BU students enter the Dragon's Den

7 April 2009

Third year students on the BA Communication and Media studying the Writing, Editing and Publishing unit entered the Dragon's Den.

Teams of four students were required to envisage themselves as setting up a new publishing company and so produce a name and a logo for their imprint, together with a 200-word synopsis and title of their pilot title, a cover design and 50-word jacket blurb and a press release defining their target market.

All this had to be presented to a panel of industry professionals comprising of a top publisher, Ernest Hecht, MD of Souvenir Press who was described by The Times as "the last of the literary entrepreneurs", senior commissioning editor Emily Thomas from the Hachette publishing group, literary agent Alice Saunders who boasts an impressive clientele of best-selling authors including Andy McNab, John McCarthy, Kate Mosse, Katharine McMahon and Felicity Kendal and a Waterstones manager, to make the point that in the end the success or failure of a book is at the point of sale.

Marks were awarded for the originality and commercial prospects of each title and for the professionalism of the actual presentation. The latter element won praise from the panel for what they felt was generally a relaxed level of performance indicating considerable depths of research and much detailed preparation.

Creatively, the professionals expressed open admiration for the imaginative ideas put before them.  Five of the nine book proposals were deemed to have publishing potential – one of which created great excitement and had the publisher, commissioning editor and agent all vying to extend invitations for the author to submit an early manuscript.

• BA Communication and Media
• BA English