Six years as an SYP member: insights and reflections

Posted on February 2, 2026 in INTO, UK

It was 2019 when I first joined the SYP and now I’m starting my second year volunteering on the UK committee. Here’s a look at how the experience helped me gain knowledge, contacts and experience, and what you can expect when you join the SYP.

Picture this: you’ve been fascinated by book publishing for years and now you’re in a huge lecture theatre full of people who share that common interest. It’s the start of a whole day full of fascinating panels delving into different aspects of publishing and opportunities to network with each other. That’s how I felt arriving at my first SYP conference at Oxford Brookes University in November 2019. (I recently returned to Brookes for the 2025 Oxford conference: a true full-circle moment.)

At this point, I’d been to a couple of other SYP events in Oxford, where I was living for my first graduate job (editorial but outside of book publishing). The first was SYP Oxford’s monthly book club, which was wonderfully informal and involved sitting in various cosy Oxford pubs. I continued attending once a month until early 2020, when…we all know what happened. In fact, one of my first indicators that the pandemic was getting serious was when the March book club was cancelled at short notice following government advice not to visit pubs.

When Covid hit, the SYP did a fantastic job of switching to remote webinar-style events. I remember the hosts of one virtual event explaining that (unlike a normal video call) no one could see or hear us through our webcams and we could type questions into the chat if we wanted to participate. Nowadays we’re so used to these we hardly think about it, and it’s fantastic that they’re still happening for accessibility and location reasons, but at the time it was so unfamiliar.

In 2022 I started my masters in publishing, though I’d already picked up a lot of industry knowledge thanks to the SYP. On the first day of the course, they asked who was already an SYP member and I was the only person who raised their hand. I encouraged my coursemates to make the most of the SYP at every opportunity and shared SYP posts on social media, but still didn’t apply for a committee role because at that point I felt like I barely had time to complete my assignments. I did, however, attend my first SYP Scotland conference that year.

When I eventually decided to give volunteering for the SYP a go, I was selected as an InPrint writer for 2025 and contributed to four editions of the beautifully produced magazine that is available for all members to read either in print or online. I’m staying on the SYP UK committee for 2026 in my new role coordinating the Press Forward blog as well as the members-only Resource Centre. The roles are fully remote, very flexible around your other commitments, and you can be part of either the UK committee or your local regional committee.

I can’t recommend SYP enough to anyone who’s progressing their career in publishing or who hopes to enter the industry someday. All the podcast episodes I’ve heard, InPrint editions I’ve collected and events and conferences I’ve attended over the years have enriched my understanding of the publishing world and introduced me to some lovely like-minded people along the way. Later, volunteering on the UK committee allowed me to be more closely involved and give something back to the society. Whether you join as a member or choose to volunteer, the SYP has a lot to offer.

There are many more benefits to joining the SYP that I haven’t mentioned but you can find out more on the membership benefits page.

Written by Emily Dunn