Publishing Showcase 2015

April 29th, 2015 by cs48@stir.ac.uk | Posted in Blog | Comments Off on Publishing Showcase 2015
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Publishing Studies Students 2014-15It’s that time of year already! The Stirling Centre for International Publishing and Communication invite you to our annual Publishing Showcase on Wednesday 6 May 2015, where we will be joined by our Industry Advisory Board to celebrate this year’s publishing students’ achievements. The schedule for the day is:

2.30-3.45pm Publishing Round Table, featuring members of the Industry Advisory Board (Marion Sinclair of Publishing Scotland; Katy Lockwood-Holmes of Floris Books; Adrian Searle of Freight Books; Vivian Marr of Oxford University Press; Simon Blacklock of Faber Factory; Martin Redfern, independent publishing consultant) (Pathfoot B2)

4pm-6pm Publishing Showcase, featuring work from our MLitt & MRes in Publishing Studies students, and some short speeches (Pathfoot B2)

Whether you’re a graduate of the programme, a possible future student, or part of our publishing network, please do join us. Please do drop us a line so we have a sense of numbers via our Contact page.

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.

Interning with Think Publishing

April 29th, 2015 by Leia Forster | Posted in Blog | Comments Off on Interning with Think Publishing
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think logoIn January 2015, I began to intern with the award-winning content and publishing agency Think. Founded in 1999, Think Publishing employs more than 60 members of staff, work with over 40 clients and have offices in London and Glasgow. I was lucky enough to work in the editorial department of the Glasgow branch which produces a number of great magazines for a variety of organisations.

During my time at Think I believe I learned a great deal about magazine publishing as well as gaining insight into the workings of an office environment. I quickly found that the inner workings of a magazine publisher were quite different to that of a book publisher. On my first day I was presented with strange magazine terminology such as ‘furniture’ and ‘copy’, but I caught on quickly. I found myself intrigued by what could be considered a somewhat unconventional business model in the realms of publishing – client funded publications. Trade fiction publishers essentially gamble with every publication they choose to publish. They invest money in these publications and rely greatly on their commercial success. Think’s business model provides a secure financial platform to support the publications that they print for their clients.            scotland in trust

While I was at Think I worked on a number of magazines such as Scotland in Trust, Historic Scotland, Escape, Splash and Legion Scotland. Tasks included the transcription of interviews, research for features, writing content for magazines, sourcing images and coming up with ideas for future features. I found that there were far more opportunities to undertake creative tasks than could be expected in typical book publishing editorial roles, and one of the most rewarding parts of the internship was being able to produce a piece of copy and watch it progress through different stages before finally being included in the magazine.

Despite working primarily on editorial tasks, Think’s office environment allowed me insight into all the different roles and tasks involved in the creation of a magazine. The open layout of the office meant that I could look across the room and watch the designers working on magazine covers and spreads. Being able to observe staff interactions and listen to office discussions was very useful and my time spent doing feature research was never wasted as I found myself leaving the office on a daily basis with a new selection of random facts and knowledge.

I am very thankful to have had the opportunity to intern with Think, and this insight into the world of magazine publishing has given me the confidence to consider magazine publishing as a potential career path to follow upon completing the course.

 

Publishing Prizes 2013-14

April 12th, 2015 by cs48@stir.ac.uk | Posted in Blog | Comments Off on Publishing Prizes 2013-14
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The Stirling Centre for International Publishing and Communication at the University of Stirling is delighted to have made the following awards to students who graduated from the MLitt in Publishing Studies 2013-14.

  • The Freight Books Prize for Publishing Design – Laura Jones
  • The Faber & Faber Prize for Digital Innovation – Liam Crouse
  • The Publishing Scotland Prize for the Best Dissertation – Fanny Schmidt
  • The Routledge Prize for the most Distinguished Student on the MLitt in Publishing Studies – Laura Jones

All the prizes are sponsored by members of the Centre’s Industry Advisory Board.

Laura Jones's prize-winning Read. Write. Ink.

Laura Jones’s prize-winning Read. Write. Ink.

Laura Jones is the recipient of both the Freight Books Prize for Publishing Design. For this former, she produced the fascinating design project Read. Write. Ink., focusing on collectors of literary tattoos. It features writers close at home including Vicki Jarrett, but also examples she sourced via Twitter. For this, Laura wins £100 of cash and £100 of books of her choice from Glasgow-based publisher Freight Books. Fellow student Aija Oksman was Highly Commended in the Freight Books Prize for Publishing Design for her powerful project Pursuit: Empowering Post-Natal Depression.

Laura is also the winner of the Routledge Prize for the most Distinguished Student on the MLitt in Publishing Studies, thus winning £200 of books from Taylor & Francis. Laura’s overall grade profile on the course was consistently high, and alongside her Publishing Project she produced extremely strong work including the dissertation, ‘Amazon: Friend or Foe?’. Laura is now working at Glasgow publisher Saraband Books.

Fanny Schmidt’s prize-winning dissertation, for which she will receive £100 of books of her choice from Publishing Scotland’s BooksFromScotland.com, is titled ‘Copyright, Books and Social Media’. The dissertation, as tis abstract explains, ‘examines the interrelation between copyright and authorship on social media platforms, arguing that that it should be awarded with both a fair dealing exemption for the use of copyrighted material in those spaces and also a better protection of the copyright of original material produced for social media. It further examines whether or not social media content should be awarded authorship status in order to support the claim for copyright. However, the findings suggest that due to the high level of prosumption on social media, authorship in the traditional sense cannot be granted; calling into question the copyright legislation these websites should receive.’ A pdf of Fanny’s dissertation is available via this link. Fanny is now working at Bloomsbury Academic.

Liam Crouse is the winner of the Faber & Faber Prize for Digital Innovation, for his work developing the concept of and designs for a geospacial app mapping out the life of the celebrated Gaelic poet Duncan Bàn MacIntyre along the West Highland Way. Liam was the recipient of the inaugural Gaelic Books Council Scholarship at the Stirling Centre for International Publishing & Communication. His aware consists of a two-day placement with Faber & Faber in London, during which he will have the opportunity to meet with the heads of Faber Digital, Faber Factory, and the marketing team. A previous recipient of the award, Claire Jeffery, writes about her experience here.

Liam Crouse's prize-winning app The Duncan Ban Trail

Liam Crouse’s prize-winning app The Duncan Ban Trail

Professor Claire Squires, Director of the Stirling Centre for International Publishing and Communication, commented that ‘It’s a great validation of our MLitt in Publishing Studies to have these industry-sponsored prizes, which showcase the work of the Centre and its students. We congratulate the individual students on their creativity, knowledge, skills and understanding of the publishing industry, and are particularly delighted to be able to have prize-winning work which celebrate digital savvy and entrepreneurialism – key attributes for the publishers of the future.’

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.