CV

This page summarises my publishing career so far and stays well away from the thorny issue of Scottish Rugby.

Below lies my CV…

###########• Edinburgh • EH# ###

Phone 0131 ### ###mobile • 07508234375 • E-mail ###@gmail.com

Jonathan

Personal profile

• Edited a successful reprint of The Thirty-Nine Steps.
• Proposed, wrote, edited and designed a literary supplement, on the development of literature from ancient to modern, for a Syrian school leavers’ course.
• Wrote the digitisation plan for an established Edinburgh publisher.

Education

 2008 – 2009   

Edinburgh Napier University

MSc in Publishing

Dissertation:

A Tale of Three Houses: The Dawn of Digitisation in the UK Trade Publishing Sector

2000 – 2004      

University of St. Andrews.

M.A. Honours in History.

Dissertation:

Turenne: The Last Campaign

1994 – 1999      

Hutchesons’ Grammar School

CSYS: English [C].

Higher Level: English [A], Classical Studies [B], Latin [B], History [C], French [C], Modern Studies [C].

Standard Grade: English, Mathematics, Biology, Religious Studies, Latin, French.  

Work Experience

October 2008 – November 2009

Edinburgh Napier University Publishing MSc

The course has covered: extensive developmental editing; training in marketing, production, further editing and design skills; business model analysis; gaining experience as class representative liaising between faculty and students; establishing important contacts across the industry; acquiring further insight into book, magazine and web publishing. Project work involved the planning, production and editing of a republication of a Scottish classic through Merchiston Press, the university’s publishing centre, for distribution through Caledonian Sleepers and Scottish schools – with a foreword from the First Minister. Placement experience has provided a good working knowledge of a literary agency and general book publishing when I wrote a project marketing plan for an established Edinburgh publisher. I built on this by also writing their digitisation plan – which has now been enacted. I worked part-time at Wine rack and as a free lance copywriter and editor.

April – October 2008

Scottish Widows

Call Consultant: taking inbound calls from clients. Switched in August to teach English as a foreign language at a Language School in Edinburgh and starting work at Wine rack.

February – April 2008

Chapman Literary Magazine

Editorial assistant: Sharing all editorial and administrative tasks; working on the Amazon account; reading, assessing and discussing contributions; returning contributions with constructive criticism; working on spreadsheets, logs and data bases.

January 2007 – February 2008

Librairie Du Liban

Junior Editor: Editing manuscripts of ELT textbooks for Middle Eastern schools at all levels according to specific guidelines for each client; proofing, editing and matching separate components e.g. Teachers’ book, Students’ book, Activity book and Tape Script; office point of reference on written and spoken English; delivering presentations, and generating new material for certain exercises. Sat in on and reported on sessions with the Iraqi education ministry; advised the ministry as an editor who had worked on the relevant projects (often only company representative present). I also created the Syrian school leavers’ literary supplement.

May – December 2006

Chapman Literary Magazine

Began publishing career at Chapman working on editorial and administrative tasks; wrote critical essay for issue 109. Worked evenings at John Lewis and taking Ghost Tours in Edinburgh’s Old Town.

April 2006 – Present

Freelance Copywriter

Writing for websites; press releases; advertisements; website copy.

September 2006

Daily Record

Journalist intern for a week’s experience on The Glaswegian: writing articles; writing advertisements based on press releases, and interviews.

August 2005 – March 2006

The Scottish Executive

Working at SEERAD reclaiming erroneously claimed subsidies from farmers; taking phone calls; managing files; creating files.

June 2004 – August 2005

Sole Trader 

Commissioning greetings cards; applied for and received start-up grant; commissioned artists; extensive marketing; business to business experience (mainly with printers); commissioning repeat orders. Also worked during this period in corporate hospitality and in a kitchen.

May 1999 – October 2006

Territorial Army

Private soldier and Leader: extensive reconnaissance and signals training; trained with an armoured regiment (formation reconnaissance), an infantry regiment and the Officer Training Wing (52 Brigade) at Redford Barracks; very intensive training in planning and orders; training in delivering lessons and presentations; part of best British Army team 2001 at Nijmegen Marches.

Skills

Driving: Full, clean licence

Computer skills: Working knowledge of the Internet and e-mail, Microsoft Windows, Word,                           PowerPoint, Excel, Quark, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator and basic HTML coding.

Personal Qualities

I pride myself on being a reliable, diligent and meticulous individual, who is able to work as part of a team and will also take initiative and work well alone if needs be. Freelance writing and editing is something I have done since starting in publishing and have continued ever since. In Lebanon I also wrote for an NGO helping Lebanese and Palestinians affected by the recent fighting.

Presentation skills have proved extremely important too and, having been honed with the TA and in weekly seminars at university, proved crucial in educational publishing. Teaching English as a foreign Language in Scotland and Kenya has also given me extensive presentational experience.

Sport has always been important to me, particularly so in Lebanon where, where with the security problems and checkpoints it was very important to unwind. My rugby and running took me from Hezbollah owned training pitches to representing Lebanon against Jordan via a great many restaurants and sights. I also love reading literature, history, historical novels, biographies and I love cooking.

Work references available on request