Publishing MA: Advisory Board

The Publishing MA benefits from the input of a dynamic Advisory Board. The Board is involved in the course's development and keen to contribute. Each member gives guest lectures and contributes to placement and dissertation study. Read more in the masterclasses section.

The Publishing Advisory Board at the launch of the MA at Dorich House in October 2005.

Viv Bird – Booktrust

In 2005 Viv Bird was appointed as director of Reading is Fundamental UK, where she was responsible for strategic development and fundraising. During this time she delivered over 300 projects each year across the UK in which children could choose and keep up to three books for themselves. She has worked as an external consultant for the MLA on their 'New Directions' programme and was the author of a number of publications on literacy and social policy.

Viv became the executive director of Booktrust, an independent national charity dedicated to promoting books and reading to people of all ages, in 2007. Booktrust is responsible for a number of national reading promotions, literary prizes and creative reading projects aimed at encouraging readers to discover and enjoy books. In 2006 Viv secured and managed the distribution of 120,000 books donated by children's publishers to celebrate the Queen's 80th birthday at the Party at the Palace. Between 1996 and 2006, she was chair of the governing body for Phoenix High School, recognised in 2006 as the most improved secondary school in the country. Viv is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

For more information about Booktrust, visit www.booktrust.org.uk.

John Bond – HarperCollins

John Bond has worked for several big publishing houses. He is currently the managing director of Press Books, a newly created division of HarperCollins.

John started his career as marketing manager at Penguin paperbacks in 1990, having first worked in a North London bookshop for two years. He left to join Virgin Books in 1995 as marketing director, before returning to Penguin as marketing director of general books in 1997. He joined HarperCollins UK as group sales and marketing director in 2002.

For more information about HarperCollins, visit www.harpercollins.co.uk.

Jenny Boyce – Vertigo Communications

Jenny Boyce started her career as a bookseller in Bath and, after forays into film distribution and cultural consultancy, she moved into publishing as publicity manager for Verso. After senior roles in sales and marketing at Titan Books and Headline, she became sales and marketing director of literary independent Serpent's Tail.

She now runs a marketing and communications company (Vertigo Communications), offering services to independent publishers. She has over 20 years of sales, marketing and publicity experience and has worked with a huge variety of different books, including literary and mass market fiction and non-fiction; travel guides; cult books; graphic novels; academic works; and entertainment/TV tie-ins. Jenny also runs the Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards for the best film, TV and photography books published each year. 

For more information about Vertigo Communications, visit www.vertigocommunications.co.uk.

Genevieve Clarke – The Reading Agency

Genevieve Clarke has been working for The Reading Agency since November 2003. She is national co-ordinator for the Vital Link libraries and adult literacy programme and has also been working closely with the BBC and major UK publishers on related initiatives.

This follows four years as manager of the National Reading Campaign at the National Literacy Trust. Genevieve previously worked in magazine and book publishing, as well as an adult literacy tutor in college and community settings.

For more information about The Reading Agency, visit www.readingagency.org.uk.

Louise Dixon – Carroll and Brown

Louise Dixon is editorial director at Michael O'Mara Books, before which she was editorial director at Carroll and Brown. Louise has worked in publishing for 20 years, during which time she has worked at various publishing houses, from Penguin Books to André Deutsch.

For more information about Carroll and Brown, visit www.carrollandbrown.co.uk.

Richard Duguid – Penguin Books

Richard Duguid has worked at Penguin Books for 20 years and is now its editorial manager. He is also a member of the Penguin Collectors' Society.

For more information about Penguin Books, visit www.penguin.co.uk.

Caroline Hird – Elsevier Health Sciences

For more information about Elsevier Health Sciences, visit www.elsevierhealth.com.

Heather Holden-Brown – hhb agency

Heather Holden-Brown worked as an editor for 15 years at BBC Books and Headline. She collaborated with a range of fascinating people on their autobiographies, including Barbara Windsor, Sue MacGregor, Kate Adie and Hillary Clinton.

Heather now runs her own agency, which represents writers of commercial non-fiction.

For more information about the hhb agency, visit www.hhbagency.com.

Kathy Gale - KG Publishing Services

Kathy Gale has worked in book publishing for over 20 years. Her key roles have included senior editor at Pan Books, Macmillan and Hodder & Stoughton; editorial director at Pan Macmillan; marketing director at Simon & Schuster; and joint managing director of The Women's Press.

Kathy is currently a publishing consultant and writing coach, and works as a psychotherapist in private practice in North London. She is project director of Quick Reads, a literacy initiative and collaborative venture between writers and celebrities, publishers, government bodies, the BBC and others. With Harriet Spicer, she co-founded Working Edge: Professional Support for Working People, which runs work coaching groups.

For more information on Working Edge executive coaching groups, visit
www.workingedge.uk.com.

For more information on Kathy Gale's writing coaching, visit
www.kgpublishingservices.co.uk.

