work experience

My Internship with Barrington Stoke

February 2nd, 2017 by evangelia_kyriazi-perri | Posted in Blog, Internships | Comments Off on My Internship with Barrington Stoke
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2017 could not have started better for me, as I was offered an internship at Barrington Stoke. Barrington Stoke is a children’s and YA publisher, founded by Patience Thomson and Lucy Juckes, a mother and daughter-in-law team with personal experience of the way that dyslexia can lock children out of the world of books and reading. They came up with the idea of books that would open the door to more young people.  They developed a dyslexia-friendly font, pioneered the use of tinted paper and began to commission short, achievable books from an amazing range of authors.

The Perks of Being a Publishing Intern!

Over the years, the company has gained many awards, such as Children’s Publisher of the Year, and many supporters due to their collaborations with exceptional and award-winning authors and illustrators. Working for a children’s publisher for 5 weeks is an amazing experience. Currently being in the middle of my time there, I received valuable guidance, advice and the chance to develop my editorial, social media and design skills, as I’m responsible for updating the company’s blog to a great extent, using WordPress.

Working in an office is one of the best experiences I could have gained, because I always wanted to work in this environment, collaborating with other workmates and get an insight into working for a publisher. Barrington Stoke  is small but very friendly company, with many tasks and responsibilities for the staff. As an intern, I’ve undertaken various tasks so far, helping by completing office administrative tasks such as mailing the new book catalogues to booksellers such as Waterstones. My favourite task was definitely blogging, because I own my own food and lifestyle blog, so it was interesting to create blogs about book titles and mini author interviews called ‘Five Questions’.

Working on blog posts for the book titles!

 

During my internship so far, I’ve been using Indesign and Photoshop tools, to edit pictures and create banners for the blog posts I was responsible to create. This helped me very much to practise my design skills and familiasize myself with design tools, which will help me in my future career. At Barrington Stoke, I’ve also been responsible for proof-reading some of the book catalogues and stock lists, and have explored the editorial department.

I consider myself lucky to have worked at Barrington Stoke and I believe this internship strengthened my passion for social media and digital marketing, helping me pursuing a career after my postgrad.

 

By Elina Kyriazi-Perri

Morven Gow, MLitt Publishing Studies 2016-17

November 7th, 2016 by morven_gow | Posted in Student Profiles | Comments Off on Morven Gow, MLitt Publishing Studies 2016-17
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htln29im

“How brave of you.” “How inspiring!” “I’d love to do that – good on you!”
Reactions to news that I have signed up to be one of the first humans trying to grow spinach in a cloche on Mars? Or perhaps to an announcement that I am contemplating a fire-walk, swimming Loch Lomond, and cycling the world? Neither of those. I find myself a Hero for the Middle-Aged Worker simply by returning to Uni.
What has brought me here to study publishing at Stirling? I wanted to shake up my skills and go back to the future, to focus on writing. After 30 years planning and buying advertising campaigns, with some PR experience, working on campaigns for some of Scotland’s bastions of culture (National Museums, National Galleries, National Library), newspaper publishers, retailers, banks, whiskies, political, and public health campaigns, I thought I would brush up my writing skills to suit the digital age adding what is known in the trade as content marketing to the skills I could offer my employer and my clients. A quick Google brought me to the Publishing Scotland website, and information about a day course on the subject. But I wanted something with more depth. I read information on the site about PG courses in publishing, and although I discounted the idea at the time, a small persistent voice (coupled with the louder voices of my friends) kept asking, “why not? Books are a passion for you, and you love a beautifully designed hip posh mag”. After a meeting with the course director, Frances, the idea blossomed, I applied – and here I am, loving my new life as a student on a well respected course, thinking new thoughts, on a beautiful campus, with fellow students from all over the world.
Now that the course has begun, I can see that the Publishing Studies course will repurpose me for the next stage in my life – rather like a classic G Plan chair, reupholstered and reoiled.
Officially self-employed, I am a consultant for my previous company combining blog writing and communication advice with media planning and buying, and looking for some experience in book and magazine marketing from publishers before I graduate, with an eye to moving into that area as a consultant at the end of the course.

