The Publishing Lab
The Publishing Lab
What are industry insiders saying about the
Publishing Lab Online?
“No writer is an island and no enterprise delineates the contours of the actual landscape in which your writing will be read better than the Publishing Lab. Year in, year out, the participants in the lab are researching, interviewing, analyzing what's going on in both commercial and literary publishing. If every writer possessed the knowledge this Lab is collecting, we'd have a much healthier industry.”
—Richard Nash
Editor, Cursor
Editor, Cursor
"Columbia College Chicago has this pretty impressive Publishing Lab. If you’re new to the writing/publishing game, it’s an invaluable resource."
—Jackie Corley
Publisher, Wordriot.org
Publisher, Wordriot.org
“I think the publishing lab is a wonderful resource for students to use when getting their work published. They are sure to get an inside look at how publishing works.”
—Caren Johnson Estesen
Caren Johnson Literary Agency
Caren Johnson Literary Agency
The Publishing Lab is a student-managed resource center run by the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia College designed to assist writers in finding homes for their stories. Our market research cuts down the amount of time writers need to weed through magazines, presses, and gargantuan/costly writing guides by steering them toward magazines and publishers that match their sensibility and experience.
Since 2001, the lab has been a place to start researching both the art and commerce of a writing career. Our Web portal is an extension of the valuable student-generated market research we house for Columbia students. Our target audience is emerging writers, but market research transcends experience. All writers can benefit. Browse the sources in the right hand column to begin your research. Good luck.
LATEST UPDATE: Our Lab Scientists aren't just compiling market research and helping their fellow students get published. They also nurture relationships with publishers and help students get clips by guiding them through the process of writing a critical book review. Nowadays, there's fewer venues for this crucial part of the literary conversation. So we created our own. Behold! The Review Lab!
We've also posted a bevy of new video interviews with editors who can help shine a light on the process they go through to decide what makes it into print (or online) and what doesn't.
