Internships

Publishing is an industry that has always valued experience, and, especially now, being equipped with the skills to meet the challenges of this rapidly changing field is an asset when entering a fiercely competitive job market. Such skills coupled with a degree in publishing studies have helped many of our students find jobs straight after graduation, as well as allowing them to find their own interests and aptitudes so that their job search might be more tightly focused.

We encourage and provide opportunities for all of our students to undertake internships, and gather as much experience as they can while they are doing their degree. We also offer an optional second-semester module, PUBP21 Publishing in the Workplace, that is exclusively dedicated to internships, entitled ‘Publishing in the Workplace.’

This module enables students to:

• apply the knowledge they have obtained in an academic context in the workplace;
• analyse the workings of a company and critically assess how its modes of operation shape its strategies and implementation;
• enable them to appraise their own skills and personal development in a professional environment.

The outcomes of this module are documented in a reflective essay and a work journal that make up a portfolio which is then assessed. In order to take Publishing in the Workplace students must undertake approximately seventy hours of work experience with one or more organisations. We help students to organise their internships by drawing on our networks of industry contacts, and putting them in touch with a variety of organisations to ensure a breadth of training and experience. These are just a few of the organisations and people that our students have worked in recent years:

• Alban Press
• Barrington Stoke
• Canongate Books
• Continuum, New York
• Edinburgh Business School
• Edinburgh City of Literature
• Eleanor Updale, author and Royal Literary Fellow
• Floris Books
• Glasgow Women’s Library
• HarperCollins
• Luath Press
• Octopus Books
• Oxford University Press
• Publishing Scotland
• Sandstone Press
• Saraband Books
• Scottish Poetry Library
• Vagabond Voices

In the words of some of our students who undertook internships in recent years:

The publishing in the workplace module encourages the importance of both applying already existing skills and eagerly embracing any opportunities that encourage new abilities. At Tern, I therefore apply my already existing editorial and design skills, when approaching new projects.

Stephanie Quick, working at Tern Digital

Creating the reflective journal has helped me to keep asking relevant questions while on the placement to continue to learn more about the organisation and the roles of the people I have been working with. While doing the internship I have also reflected on the learning I had been doing in class. This placement at EBS has certainly provide me with more depth to the publishing dynamics class I took in Semester One, and I am glad to have had the knowledge gained in this class around digital publishing behind me while progressing with the work I have been carrying out at EBS.

Louisa Preston, Lecturer at University of Stirling