Meet some publishers
Who works in publishing in Scotland? Well they are all book lovers – that goes without saying. But their routes into publishing, their skills and the jobs they do can be very different.
Watch some of them tell you about their jobs.
Ceris Jones
Ceris is the Marketing and Publicity Officer at Sandstone Press in Inverness. She talks about how she goes about ‘spreading the book joy’, what she particularly likes about working in marketing and publicity and tips for getting a job in that area of publishing. Watch the video.
Leah McDowell
Leah is the Art and Production Director at Floris Books in Edinburgh. She tells us about her role in the publishing process and how a designer’s working life is very varied and involves a lot of talking. She gives some advice about getting a job like hers. Watch the video
Robbie Guillory
Robbie set up Underline Literary Agency in November 2021. Before becoming an agent, he worked as an editor. He talks about the various aspects of editing from commissioning onward. He also discusses what skills are needed and gives some advice on how to get into editing. Watch the video.
Vikki Reilly
Vikki (formerly of Birlinn and now at Publishing Scotland) talks about sales. She discusses the various exciting roles in sales departments, as well as offering advice on some key things to do if you’re interested in promoting books and authors. Watch the video.
Kirstin Lamb
Kirstin is Senior PR and Rights Manager at Barrington Stoke in Edinburgh. She focuses on the rights part here. Working in rights is fast-paced, fun and can involve foreign travel. Her favourite part is seeing the foreign versions of books she has sold, and she shows us some examples. Kirstin outlines the skills needed to work in rights. Watch the video.
Sha Nazir
Sha is the Publisher at BHP Comics and Agent and Founder of 9 Panels Agency. He talks about making his own graphic novels and comics, starting a business publishing other people’s work too, and comic cons. He rounds it off with some inspirational advice. Watch the video.
BookSource and Davinder Bedi
Our plans to get a video about distribution have been temporarily thwarted by the pandemic but in the meantime we have a video that takes you round the BookSource warehouse at Cambuslang and a video featuring BookSource MD Davinder Bedi talking about some steps they’ve taken to improve lighting and reduce their carbon footprint.
About the Videos
All the videos and interviews except the BookSource ones were conducted, filmed and edited by Alice Piotrowska who is a PhD researcher at the University of Stirling.
School visits
Interested in having a publisher visit your school or organisation? See our Publishing Ambassadors page.