Editorials & Commentary

Juan Pablo Alperin is an Associate Professor in SFU's Publishing Program. He is also the co-scientific director of the Public Knowledge Project, a multi-university research initiative, and the co-director of the Scholarly Communications Lab, an interdisciplinary group of Canadian researchers. We recently asked him to share a few insights with us. Here's our brief conversation including Dr. Alperin's advice for future MPub students:

I’ve worked in publishing for about 15 years, but every year I’m caught off guard by the January phenomenon of aspiring authors who’ve resolved that this is the year they’re publishing a book. Manuscript submissions and calls about the publishing process become more frequent, as do inquiries about how to get into the industry itself. When we field these calls at the Association of Book Publishers of BC, we direct these individuals to various resources and wish them luck, but in 2021, I’d also suggest they pay close attention to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic when pitching themselves to the industry, whether as an author or a publishing professional.

When I first started teaching in the Master of Publishing, I was anticipating some culture shock. I have a much more traditional graduate school background -- an MA and PhD in English literature -- and my graduate education consisted largely of traditional seminar courses, deep dives into specific topics culminating in journal-article-length research papers. Trained in close and careful reading, scholarly research skills, and academic writing, I was a little nervous about teaching in a more professionally-oriented program. What I didn’t anticipate was a feeling I slowly developed over the course of my first few years, a feeling of jealousy.

Over the past five months, as teachers and instructors have been collectively grappling with the challenge of pivoting to online teaching, a question I’ve heard often is: how will we recreate the intimacy of the classroom online?

I’ve spent much of this pandemic summer preparing to teach PUB 800 for the first time: wading through dense treatises on publishing and working out how to deliver an engaging remote seminar. So you’ll forgive me for devoting my introductory post for SFU Publishing to a delightfully frothy show that I’d like to recommend as a companion to your quarantine reading: Younger.

When Vancouver’s public libraries abruptly closed their doors as part of March’s Covid lockdown, my book-addicted family was suddenly forced to go cold turkey. Hallelujah for Little Free Libraries, which have sprouted all over town in the last few years.