{"id":31226,"date":"2026-05-19T11:51:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T03:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/?post_type=oasis-news&#038;p=31226"},"modified":"2026-06-08T09:00:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T01:00:15","slug":"mycurtinstory-elephantpagepublishing","status":"publish","type":"oasis-news","link":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/oasis-news\/mycurtinstory-elephantpagepublishing\/","title":{"rendered":"What is it like to work at a student-run publishing house?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Harman, Jess, Josie and Marcuz were all staff members at Elephant Page Publishing, a publishing house powered by students but guided by a team of publishing professionals. They share their experience working in a student-run publishing house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Harman was the design director.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jess was the editorial co-director.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Josie was the director of acquisitions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marcuz was the marketing director.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image is-style-default\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1588\" height=\"840\" src=\"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/2.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-31228\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/2.jpg 1588w, https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/2-768x406.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/2-1536x812.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1588px) 100vw, 1588px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p><strong>How has Elephant Page Publishing helped you in your current career?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Harman: Elephant Page Publishing helped me understand the intricacies of publishing a book and skills like leadership and communication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jess: The editorial experience that I gained, the role that I had, was really important for the jobs I&#8217;m looking for now.&nbsp; I think it provided me with an opportunity that I may have never gotten before, and to work on real books, real manuscripts, which has been really helpful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Josie: Elephant Page was really valuable in getting practical experience.&nbsp;At&nbsp;uni,&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;easy to just get a lot of&nbsp;the academic&nbsp;work, and you&nbsp;don&#8217;t&nbsp;really know how it will apply in practice.&nbsp;So&nbsp;it was good to see how publishing works in real time, working on real books, real authors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marcuz: Working at Elephant Page really helped provide me with industry experience. It enhanced my skills in marketing and communications, looks&nbsp;really good&nbsp;on a resume, and helped me build connections and network with a lot of amazing people.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>What was the most important thing you learned in&nbsp;Elephant Page?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Harman: Just how much detail and effort&nbsp;go&nbsp;into the publication of a book.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jess: The editorial skills that I learned&nbsp;were really important.&nbsp;Getting practice in that and learning on the job is important for editing, and so getting that was really great.&nbsp;Also, the teamwork environment was really important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Josie: Collaborative teamwork skills because&nbsp;I&#8217;m&nbsp;pretty good&nbsp;at working independently. It&#8217;s&nbsp;a big team,&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;a big class, and you&nbsp;have to&nbsp;work well within your department and then also with the other departments as well.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marcuz: This was my first time working with people in the industry that I want to work in. And, seeing the inner workings of a publishing house was&nbsp;really interesting.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>What kind of work did you do for Elephant Page?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Harman: We designed the cover of <em>Running Track<\/em>, which has recently been published.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jess: I&nbsp;organised&nbsp;meetings, assigned tasks, and oversaw all editorial tasks that were occurring.&nbsp;I also did my own editorial tasks, like copy editing and structural editing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Josie: We were just going through all the manuscripts looking for the next book that&nbsp;we&#8217;re&nbsp;going to publish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marcuz: I was leading the marketing department in promoting the book we were working on that semester.&nbsp;&nbsp;I was delegating tasks to my staff&nbsp;members, mainly content creation for Elephant Pages\u2019 social media websites.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>W<\/strong><strong>hat skills translated over from Elephant Page Publishing to your everyday life?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Harman: Communication, leadership, and teamwork. Elephant Page, being an&nbsp;actual publishing house, a lot of those skills&nbsp;are usable in so many different aspects of life, which I think has been really important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jess: Becoming a better writer, and that&#8217;s&nbsp;really crucial&nbsp;in the job market today for people graduating from this degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Josie: I feel like I have an understanding of all the areas of publishing, so acquisitions, editing, marketing, and design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marcuz: Mainly teamwork. You learn to work with a&nbsp;really diverse&nbsp;group of people. It really preps you for when you work in the real world, and you meet new people and learn to adapt to how they work.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>What was the biggest surprise working for&nbsp;Elephant Page?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Harman: Actually working on getting a manuscript to publication and&nbsp;realising&nbsp;that there are so many different details that go into it.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jess: The connections that&nbsp;I&#8217;ve&nbsp;made through it. I&#8217;ve&nbsp;made some lifelong friends with other directors and other people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marcuz: I never really expected how intense we\u2019d get.&nbsp;It&#8217;s&nbsp;a fully functioning publishing house, and there are designated departments for doing different things, and you might not necessarily be doing&nbsp;publishing, but your work contributes to that overall goal of getting a book out.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>What do you miss most about working for Elephant Page?<br><\/strong>Harman: I definitely miss the friendships most, and also working with Per. His expertise is just incredible.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jess: Being with&nbsp;like -minded people and working on real books with people that you get along with so well.&nbsp;The friends that I made as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Josie: I miss the people. I made really great friends. I miss Pear.&nbsp;Everyone&#8217;s just really amazing, and it was really good fun.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marcuz: Definitely the&nbsp;people.&nbsp;I&#8217;m&nbsp;still lucky enough to be involved and connected with the people I worked with.&nbsp;&nbsp;And a lot of times, you end up&nbsp;connecting, and they&nbsp;basically become&nbsp;part of your network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>What advice or recommendations would you have for future students?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Harman: Absolutely make the most of it; the experience you get here is almost unparalleled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jess: Have fun with it. I feel like it can be stressful, and&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;like a lot of pressure when&nbsp;you&#8217;re&nbsp;getting thrown into this environment that&nbsp;you&#8217;re&nbsp;not sure about. Pick people from the other departments and try other stuff as well.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Josie: Don&#8217;t&nbsp;procrastinate too much. I know students love to procrastinate, but get the work done as if you&#8217;re actually working a real job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Elephant Page Publishing has given so many students rewarding experiences working in publishing. As Harman, Jess, Josie and Marcuz show, their Elephant Page experience will be one to remember.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What would it be like to work in publishing? With the help of Elephant Page Publishing, students are getting real-world publishing experience at Curtin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4495,"featured_media":31227,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"6141,4698,5289,4700,4556,7025","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"Relevanssi index exclude","wds_primary_oasis-categories":0,"footnotes":""},"oasis-categories":[136,250],"class_list":["post-31226","oasis-news","type-oasis-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","oasis-categories-humanities","oasis-categories-student-profile"],"acf":{"post_options":{"":null,"banner":{"image":false}}},"featured_image":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1-1000x500.jpg","author_meta":{"first_name":"Nikita","last_name":"Arun","display_name":"302394e"},"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-15 13:35:05","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"oasis-categories","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/oasis-news\/31226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/oasis-news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/oasis-news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/oasis-news\/31226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"oasis-categories","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/oasis-categories?post=31226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}