Looking for ways to step up your professional development? Look no further than the recently revamped Tech Forum website, and gain access to a repository of all the content we’ve created and shared as part of our event throughout the years.
From video recordings of virtual and in-person presentations to slides, podcast episodes, and blog posts, we’ve got a wealth of content in your preferred format.
In our previous instalment of this blog series, we highlighted content related to metadata, today the spotlight's on publishing.
If you’re looking for something in particular, here’s a quick guide on how to leverage the power of our website’s search engine.
Foreign object in the house of Canadian literature
In this session, Annahid Dashtgard, Chelene Knight, and moderator Léonicka Valcius have an important, nuanced, and solution-based conversation about how the publishing industry cares for authors who share difficult truths in their work. How do we create space and safety for people, writers especially, who, for a variety of reasons, have not been welcome in Canadian publishing? People who, as Dashtgard writes in her essay, Foreign Object in the House of Canadian Literature, “are wooed for the colour [they] represent, but [who] don’t yet belong.” Dashtgard, Knight, and Valcius explore the author experience in publishing and how that mirrors or differs from the experiences of racialized people in other industries. What are the primary concerns authors face in navigating the industry? What responsibility do industry professionals have to incorporate author care into their process? And how does author care differ for marginalized writers or writers who are exposing trauma in their work?
Find the video and other related content here.
Optimize your publishing from start to finish
Representatives from MetaComet, Firebrand, Central Avenue Publishing, and IPG gathered for a webinar packed with expert guidance on using technology to improve your publishing operations. In conversation with Dayla Fuentes-Morales, the discussion approaches the publishing process from start to finish, presenting the real-world challenges of small- and mid-size publishers along the way. From acquisition planning to post-publication analysis, this webinar maps the key stages of the publishing process and shares advice on increasing revenue while reducing the effort, time, and cost spent on each. The panelists cover important tasks including contract management, product development, distribution, and royalty tracking, with recommendations for digital tools to support them. There are quick, actionable insights into planning, metadata development and maintenance, contract and royalty management, and much more.
Find the video and other related content here.
The difference queer fanfiction makes: Lessons for the publishing industry
As Nikoo Sarraf and Jennifer Chen from McGill University's .txtlab write in their introduction to their 2021 report, queer fans: the difference that queer fanfiction makes, "fanfiction is a powerful and transformative form of writing that provides a safe space for youth to explore their gender and sexuality, knowing that they are part of a larger community." Sarraf and Chen joined Tech Forum to share insights from their research: revealing the stylistic qualities of queer fanfiction that allow readers to form strong attachments with the material and showing how queer fanfiction authors approach content from a place of emotional vulnerability, explore taboo topics, and offer character-focused storytelling. By comparing queer fanfic with books published in the mainstream, Sarraf and Chen highlight how fanfiction normalizes intimacy and emotional vulnerability for sexual and gender minority youth.
Find the video and other related content here.
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