Edinburgh in August is . . . intense. It’s festival season, and the city’s usual population of 500,000 surges to twice that amount, though it feels like more. The streets are packed with street performers and event promoters, tourists, and harried locals. Wandering among the crowds this year was a group of students from Portland State University. For the past three summers, PSU’s Director of Book Publishing Dr. Rachel Noorda has been leading a short study abroad program in the city. The goal: to educate students about the publishing industry in the United Kingdom. Here’s a glimpse into the program from one of the eight Oolies in the 2024 cohort.
One might expect a study of the UK’s publishing industry to lead to London, so why was Edinburgh chosen as the location for the program instead? Edinburgh is a city with a rich literary history. To name a few examples, it was home to Robert Louis Stevenson, who was inspired to write Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide by another resident of the city, Deacon Brodie; Edinburgh was also home to the author of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Scottish poet Robert Burns was inspired by the Edinburgh-born poet Robert Fergusson. This history makes it the perfect setting for book lovers from around the globe to gather for the world’s largest book festival, the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
As part of the program, students attend several festival events. But how were these events chosen? When the schedule for the festival was released in late spring, the group was asked to go through and choose their top five events. From there, tickets were purchased based on ticket availability and other scheduled activities. This year’s cohort was able to see eight events covering a wide variety of topics. These included a conversation between popular fantasy authors R. F. Kuang and Samantha Shannon about the genre’s future, a moving performance by poet Hollie McNish, a discussion with renowned author Val McDermid about her latest release, an appearance by Matt Haig, and a panel on erotica. With each event, students learned more not only about a specific author or genre, but about the publishing industry in general. Students also had the opportunity to briefly interact with authors at the book signings that followed their appearances.
Between these events, the group was taken on several tours. The first was a tour of the National Library of Scotland, where students learned about the library’s history and current function, including a visit with the archivists! Second was a tour of Publishing Scotland, whose mission is to “act as the voice and network for publishing, to develop and promote the work of companies, organisations and individuals in the industry, and to coordinate joint initiatives and partnership.” Next was a tour of Edinburgh’s Central Library, followed by a tour of Edinburgh University Press. (Fun fact: Although Ooligan Press is smaller than EUP, they share a likeness in that they are both associated with a university while being completely independent financially.) The final tour took the group on a day trip to Glasgow, during which they visited the UK’s largest book distributor, BookSource.
More time was spent participating in workshops with various publishing professionals appearing as guest speakers; workshop topics included diversity in YA in UK publishing, rural publishing in the UK, and the history of publishing in Scotland. Another scheduled activity was a “retail crawl.” Students were tasked with observing differences between books published in the US and books published in the UK, as well as differences in selling practices. A few differences noted were that the copyright page is centered in the UK rather than left aligned, some covers differed from the US versions, there were very few hardbacks, and most fiction simply appeared under “General Fiction” rather than being broken up by genre (A few of the genres that were shelved separately included sci-fi/fantasy, crime fiction, and horror.). Many books were inevitably bought while completing this assignment, with one student coming home with forty-three in all!
After two weeks in this high intensity program, students were left with a deeper knowledge of the international publishing scene. For the Oolies in the program, they may find occasion to incorporate this knowledge into their practices at Ooligan Press in the future. Having this previous understanding of the industry also provides an advantage to the Oolies interested in working in the UK. Regardless of their future plans, this study abroad experience is not one students are likely to forget!