I am afraid we do not take on people for work experience placements. Other publishing houses have different policies, and we wish you luck if you decide to offer your services, but publishing is an intensely competitive industry and the credit crunch means that risk taking publishers of literature in translation, like ourselves, have cut their lists. We are not doing new books in 2011 and believe me, it has been difficult to stick to this resolve when there are so many intriguing and fun books just waiting to be translated into English.

Please understand that anyone wishing to work in a small publishing house will be expected to be fully competent in several high level computer programmes within a couple of months. Small publishers can use training schemes run by Book House, but as these courses only run a few times a year, it is important that self- motivation to learn on your own is high.

The reason for this is that small publishers do not have the money to pay someone to tell other people outside the company to do the actual work for us. There are no editorial managers here – please apply to the large houses for that kind of job. 

Also, many people are competent with computers, as well as being extremely well read, enthusiastic and lovely characters. So a small publisher is unlikely to give a job to someone who sees type setting as inherently different from proof reading, and not their job.  It isn’t very different really – both require a high level of concentration. 

And one last thing – publishing – the activity of making books – is one thing: attention to detail. If you are not the kind of person who can concentrate hard on a set of proofs which you have already looked at six times, it’s not for you.