I can be found at@Morv60 on Twitter and at Morven Gow on LinkedIn

Marketing and Publicity and PaperLove

June 24th, 2015 by Courtney Murphy | Posted in Blog | Comments Off on Marketing and Publicity and PaperLove
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Rachel Hazell, a.k.a. the Traveling Bookbinder

Rachel Hazell, a.k.a. the Traveling Bookbinder

I interned for Rachel Hazell, a bookbinder and paper artist based in Edinburgh. Rachel has been a self-employed book artist since 1998 when she founded her first company, Hazell Designs Books. She is passionate about books but more than anything else she’s passionate about paper itself. Her strong drive to share her passion for paper with others has taken her around the world: she has taught bookbinding and book art workshops in Scotland, Paris, Venice, California, and as far afield as Antarctica.

My work as an intern primarily involved marketing and publicity for PaperLove, Rachel’s online paper art course. The PaperLove e-course is five-week class that explores a range of paper art and paper craft. It is advertised as a course “Developed to enable everyone, no matter where they live, to work with Rachel to develop their creativity through the medium of paper”. Each week of the course is devoted to a specific theme or craft. The themes for each of the five weeks are: paper, collage, word, book, and mail. You can learn more about the course here.

The PaperLove e-course runs two times each year. As soon as my internship began in January I started

Countdown to PaperLove

Countdown to PaperLove

working to promote the March run of the course. Working with a limited marketing budget Rachel and I focused on using social media and electronic word-of-mouth marketing as a way of reaching potential “PaperLovers”. We used Instagram to host giveaways and to advertise the course. (The Society of Young Publishers recently did a feature on Rachel’s delightful Instagram account here.) On Facebook we used the Paperphilia page to share free DIY tutorials as a way of giving potential students the chance to try out paper crafts and get a sense of Rachel’s teaching style.

A large part of my internship consisted of liaising with artists and bloggers who helped to promote PaperLove. I contacted paper artists, collage artists, bookbinders, and bloggers all over the world and worked with them to get publicity for PaperLove. We offered interested artists a five-day PaperLove sampler course and requested that in exchange for the sampler they write a feature about PaperLove on their blog. Artists all over the world took part, including a visual artist based in London, U.K.; a paper artist and author in Delaware, U.S.A.; and a jeweler and crafter in Bucharest, Romania. It was interesting to see what each artist did with the sampler class projects, and the features these artists wrote really helped to extend Rachel’s reach and to spread the word about PaperLove. I also worked to get PaperLove onto craft websites and community sites. It was exciting to see PaperLove featured on CraftGossip.com. CraftGossip did two features on Rachel’s paper art: one feature on PaperLove and a second feature on Rachel’s DIY tutorial on how to make Mini Post Books.

Lemongrass soap lovingly wrapped in book text

Lemongrass soap lovingly wrapped in book text

Interning for a book and paper artist was never ever boring. While much of my work was done from home on my laptop, whenever I went into Edinburgh to meet with Rachel at her studio I got to take a break from my laptop and busy myself with whatever crafty tasks needed doing. One day I used pages cut from old second hand books to wrap up bars of soap for Bed with a View, Rachel’s literary-themed studio apartment retreat in Edinburgh’s Old Town. The next day upon my arrival at the studio I was presented with one of Rachel’s literary sculptures and asked to count the number of blossoms in a paper “bookquet”—a bouquet of flowers custom made from the pages of a book.

It was such a privilege to work with Rachel on promoting the PaperLove course. I learnt so much about marketing and publicity while working alongside Rachel and her PR, branding, and long-term strategy person. I also learnt a lot about paper: I now know all about European paper making methods, the history of writing implements, and I’ve mastered some basic paper folding and bookbinding techniques. My internship with Rachel Hazell has truly been a highlight of my year on the M.Litt. course.

My Internship with Eland Publishing

May 5th, 2015 by Helen Griffin | Posted in Blog | Comments Off on My Internship with Eland Publishing
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Eland BadgeIn February of this year I had the opportunity to work for Eland Publishing, one of the foremost publishers of classic travel writing in the world. Eland is a very small and determinedly independent publisher located in Exmouth Market in London. The publishing house is owned by travel writers Rose Baring, John Hatt and Barnaby Rogerson, run with the assistance of a team of self-motivated freelancers: Jennie Paterson [website creation] Antony Gray [typesetting and page design] and Stephanie Allen [Publicity Director]. Eland’s mission statement is to keep the great works of travel literature in print.

