SPI Day One: Passion, Power Editors, and Russian Poetry

Zinczenko and Leive at NYU’s Summer Publishing Institute

I’d wager there’s at least one kid in every city who dreams of making it big in New York. While a fair few aspire to Broadway stardom, our kind imagines something slightly more bookish, although undoubtedly as enchanting.

Our kind is the readers, the writers, and the would-be editors and publishers. We grew up checking out too many books from the library, using our allowances at Barnes & Noble, staying up way past midnight to read the new Harry Potter book, and just generally spending hours (possibly days) with our faces buried in text. While for some, this process may have manifested itself in a less-pronounced fashion, 116 of us applied and were accepted to the Summer Publishing Institute at NYU’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies. At SPI, as we call it, we’ve now found ourselves eagerly immersed in one of the most intense summers of our lives. 

The Final Word: NYU’s Publishing Board Sounds Off

NYU Publishing Student Felipe Cruz with Stephen Riggio,CEO and Vice Chairman, Barnes & Noble

Pathways to publishing can be very convoluted, we learned as members of the Board of Advisors of NYU’S Center for Publishing convened at the Midtown Center recently to tell graduate students in the M.S. in Publishing program about their backgrounds and share their thoughts on the industry.

All Roads Lead to Publishing

As the Board members introduced themselves, it became evident that some of them began their professional careers in divergent fields and had serendipitously landed in the publishing industry. Jamie Raab, Senior Vice President and Publisher of Grand Central Publishing, had originally studied city planning, but wanted to be a diplomat; she admitted that she now exercises her diplomatic  skills running her division of the Hachette Book Group. Martin Maleska, Advisory Director to Investcorp, with various holdings in media, initially supervised the construction of polyester plants in Brazil before starting a long career at Macmillan Publishing, Simon & Schuster and other companies. Martha K. Levin, Executive Vice President and Publisher of Free Press, an imprint of Simon &  Schuster, fell into a publishing career after exiting law school.  David Ball, Vice President of Consumer Marketing for The Meredith Corporation, earned a degree in urban studies before enrolling in the NYU Publishing Program and landing his first job working for The Forbes Magazine Group.

The Pirates of Publishing:A View from the Crow’s Nest

The new face of publishing?

I am a pirate, sanctioned by publishers to engage in piratical activities and collect information for the benefit of the publishing community. During the last year and a half, I have worked with Magellan Media Partners on collecting data for a study on The Impact of P2P File Sharing on Book Sales. In the course of my research, I’ve talked with many people in various areas of the piracy community and as a result have been able to create a list of observations about the nature of piracy, how it can be a useful tool, and what publishers can do to minimize overall risk.