I’m on the committee for the Scottish branch of the Society of Young Publishers, an amazingly useful organisation for anyone interested in getting into publishing or already working in publishing. Our aim is to put on informative networking events and we were thus very pleased when Simon Juden, the CEO of the Publishers Association, agreed to come to Edinburgh to speak at our ‘Publishing Needs YOU!’ event on the 16th of June. The event was geared towards attracting people who may not have ever considered publishing as a career, and we couldn’t have had a more charismatic speaker to persuade his listeners of the value and appeal of working in publishing at this particular cultural moment. Simon’s talk was wide-ranging–he started off by introducing the Publishers Association, and then addressed the important shifts and changes in the industry wrought by digitization, in particular by ebooks, the agency model and the Google Book Settlement, and ended by bringing us up to speed with the latest debate on VAT and e-book pricing. Simon also spoke passionately about the necessity of diversity in the publishing industry, a need which has recently been addressed by an initiative, DIPNET, launched at the London Book Fair earlier this year. Unfortunately Simon had to rush off to catch a flight, but attendees stayed on and enjoyed the free wine and the opportunity to meet other like-minded people, inspiring us to put on more such events in the future. Watch this space!

– Padmini Ray Murray