After I started Publishing Studies I realised that there were many students on the course who shared a similar background to me: we had an under-graduate arts degree from a few years before (in my case philosophy) and had struggled to make any headway in the world of work. I was drawn to publishing studies by little else than a love of books and a feeling that a post-graduate qualification was necessary to start making meaningful progress in my career. It’s fair to say that the course exceeded all my expectations. The staff were friendly, enthusiastic, and clearly very knowledgeable. We were given an excellent view of the many aspects to the industry and graduated well-prepared to start our careers – as is proved by the number of my class-mates who went on to excellent first jobs in the industry. It was also great to work with so many students from around the world, especially in a setting as beautiful as that of the University of Stirling campus.

Since leaving I have set up my own publishing company called The Lumphanan Press, where we help authors to self-publish their work. This wouldn’t have been possible without the skills I learned on the course. The publishing project was particularly useful, as it gave me an excellent grounding in how to produce printed publications using the industry standard tools (mainly Photoshop and InDesign). I basically came out of the course ready to start publishing books, and it only took little more reading on my part before I was producing professional publications. The course gave me the confidence and ability I needed to start out in business on my own – a far cry from the days washing dishes after my philosophy degree!