Flavia Marcocci

I moved to the UK from Italy in September 2017 to study on the MA in Digital Publishing at Oxford Brookes University, graduating in 2018. I really appreciated the variety of modules and the combination of traditional subjects (Editorial Management, Marketing, Design & Production, International Rights) and innovative subjects such as Digital Publishing Strategy and Multi-Platform Publishing. I also joined the field trips to the Frankfurt and Bologna book fairs and volunteered at London Book Fair, and at the Oxford Literary Festival, all of which were fantastic experiences.

The MA in Digital Publishing at Oxford Brookes equipped me with the knowledge and transferable skills necessary to navigate and find opportunities in a challenging and competitive job market in the UK and I would highly recommend it to anyone who would like to start a career in publishing.

The lecturers supported the students not only academically but also in our job search, advising on CV and cover letters, which I found really useful, and organizing networking events such as Working in Publishing. Lectures often included guest speakers from the industry and this inspired me to produce my own interview podcast, Publishing Insight, as my Master’s Major Project. The podcast was well received among fellow students and in the publishing community, and I was nominated for the London Book Fair Trailblazer Awards in 2019, which was an incredible honour.

During the MA at Oxford Brookes, I also applied for many internships and work experience and in the days when I had no classes, I had the opportunity to help Georgina Atwell at Toppsta, a review and recommendation platform for children’s books. I also did work experience in the Rights Team at Taylor & Francis, supported the Stock Planning Department at OUP and assisted the Marketing Manager at Myriad-New Internationalist.

My first full-time job after the MA was as Digital Marketing Executive at Polity in Oxford, an independent publisher in the social sciences and humanities. I developed and executed Polity’s digital marketing strategy, compiling digital marketing plans and budgets and developing integrated multi-channel campaigns, across social media, newsletters and pay per click advertisement. I also uploaded data and ensured its accuracy on internal and external bibliographic systems.

I then moved to London to work as Metadata & Digital Supply Chain Coordinator at DK. The work includes: coaching colleagues in the publishing divisions on metadata best practices and suggesting ways to improve book discoverability and conversion rates on Amazon; auditing DK’s metadata optimization initiatives; and managing ONIX feeds from our internal system (Biblio) to external recipients in the UK and internationally.

You can listen to my podcast Publishing Insight on Apple Podcast, Spotify and all podcast apps, or on my website: http://www.publishing-insight.com