Eland Picture 1I thoroughly enjoyed my opportunity to work for Eland because everything was run from one small attic room that had a bohemian, dusty sort of air to it, spread around large piles of books. The office was everything you imagine a publishing house should look like. All meetings and every aspect of book production was covered in this tiny little space and so I was able to see and hear all the work and planning that goes in to every stage of the book making process. I was also able to meet and have conversations with some incredibly interesting travel writers, who in a larger publishing house would have most likely been tucked away in private offices to have their meetings.

 

GoddessThroughout my internship I was able to sink my teeth into some real publishing activities such as organising and attending a book launch for their newest release: The Living Goddess by Isabella Tree. I also had the exciting job of cataloguing all of the entries for the Stanford-Dolman Best Travel Book of the Year Award, which meant that I was the first person to see all the potential candidates for the award.

 

Eland Picture 2Barnaby and Rose were both excellent people to work with. I was the first intern they had ever taken on and so I was very appreciative of how welcoming and enthusiastic they were to ensure that I would gain as much experience as possible from this work experience. They would explain the reasoning and importance behind every task I was completing and how each contributed to the overall running of their business. They would also involve me in all of their meetings and engage me in the conversation so that I was not just a mere spectator to the activity.

Eland Picture 7My time at Eland allowed me to develop a fine eye for detail and gave me the confidence to voice my own ideas when I felt I could contribute. I am very grateful to Barnaby and Rose for the support I was given throughout my time at Eland. This experience gave me a broad understanding of the work that goes into book production and showed me the pride they felt for the content they were producing. It was a privilege to work for a company who strive to keep classic travel literature in print and to be able to say, that for a while, I was a part of it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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My Internship with Floris Books

April 29th, 2015 by Callum Mitchell Walker | Posted in Blog | Comments Off on My Internship with Floris Books
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9781782501824In February of this year I began a  4-month internship with Edinburgh based children’s and non-fiction publisher Floris Books and have greatly benefitted from this experience by enhancing my classroom learning in a professional environment. Mainly focused in the marketing department, I learned valuable new skills and was able to improve the abilities I had prior to my time interning. Although most of my tasks were marketing focused, one benefit of Floris being a small publisher is that I was given the opportunity to work on a wide range of tasks across other departments too and develop a greater understanding of the ways in which departments work together to optimize the effective running of company procedures.

Although Floris are a small Scottish publisher, they publish a wide range of non-fiction titles in areas such as biodynamics and holistic health as well as their popular children’s books. I was able to work on many projects across the different lists published by Floris and enjoyed working on marketing different books to different groups of readers.

9781782501251-3At the start of my internship I was warmly welcomed by the lovely Floris team and was introduced to the extensive Floris tea collection that I was encouraged to enjoy as often as I liked, before getting straight down to work. Throughout my internship I was able to work on a wide variety of tasks for the marketing department including writing press releases, drafting advance information sheets and designing promotional materials for events. I was unaware before my internship how often I would be utilizing my InDesign abilities in creating marketing materials and my first few weeks interning encouraged me too really practice these skills. However my tasks were not restricted to marketing, as I gained valuable editorial experience proofreading content and reading and reporting on submissions for the Floris annual Kelpies Prize, which encourages Scottish writing for children. I also helped assist the Floris team at the awards ceremony for the Kelpies Design and Illustration Prize, which awarded designers and illustrators who reimaged the cover of a classic children’s book in the Kelpies range of Scottish children’s fiction.

I’m very grateful for my time spent at Floris as I have received support, guidance and feedback from such a dynamic company. I have learned many essential skills that will benefit me in my future career from a fantastic, passionate small team. My internship has given me much more confidence in my abilities and has encouraged me to work on other skills to improve my employability when looking for my first job in the publishing industry. This experience has been completely invaluable to me by providing me with a hands-on approach to publishing practices and helped me to feel more enthusiastic than ever before about my future endeavours.

My Internship with Glasgow Women’s Library

April 8th, 2015 by Kena Nicole Longabaugh | Posted in Blog | Comments Off on My Internship with Glasgow Women’s Library
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photo 3In November of last year, I began a publishing internship with Glasgow Women’s Library. Located in Glasgow’s East End, GWL acts as a lending library, historical archive and provider of services and programmes for women across Scotland. The mission of the library is ‘to celebrate the lives and achievements of women, champion their historical, cultural and political contributions and act as a catalyst to eradicate the gender gap that contributes to widespread inequalities in Scotland’. Unique as the only women’s library in Scotland, GWL aims to provide a welcoming and productive space for women from all walks of life; a warm smile and offer of tea is almost guaranteed when you walk through the doors.

