I'm the principal contact for the training in publishing skills that Publishing Scotland provides.

With an established publishing industry in Scotland, there is a need for publishing training in Scotland. Our training programme was set up to overcome the distance, cost and time issues involved in accessing training based in London.

As publishing encompasses a wide variety of tasks, it requires a breadth of creative, business and technical skills. Publishing in its broadest sense is defined as 'making public' and the explosion of social media (from websites to Twitter), means more content is being published than ever before. Many of our courses (like proofreading, writing for the web and business writing skills) are just as valuable to people who work outside the traditional book publishing industry.

We constantly monitor developments and consult extensively (with members and others) to commission the right publishing training for people in Scotland. We welcome suggestions for new courses.