Want to know the secret to academic publishing success?

How do you market your manuscript or transform your thesis into a book?

The Guardian gather together some leading players in the fields of publishing and academia to provide a few answers on their Higher Education Network blog.

Well worth a read if you're trying to break through into academia!

NEW textbook

Mathematics for economists, third edition will be released shortly

How can the book help you?

Cue and Cut author talks about his experiences writing his latest title

By Roger Singleton-Turner

I did not set out to be writer – and that is not how I see myself, really, but everything has a consequence.

Cue and Cut is my fourth and longest book about television production. It’s been a long time in development. It began with a conversation at the University of Sunderland with Trevor Hearing (now at Bournemouth University). That was in 2005.

The work there followed some HE teaching in Middlesbrough, which came after three successive years on BBC training courses run for, and in association with, the University of Leeds. This work was a result of teaching aspiring directors at BBC Elstree in 1986-7. That job was itself a result of directing single and multi-camera children’s programmes from 1974 (Jackanory, Jackanory Playhouse and other dramas including Grange Hill). After the stint in Training, I carried on directing at the BBC until 1998, finishing with three series of The Demon Headmaster, and then moving on to work for Carlton and Granada – the freelance projects alternated with the teaching.

By the time I started directing Jackanory, I had already spent a lot of time working on various series in Children’s Programmes as an Assistant Floor Manager. In fact, uniquely, so far as I know, my last week working on the floor as an AFM coincided with my first week working in the Gallery as a Director. I ran up and down the stairs a lot.

The BBC took me on in the first place (in 1966 – a time of expansion) because I had gained a lot of stage experience as a Medical Student. For a doctor, it was entirely the wrong kind of theatre, so I had given up Medicine. Working in television had been an aim since childhood – particularly since watching David Attenborough on Zoo Quest. More consequences.

BBC Television Training commissioned the first two books, Continuity Notes and Television and Children. The third book, Children Acting on Television, was commissioned by A. and C. Black. They had approached my then boss, who found he did not have time to write the book. He suggested me because of the first two BBC books. Consequences, yet again.

What I hope for Cue and Cut is, firstly, that it will work with practical classes, backing up practical experience and suggesting solutions to challenges. It should, secondly, be a source of basic information and methodology for using multi-camera systems, which are used in some form on around two-thirds of Britain’s most popular television programmes. Finally, I have put in a certain amount of history, an indication in part, of how things got to where we are today and, in part, an indication that the way we do things now is not the only approach! There is enough guidance, I hope, for newcomers to multi-camera techniques to start working in this form, but enough flexibility for readers to soar beyond these basics.

I’ll be interested to hear how users find the book works for them. (comments can be sent to the MUP blog).

LSE blog

This week we're following The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) blog.

It's extremely active at the moment, with some interesting commentaries on the recent riots.

Plus they've just posted a good review of Equality and the British Left.

The IRA 1956-69, Rethinking the Republic

RADIO INTERVIEW
Matt Treacy, author of The IRA 1956-69 recently took part in a most interesting debate on Near FM.

The wide-ranging and detailed discussion focused on the period from the ill-fated Border Campaign of the 50’s through to the outbreak of The Troubles (or the Ulster Civil War as Michael refers to it).

LISTEN NOW

NEW ISSUE, THE IRISH JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

Volume 19, Issue 1 available now

Subscribers will receive their copies shortly.

Not a subscriber?
Find out how to become one!


Contents list for Volume 19, Issue 1
The challenges facing contemporary social theory
Piet Strydom
We do not live in an age of cosmopolitanism but an age of cosmopolitanisation: the ‘global other’ is in our midst
Ulrich Beck
Power and oppression from the perspective of the sociology of
engagements: a comparison with Bourdieu’s and Dewey’s critical
approaches to practical activities
Laurent Thévenot
Varieties of critique in sociological theory and their methodological implications for social research
Gerard Delanty
Theodicy sociologised: suffering smart in the twenty-first century
Steve Fuller
Gossip, conversation and group size: language as a bonding
mechanism
Bernard Conein
The new welfare-warfare state: challenges to the sociological
imagination
Marinus Ossewaarde
Social theory and the critique of capitalism in a communication society
Patrick O’Mahony
Towards a cognitive sociology for our time: Habermas and Honneth or language and recognition…and beyond
Piet Strydom

London Review of Books - one blog worth checking out

This week we've been reading the LRB blog.

With a wide selction of articles, from a very timely peice on The police and the Tabloids, to Tariq Ali's Homage to Sangakkara, it's well worth taking a look,

www.lrb.co.uk/blog

Curiouser and Curiouser: The Films of Alain Resnais

The BFI are celebrating one of France's most enigmatic and intriguing directors with a series of screenings and special events, starting today until the 4th August.

A full list of events can be found on the BFI website

Or, why not learn more about the enigmatic director in this illuminating introduction to his work,

Alain Resnais
By Emma Wilson

This title traces the evolving patterns of Resnais's filmmaking, and its changing reflections on mortality, guilt, chance and human doubt.

Emma Wilson offers a highly personal and detailed engagement with individual images and scenes in Resnais's films

NOW IN PAPERBACK

The Peeps - New review

A new review of The Peeps has been posted on The Shrieking Violet blog,

http://theshriekingviolets.blogspot.com/2011/07/ancoats-peeps-dan-dubowitz-and-presence.html

LAUNCH!

Moving stories launch

WATERSTONE'S BRIGHTON will be hosting the UK launch of Alistair Thomson's Moving Stories on Tuesday, 12 July 2011, 7:30PM - 9:00PM

Join us in celebrating the launch of Alistair Thomson's fascinating new book in conjunction with the University of Brighton and their exciting event on Memory, Narrative and Histories.

Read Alistair Thomson's recent article for The Conversation. Further details of the event are here or call: 01273 206 017