My role at the library was to provide publishing related support for a book titled Mixing The Colours: women speaking about sectarianism, an anthology of short stories and poems about women’s experiences with sectarianism in Scotland. More than sixteen writers contributed to the book, including commissioned authors Eleanor Thom, Denise Mina and Magi Gibson. The short stories and poems contained within the publication were collected through a series of creative writing workshops and discussions where women were encouraged to draw on experiences of sectarianism in their lives. The result is a moving narrative that is truly unique: Mixing The Colours: women speaking about sectarianism is the first ever published work written by and about women on the issue of sectarianism. The book was launched with a conference on 20th March that included performances by the contributing writers, discussions and a screening of the accompanying film of the same name. The entire project was spearheaded by the wonderful Rachel Thain-Gray, my internship mentor and the Project Development Worker for Mixing The Colours.

The authors of Mixing The Colours: women speaking about sectarianism

Several of the authors of Mixing The Colours: women speaking about sectarianism posing with the book.

During my time at the library, I worked on various editorial and marketing tasks for the Mixing The Colours publication. These included proofreading the manuscript, contacting book festivals, researching, designing an Advance Information sheet and copyright page, writing a press release and sending it to media outlets, blogging and planning for the conference.

The Mixing The Colours conference at St. Andrew’s in the Square in Glasgow.

I’m grateful to have been trusted with so much responsibility throughout my time at the library and for all the support I was given by Rachel, Rebecca and the rest of the Glasgow Women’s Library staff. The internship served as a broad introduction to the tasks involved in the overall production of a book and it was a privilege to work with an organisation with such strong values while developing my own skills as a publishing student. 

My Internship with Saraband

March 12th, 2015 by Jennifer Katherine Hamrick | Posted in Blog | Comments Off on My Internship with Saraband
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Paris KissI am currently interning at Saraband and I could not have asked for a better experience. Saraband is an independent publisher located in Glasgow with a wide range of both fiction and non-fiction titles as well as some literary apps. The publisher is very small, with only three employees: Sara Hunt (managing director), Craig Hillsley (who works satellite from London) and Laura Jones (a former Stirling MLitt student and current Saraband assistant). But for such a small publisher, they manage to do an incredible amount of work. Sometimes I think Sara must have clones of herself in order to accomplish everything she does in a single day!

Working with a small publisher is ideal for students because it means you get to dabble in every aspect of publishing. My very first day I got to go to a trade fair, start copyediting a nonfiction title, practice filling in metadata spreadsheets and learn about promoting titles on Amazon. We all work in the same room so I get to overhear very interesting and educational conversations such as when to send out press releases or how to coordinate sales reps’ expectations versus authors’ expectations. So far, I’ve been able to see a title through from copy-editing to cover design and hopefully to final production in the future.

What I like best about interning with Saraband is that I am welcome to ask any questions I want. Sara and Laura are both fantastic teachers and go above and beyond to make sure I am getting good experience from my time here. Sara always makes it a point to explain why we do things a certain way in publishing so that I can understand where these processes come from. And Laura has taken time away from her work to personally teach me about typesetting, a skill I was very desperate to improve upon. Thanks to her, I was able to improve my publishing dummy project and I now feel much more confident about setting up Eagle's Wayboth Word and InDesign documents for typesetting in the future.

One of my favorite tasks thus far has been to create book trailers for a couple of Saraband’s titles. I created very simple iMovie videos, but am interested in expanding my video-editing knowledge and exploring other video software programs. I was very happy to learn that the authors of the books for these videos were pleased with what I had created; it gave me a lot of confidence to have made something that both Saraband and the authors could use on social media. Moreover, I now have another skill to add to my CV with links to videos that I created.

This experience has been completely invaluable to me. Through this internship I have been able to gain the practical knowledge I need to enter the publishing industry, and I feel much more confident about my skills. Plus, by completing a variety of tasks, I now know with which area of publishing my skill sets and interests line up. I look forward to learning more as my internship progresses.

