Emerson Undergraduate Students for Publishing, or “Pub Club,” as many members affectionately call it, has been an organization on Emerson’s Campus for the past ten years, with SGA recognition for five. Originally set up to offer publishing experience for underclassmen, the organization’s most well-known endeavor is the book project, where Pub Club publishes the manuscripts of two Emerson students. On December 9th, the organization’s publishing house, Wilde Press, will be launching two new student works: Hypergraphia, by Brenna Kleinman, and World From Jar, by Rebecca Crandall. In a process that is as close to the professional publishing world as possible, Emerson students stand out to make the dreams of writers on campus come to life.

But Pub Club isn’t just one entity; it’s a much larger organization with smaller branches under its wing.

“Basically, Undergraduate Students for Publishing is like an umbrella. We deal with publishing events, whether in conjunction with other organizations, or panels like we do with career services,” says Julia Domenicucci ’15, one of Pub Club’s co-presidents. “ We have Generic, which [is] the only literary magazine of genre fiction [on campus], as well as all our workshops and other associated genre things. And then we have Wilde Press, which only kicks in for part of the semester. It functions as a publishing house [that] publishes two books.”

The decision to create a publishing house within a student organization was a practical one when Pub Club first started out because the books have ISBNs on them; they must be connected to a publishing house. While Wilde Press is technically a non-profit (the profits of all manuscripts go to a charity of the author’s choice) the fact that they are a publishing house on their own allows them to publish student manuscripts without the interference of larger publishing companies.

While there is plenty of overlap between teams, the eBoard for Pub Club and the managing team at Wilde Press do not necessarily consist of the same students. This opens up more room for members of the club to hold positions. While there is an application process to become a member  of the eBoard or having a leadership position within the book project, any student can join the general team, regardless of year or major. Domenicucci described her role within Wilde Press as a publisher  and heads the production process for Kleinman’s Hypergraphia. Fellow co-president Alex Kowal ’14 is the publisher for Crandall’s World From Jar. The project itself,  which happens every semester, is a huge undertaking for the club. Students from Emerson College can send Pub Club their manuscript of around 40 pages or so to the eBoard to read through. Once the eBoard has selected their top choices, they present them to the entire club to vote upon. “Our all-time high was 17 submissions,” said Kowal, “but this year we had 14.”

“Some people think that the whole entire club should read every manuscript and decide on it that way, but that would potentially be a determent from being involved in Pub Club. It’s not accurate for what happens in the industry, anyway,” said Domenicucci.

“We work as a publishing house,” said Kowal, “and that’s actually how they would choose as well.” This being said, the eBoard sends feedback to all students who submit their work, and encourages them to resubmit in the next semester.

Pub Club only published one book a semester at first, but have taken on two books a semester since the fall of 2012. Once the decision is made on manuscripts, four teams are developed: substantive editing, which handles holistic edits to the manuscript; copyediting, which manages grammar and word choice; marketing, which promotes the manuscripts and authors; and finally design, which creates the covers and layout for the manuscripts.

All of the work of these individual teams sums up to the book launch at semester’s end, on December 9th at 6p.m. in the Bill Bordy Theater. Afterwards, copies will be available for purchase from Pub Club itself, and will have a copy of each added to the library’s catalogue.  Make sure to check back with Your Mag for a review of the student works!