Publishing student sets up freelance company

Oxford Brookes has inspired at least one of its MA Publishing students to go it alone and enter the freelance world of publishing.  Here is the story of Kumquat, told by Emma Anderson...

The world has Orange, Apple, Pineapple and now, Brookes has inspired the creation of Kumquat - a name chosen after half an hour of random word calling out amongst the smaller members of my "team" and, I hasten to add, despite the advice of business analysts saying "Never name a company after a fruit" - cf. various legal wranglings.

Now in the third semester of the part-time MA in Publishing and Language, I have decided to follow a dream and go fully freelance, enjoying the benefits of varied, flexible, challenging and interesting, short and long-term projects.  After eighteen months of the MA, I feel I am able offer the skills I have learnt on the course combined with ones gained in previous working lives, to publishers who may not want to employ a person full time (saves space and money), but who need someone who can come up with the goods when the pressure is on and the workload too great.  I see myself as a mini-service industry, offering support to overworked publishers on proofreading, text book versioning, picture research, indexing, marketing, event organising, editorial assistanting and even, and this really surprised me being a slight technophobe at the beginning of the course, software testing for language teaching CD ROMS.

The MA course at Brookes has given me the confidence to go out into the world, seek support from business organisations such as Business Link, build up contacts, but most importantly enabled me to set up on my own where the positives of flexible home-working and long commute avoidance far outweigh the negatives.  Well, actually, I can't see any negatives.

Contact Emma at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) if you would like more information.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 17 Feb 2008 around 6pm

Filed Under #Postgraduate | #Publishing