WORKSHOP ON BOOK EDITING...

PRESS RELEASE

CORA HOSTS A WORKSHOP ON BOOK EDITING

The Committee For Relevant Art (CORA) is working, in partnership with Bookbuilders Limited in Ibadan, on a workshop for Book Editors. The event will run from April 26 to 28, 2007, at the Goethe Institut in Lagos.
The workshop is the first attempt by CORA to engage in capacity building for the Book industry.
The idea of the workshop is to develop a generation of fully trained book editors who are envisaged to energize the book industry with the editorial skills that are so lacking in current literary and scholarly books.

In hardly any of the few operating publishing houses is there a book editor of redoubtable skill and renown. “Indeed, so negligible is the impact of editors on the few books that are published that nobody makes the ordinary connection between editing and the quality of a published book”, according to the CORA proposal.

Mrs Chris Bankole, the key facilitator, and Mrs Sherifat Oladokun, both of Book Builders Limited, a highly regarded firm of book editors, will give closed-session lectures, seminars, and tutorial-style meetings. Participants will have the opportunity to engage in practical demonstration of how a book is worked on. They will learn about the role of the editor in relation to the publisher, agent, and author, and the differences between a newspaper editor and a book editor. There will be illuminating conversations on a range of topics including Initial assessment of a book, Copy Editing, Substantive editing, Proofreading, Indexing, Cover design, Grammar and useage, cliches, Nigerian malapropisms. It will also look at challenges in editing creative writers; both of children and adult fiction, as well as Scholarly/ tertiary publishing / research vs university, textbooks. Participants, who will pay 10,000 naira for three days (which covers tuition, course materials, tea/snacks, lunch, certificate and group photograph) will be taught Footnote / reference styles, publications of Newsletters / flyers / brochures as well as how to handle tables / diagrams / maps etc.

“The experience is not substitute for a sustained academic program in publishing”, the proposal reads. But we hope that participants will gain a lot from this workshop to develop career interest in book publishing. The organizers look forward to hearing from such large (mostly erstwhile multinational ) publishers such as McMillan, Longmans, Evans, as well as homegrown, midsized companies including Spectrum, Africana, 4th Dimension, Litramed. The workshop will be particularly useful for emerging companies like Farafina, New Gong, Cassava Republic, BookKraft, Kraft Book .

Perhaps the major beneficiary from this sort of learning would be people between ages 22-40, preferably university graduates or those in the final semester of their bachelor programs, with demonstrable interest in reading and writing.

Graduates that can produce their certificates may not necessarily present their transcripts. Staffers of reputable publishing firms should only need to present a letter from their employer authenticating their status. Completed application package will include a letter of application, and a statement of purpose. For those who are not working in a publishing house, there is, required, a letter of recommendation from academic mentors or teachers.

Contacts: CORA Secretariat http://www2.blogger.com/ym/Compose?To=cora2stamp@yahoo.co.uk, Ayo Arigbabu, (http://www2.blogger.com/ym/Compose?To=arigbs@gmail.com), Jumoke Verissimo, (http://www2.blogger.com/ym/Compose?To=jumokeverissimo@yahoo.com) Juwon Bukola Phillips(naijajuwon@yahoo.ca) and Wale Omotoye (geewale@yahoo.com)

Thank you so much,
Toyin Akinosho
Secretary General