avenue or at Fisher Library. With no posters and the impact of COVID-19, we struggled to get submissions. A new strategy was required. We opened the call for new works to all University of Sydney staff, alumni and students, and we ended up with a strong collection, with a foreword by Karl Kruszelnicki.

Le Masurier and Giles also tried to set up a project for magazine students alongside the anthology, but this was stymied by the University’s marketing policy. Giles said, “It would still make a wonderful project – if the resources were available – and enable the students to showcase not only their writing and editing but their design skills.”

Over the years, we have also tried to set up a student-led publishing house to build on the success of the anthology, and to further combine project-based, on-the-job learning with mentoring and interdisciplinary teaching. Such teaching and student-led publishing houses are associated with many publishing degrees in Australia (at RMIT, the University of Melbourne and the University of Queensland) and internationally. With the limited resources available in the University post-COVID-19, this idea has been placed on hold.

So, what about the future of the Master of Publishing? Fifteen years later, it remains the only master’s level publishing degree in New South Wales. Le Masurier said, “The degree will constantly be updated as the industry continues to change. In the immediate future, I see the focus being more on book publishing than magazine publishing. The magazine unit will still run, but as an elective open to other MECO degrees (such as Master of Media Practice) rather than a core for MPub.” She also said she believed a new multimedia unit needed to be developed at the master’s level, where students can learn basic video shooting, editing and voiceover narrative skills.

Apart from the evolving curriculum, Giles said when I talked to her in 2020, “The degree would have a stronger and more secure future if MECO could appoint at least one permanent continuing lecturer.” Such an appointment would complement the industry expertise of the sessional lectures, providing a more solid research base to the curriculum design, teaching delivery and, most importantly, student learning. This came to pass in January 2022, when I joined MECO on a full-time basis. According to Giles, the degree “has had consistently strong enrolments in the vicinity of 40 to 50 students per semester, with some of the units enrolling many more”. She said, “The size, while not of blockbuster scale such as some of the other MECO programs, is not only economically viable but good for the students, who can get to know each other as a cohort, work together on the anthology and develop their networking skills with the industry-based staff and their internship experience. Given that the publishing industry is itself relatively small in Australia, the student numbers have been admirable.”

According to John Maxwell, director of Publishing at Simon Fraser University, these days publishing degrees need to deliver more than just teaching specific skills. They need to provide “an environment that nurtures a community of practice and professional discourse in which to develop [students’] already-existing sensibilities … they enter into this environment collectively and together undergo the process of learning and becoming valuable professionals. They are working individually and collectively: acquiring and generating knowledge, and perspectives, and the very culture of publishing.”4

By constantly evolving, experimenting and working closely together with the industry, the Master of Publishing is well placed to provide forward-looking professional training and contribute to the publishing culture of Australia. While the long-term impacts of the pandemic are hard to predict, it is clear that it has accelerated the digitisation trends across various aspects of the publishing industry, including ebook consumption, and forced publishers to be more creative and collaborative. The publishers also need to become more inclusive in their hiring and publishing strategies to better represent and cater for the voices of First Nations and People of Colour, and people with disabilities. Curious, innovative and resilient graduates are what the industry needs and what the Master of Publishing at the University of Sydney is producing.

​Works cited