Jenny Hamrick

Blake Brooks, MLitt in Publishing Studies 2012-13

October 7th, 2014 by cs48@stir.ac.uk | Posted in Alumni | Comments Off on Blake Brooks, MLitt in Publishing Studies 2012-13
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BlakeBrooks‘StirPub supported me from day one of the course, allowing me to pursue the areas of publishing I was interested in. By helping me with internships they allowed me to gain the experience I needed, and the course provided wonderful networking opportunities. Without the experience and education I gained from the course I would never have achieved everything that I have. The course is the perfect first step to a career in Publishing.’

Blake Brooks, Marketing and Events coordinator, The Bookseller

The First in Our Visiting Speakers Series, 2014-15

October 7th, 2014 by Kiley Pole | Posted in Blog | Comments Off on The First in Our Visiting Speakers Series, 2014-15
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On Thursday October 2, we had the first in our visiting speakers series. Chani McBain, Leah McDowell and Nadia Suchdev provided us with a plethora of information on not only their specified topics but also their experiences in the publishing industry.

To start the session off Leah McDowell and Nadia Suchdev introduced us to the Society of Young Publishers Scotland (SYP). We learned how the organization is run by volunteers with the aim to help and inform those who have been in the publishing business for less than 10 years, or those like us who are attempting to break into the business. SYP Scotland offers different events and workshops available to members (to become a member it costs £24 per annum) that help put their name out there and start the all dreaded networking. Included in the membership is free entry to all events, a newsletter, job bulletins, discounted tickets to the annual SYP Conference and participation in the mentoring programme.

Some of upcoming events include, “How to network for those who hate networking” on October 23rd and the Booksellers Panel Event on November 19th.

Leah and Nadia also encouraged us to not only join, but apply to become committee members. As a member of the committee you would have a hand in putting on the events throughout the year that really help people.

You can find them on Facebook SYP Scotland and on Twitter @SYPscotland.

Chani McBain spoke to us about Floris Books and more specifically the internship available from them. She gave us some useful advice about using our time in the course to make those connections and getting a lot of different experience in the different fields of publishing. Her main tagline about internships being that we might be wrong. In our heart of hearts we may think we are meant to be editors when in reality we are best suited for production or marketing, that really we could love a field that we never thought possible.

The internship at Floris Books is one day a week (which day that is they are flexible and willing to work with us) in a “marketing focused” capacity. That does not mean that the intern (one this semester and one next) will solely be stuffing envelops, although that is part of it, but that they will be working on press releases, marketing briefs, and flyers to name a few. Since Floris Books is a small company, composing of 11 employees, the interns will have the opportunity to witness and be part of many small projects and get to see the whole publishing process.

What Floris lacks in number of employees they make up for in their plethora of teas to chose from.

These three ladies gave us lots of useful advice, stemming from their experiences as newcomers to the industry and from when they were students as well. Namely, that internships are good, if not essential in getting to know the business as well as getting to know yourself. Are you really an editor? Or, are you a literary agent? This is our industry, it pays to become involved. Take advantage of every opportunity, not just internships but events, panels, book and literary festivals. And, when it comes dissertation time, choose a topic that is useful, something that not only will inform you about the industry but something that is geared to the type of job you want.

Saltire Society Publisher of the Year

August 24th, 2013 by cs48@stir.ac.uk | Posted in Blog | Comments Off on Saltire Society Publisher of the Year
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Yesterday at the Publishing Scotland reception at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the winner of the inaugural Saltire Society Publisher of the Year award was made to Saraband Books by Fiona Hyslop, Cabinet Secretary for Culture and External Affairs. Our Director, Professor Claire Squires, was one of the judges for the award.

The judges said Saraband, a small Glasgow-based publisher run by Sara Hunt, ‘is a company that has shown shrewd and strategic business thinking in a shifting context. They are collaborative, innovative and are distinguished by fresh thinking in their use of digital technology. Their move to new approaches still has the interest of authors at its heart.’

Floris Books of Edinburgh was also commended for its work in publishing children’s books. The full shortlist also included BackPage Press, Barrington Stoke, Edinburgh University Press, and Freight Books. The award is administered by the Saltire Society, with support from Creative Scotland and Publishing Scotland. Further details of the award were reported by The Bookseller.

Over the past year we have had students interning at both Saraband and Floris Books, as well as some of the other shortlisted publishers. We are also very pleased that Sara Hunt will be coming in to speak to our students in the forthcoming semester.

 

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