Royal Holloway's Emporium: A Treasury of Creativity
Welcome to Royal Holloway, University of London's Creative Writing Anthology, The Emporium: a Treasury of Creativity. Inside are the imaginative works of the graduating class of 2015. Delve into the thrillers, the love-sick, the angst, and the revolutions of our minds.
Royal Holloway's Emporium is the graduate anthology for the Creative Writing graduating class of 2015. It was published through Amazon CreateSpace and is distributed through a print-on-demand model. The project was created by Cassandra Kosmayer and Sophie Goodall, who brought the project to life from idea to publication.
Published and distributed through Amazon.
This anthology was created with the support and funding from the English Department at Royal Holloway University of London.
Multiple self-publishing avenues were researched for quality and budgeting purposes. In the end Amazon’s on-demand self-publishing platform CreateSpace was chosen as it provided the ability to officially publish the anthology and print physical copies for the graduates at cost.
Budget was created based on the cost of CreateSpace’s services based on volume of copies. In the end it was agreed that every graduate who contributed their work would receive one copy, and that the department would keep two. The overall budget was minimal and covered by the English department.
Cover Creation
To create the cover an image of Royal Holloway, University of London was sourced from the university’s website and sized to the aspect ratio of a standard-sized book. Using the image as a source guide, vectors were then created with the Magnetic Lasso Tool to transform the image from a photograph to an artistic representation using triangular geometric abstraction.
The font was sourced and copy was created and added to the cover of the anthology. The logo was created by compiling multiple layers of sourced vector images found with creative commons licenses.
Page Layout Creation
Typesetting was created within Adobe InDesign. Page layouts were created for:
- Author Pages
- Fiction Pages
- Poetry Pages
- Screenwriting Pages
- Letter from the Department
Website Design and Creation
To provide graduate writers with an easy system to submit content for their author page and their fiction, screenwriting, or poetry piece an online portal was created, and several accounts for file acquisition were made.
The website was created with WordPress.com with a free theme customized to provide students with a professional environment in which they can learn about the project and what they need to do to be a part of it.
Sourcing Content from Graduates
An author form, with prompts for name, specialty, and a short bio was created using an online free tool. The information from here was used to fill author pages. To advertise these services the department sent out multiple emails to graduating students.
Once the content was acquired Sophie Goodall edited and compiled the content into the anthology.
Obtaining Special Messages from Staff
We had the staff create a personal message to the graduating class of 2015 as a touching farewell to their students. This was formatted and included at the beginning of the anthology.
Publishing Using Amazon CreateSpace
Using online tutorials and Amazon CreateSpace’s intuitive interface the project was uploaded and published. Upon publishing the department ordered copies of the anthology and the books were printed on demand and shipped to the English Department where they were handed out to graduates on their graduation day.
The Team
Cassandra Kosmayer
Cassandra Kosmayer handled the design elements of the project. She created the cover, page layouts, website, contact forms, and published the project using Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, CMS, Contact Forms, and CreateSpace.
Sophie Goodall
Sophie Goodall founded the idea for the anthology and worked as the lead with the authors to compile and edit the graduate works for any errors, with particular focus on the author pages.
