Publishing by Degrees

Off to the Printer

Manroland 700 printer with paper being fed into the printer off a roll

In what could be considered to be one of the stranger decisions of a publishing student, I ventured eastwards out of Scotland’s capital to Scotprint to observe the modern day printing process. You may be asking why this is strange? Well, firstly it seems that this most vital part of the publishing industry, that of actually printing the item you have worked on for a large period of time, seems to be forgotten about. After all, doesn’t the publisher just send the files to the printer and then a few days/weeks later a pile of books come back? Well many would probably be led to believe that that is how the process works. After all, surely the process can’t be anymore difficult that hitting Command+P and waiting for the printer to spew out the relevant number of pages times the relevant number of copies. I.e. fill in the print dialog box, go and grab a cup of tea and relax. This of course bares no similarity to the way an offset lithographic press works. With these, everything is different. Read more of this post

Work Placement – Informed Edinburgh

Having been unsure about which area of publishing I would most like to pursue, I was pleasantly surprised to find my placement was with an online magazine.

Informed Edinburgh is ‘Edinburgh’s Fastest Growing Online Magazine’ with 52,000 subscribers and over 300,000 views a month. A relatively new company, this hard-working small team was the ideal introduction to the online workplace.

When I arrived to begin my placement I found the team working hard to get everything in place for the launch of a new venture, Informed Deals. This meant I was able to get involved, experiencing firsthand the preparation and problems concerned in launching a new website and business. Read more of this post

Interning at Fledgling Press

While I was at the London Book Fair in April, I was lucky enough to bump  into Clare Cain, a woman from my undergrad course. Since graduating, she had become CEO of Fledgling Press, a small independent publishers specialising in new authors. After a coffee and a brief insight into the company, I was invited along to the next meeting.

As the Fledgling team are small in number, I was in a unique position where I was given a number of jobs across all areas and was involved in everything from organising an author visit to schools, to helping out with a book launch (pictured is the team after the event) and even editing the first draft of a novel.

Most of my work was done from home but once a week the staff met to discuss any progress from previous meetings. In this environment, every opinion was valued and I soon found myself settling in to lively discussion on book covers and marketing strategies – something I did not expect before I started my placement.

I consider myself lucky to have found a publishing house where my input was valued Read more of this post