Rebecca Sederberg and Professors Doris R. Dant and Don E. Norton, English
Students at Brigham Young University have a wealth of possible publishing options. These include not only on-campus essay collections and student-run magazines but also the commercial and trade markets of the general public. Our goal was to analyze the publication procedure from the viewpoint of a student and to make more accessible to students market resources and knowledge.
Gathering information from the many available writer’s handbooks, we drafted a “standard” student publication process. To test our process, we set up a temporary “student agent” program, through which we helped interested students to navigate the publication process.
The work was much more involved than had been initially assumed. We had started with the underlying assumption that the writing would be publisher-ready, and that the student agent program would merely help students to understand the publishing world. We found, instead, that we needed to start at an earlier point: we needed to help the students to polish their work and gear it toward a particular market. So we added a preliminary chapter on editing to our handbook. Our final product includes the following sections: Editing, Market Research, The Query Letter, The Tracking Process, Peer Review, Working with an Editor, The Finished Product, and Maintaining Professionalism.
Our original plan had been to mass-produce the handbook for distribution to students. We have decided, instead, to place the information on a webpage. This page will be attached to BYU’s honors’ page. We anticipate it to be up and running by December 2000. Please visit us then.
Special thanks to: Doris Dant, Don E. Norton, Colleen Whitley, Cheri Earl, Michael Murff, and Todd Rawlings.