For more information on psychotherapy and counselling, visit
www.kgtherapy.co.uk.

Hannah MacDonald – Ebury Publishing

Hannah MacDonald studied English and American literature at Manchester University. She has worked at Virgin Publishing, Andre Deutsch and Ebury Press, part of the Random House Group, since 1998.

She was publishing director with responsibility for Ebury's narrative, non-illustrated list and will be heading up Collins from July 2009. She has also written two novels, the second of which, Julianna Kiss, was published in January 2006 by Little Brown.

For more information about Random House, visit www.randomhouse.com.

Robert McKay – Taxbriefs Ltd and Dunedin Academic Press

Robert is current the director of Taxbriefs Ltd and Dunedin Academic Press. His previous roles in publishing have included:

• director and head of CCH Information, part of Wolters Kluwer;
• director of publishing and training, ABG Professional Information (ICAEW) (now part of Wolters Kluwer);
• managing director and co-founder, FL Memo Ltd (now owned by Éditions Lefebvre-Sarrut in France);
• managing director, National Publishing, TSO (now part of Williams Lea);
• divisional chief executive, Tolley Professional Information (now part of Reed Elsevier); and
• publishing director, Sweet and Maxwell (now part of Thomson-Reuters).

Previously he was a consultant to Frank Cass & Co, now part of Informa and a director of The Red Group.

A law graduate from Queen's University, Belfast, Robert is a Fellow of the RSA and a Member of the International Bar Association. He has also lectured on publishing outside at Kingston and has been published a number of times on legal, professional, reference and business publishing topics.

For information about Taxbriefs, visit www.taxbriefs.co.uk and about Dunedin Academic Press, visit www.dunedinacademicpress.co.uk.

John Peacock – Macmillan

John Peacock started his publishing career as a writer and editor of language magazines for Mary Glasgow Ltd. For some of this time he lived in the former Soviet Union, writing for the Russian magazine, Kometa. He joined Macmillan Publishers in 1975 as production manager for general books.

Since then, he has held a wide range of positions in the Macmillan group to do with editorial management, production, IT, fulfillment and logistics, including directorships in magazines, journals and most areas of the company's book and online activity. John Peacock is the author of several books on operational and production aspects of publishing and is group production manager at Macmillan.

For more information about Macmillan, visit www.macmillan.com.

David Roche – Waterstones

David Roche was appointed chief executive of Borders UK in March 2006. Before this, he was product director on the main board at Waterstone's. Here he was responsible for the product strategy, including all buying and merchandising decisions; category management and replenishment systems; campaigns, pricing and space planning for 195 stores across the UK and Ireland; and publisher trading terms and relationships.

David is also the president of the Booksellers' Association, and was the inaugural chair of the Booksellers' Association/ Publishers' Association Liaison Group. He was awarded the Bookseller Retail Personality of the Year 2005 Award at the inaugural Bookseller Retail Awards in September 2005.

Prior to joining Waterstone's at the beginning of 2002, David worked for 13 years at HMV, initially as operations manager, and then on the board as product director.

Visit www.booksellers.org.uk for more information about the Booksellers' Association.

Alan Samson – Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Alan Samson is Publisher (non-fiction) at Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

For more information about Weidenfeld & Nicolson, visit www.orionbooks.co.uk.

Cathy Schofield – World Book Day

After a distinguished career in publishing, Cathy Schofield became a freelance marketing and publishing consultant in 1999. Her main contract, since October 2000, has been as World Book Day co-ordinator in the UK and Ireland. Cathy is also involved in a project to create a new series of semi-educational books for young children, bringing together a team of experts to work with an author and illustrator from scratch. Another project involved working with a co-author to write a series of adventure stories for children aged 8-12 years.

Cathy's first job was at Books etc., before moving on to Transworld Publisher as publicity assistant. In 1990 she moved to Random House as publicity director, and then on to Simon & Schuster for six years, first as publicity and promotions director, and subsequently as marketing director.

For more information about World Book Day, visit www.worldbookday.com.

David Taylor – Lightning Source

David Taylor joined Lightning Source UK, the US-owned print-on-demand company, in June 2003 as business development director. He became managing director in December 2003. David has over 20 years of experience in the UK and international book trades in a wide variety of roles, covering retail bookselling, international library book and journal supply, and internet bookselling. He started working in the book trade as a bookseller at Blackwell's in Oxford and spent 15 years with the company, eventually becoming director of Blackwell's international library supply business.

David is a previous chairman of the College and University Booksellers group and the Internet Booksellers group, the latter of which he helped to found. He also served on the UK and Irish Booksellers' Association Council for nine years. He is a regular speaker at industry conferences and has published a number of articles on the impact that new technologies have had on the bookselling supply chain. In 2000 he co-founded the online bookseller swotbooks.com and remains a non-executive director on its board.

David holds a BA and an MA in English Literature from the University of Reading. He has also completed a Diploma in Management Studies and an MBA.

For more information about Lightning Source, visit www.lightningsource.com.