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22.08.08 Tom Tivnan

Marion Sinclair, the new chief executive of Publishing Scotland (PS), is telling me that a trade body works best when it is "doing away behind the scenes", supporting its members out of the spotlight.

It is unfortunate, then, that this spring PS was centre stage, the subject of headlines after a number of vitriolic attacks by one of its members, Birlinn c.e.o. Hugh Andrew. The main controversy was over the amount of money PS received from the Scottish Arts Council (SAC), with Andrew arguing that more funds should be made available to frontline publishers. Andrew subsequently pulled Birlinn, Scotland's third-largest independent publisher, out of PS.

Sinclair, who took over on 1st August following the retirement of her predecessor Lorraine Fannin, emphasises that PS was roundly supported by its other 68 members. She adds: "I think that [Andrew] has felt for some time that his interests are at odds with ours. The SAC, however, felt that by supporting us they were funding Scottish publishing's infrastructure. It was a difficult time; we spent a lot of energy defending ourselves and correcting inaccuracies in the press. We felt we were being penalised simply for making a successful funding bid."

With the dust largely settled from the Birlinn split, Sinclair is focusing on continuing PS' new direction, begun last year when the organisation rebranded itself from its previous incarnation, the Scottish Publishers Association (SPA). The new look is part of the organisation's expansion of its remit, with a greater focus on business development and opening membership up to non-traditional publishing ventures, particularly online and digital companies.

As the SPA's business development manager for the past five years, Sinclair was an integral part of the restructuring, but she is quick to laud Fannin's leadership.

"Lorraine left us in excellent shape. The hard work was the changeover from the SPA to PS," she says. "I am not coming in with a broom to bring sweeping changes but building on our development programme."

Tibor and Sandy
A Gaelic speaker, Sinclair spent her childhood on the Isle of Barra in the Outer Hebrides, the island where "Whisky Galore!" was filmed. "It was a great place to grow up and, at the time, was an almost an idyllic pre-car, pre-electricity existence." She spent a couple of years in France after graduating from the University of Glasgow, then returned to Scotland in 1987 to do an MPhil in publishing at the University of Stirling.

After the course she joined Polygon, then the trade arm of Edinburgh University Press, now an imprint of Andrew's Birlinn. She helped guide the small publisher through a string of successes, including publishing Tibor Fischer's Under the Frog which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1993. One of the last books she acquired was a crime novel by a member of Edinburgh's law faculty that had just been turned down by Canongate: Alexander McCall Smith's The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. "I knew it was good," she says. "But, of course, I had no idea that it would be so successful."

In the late 1990s she felt she needed a change and moved into academia, lecturing in publishing at Napier University for six years before moving on to the SPA.

With her diverse CV, she has a unique perspective on publishing in Scotland and she is bullish about the market. "I can remember the bad old days of Scottish publishing in the 1970s and '80s, when it was really difficult and there were far fewer publishers on the ground. Now we have a stream of talent coming forward, companies like Strident and Bright Red, as well as strong, established publishers. I think the sector is in as great a shape as it has ever been."

tom tivnan Publishing Scotland trade profile

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