Publishing Scotland

Published on Thursday 15 May 2008 21:00

Recent articles and letters in The Scotsman have suggested that funding for Publishing Scotland, the development network and trade organisation for the sector, has been allocated by the Scottish Arts Council in place of grants to publishers and, consequently, to writers. This is an entirely wrong implication. The budgetary decisions relate to different financial years and come from completely different budgets.

The funding for Publishing Scotland relates to projects for 2009-11, agreed by several of them to assist in

this issue. We have had no project funding

for Booksfromscotland.com in the current year either, as was implied.

Your article on our website, BooksfromScotland.com, made a series of errors and misinterpretations which should be corrected. It referred to a grant of 100,000 for the website; this sum was awarded several years ago for a wide range of projects and for equipment for training development, not for the website alone. The funding from SAC in the first two years, in 2004-05, used for the site's development, was 26,000. The audited accounts show this. There was additional expenditure in subsequent years amounting to a further 25,000. BfS.com is not a simple, single company website; it pulls in data from over 1,000 publisher imprints, and is updated daily. The complex process is unique for Scotland. Booksfromscotland.com has the primary aim of providing information about Scottish literature; It has succeeded in this aim. We have high traffic on the site, and it is spread worldwide, currently receiving around 1.5 million hits per month.

The article, and the leader comment, also misunderstands the figures quoted for the Welsh Books Council website, which is cited as notching up 776,000 of individual item sales. This is wrong: 776,000 is the number of book units sold, not the turnover. The figure does not refer to the website's sales, but to the Welsh Book Council's distribution centre. Publishing Scotland set up an equivalent service, Book Source, which distributes more than two million books.

We regret that the publisher quoted by you did not address the concerns to Publishing Scotland. It has been followed with allegations about financial irregularities. We take this seriously. The auditors for Publishing Scotland have made clear that they certified the accounts for the last financial year. The note appended, as charities accounting procedure advises, stated simply that the accounts of subsidiary undertakings were held separately.

I would also encourage readers to visit the site www.booksfromscotland.com to browse, buy or just learn about the distinctive and exciting world of contemporary Scottish literature.

KEITH WHITTLES

Chairman, Whittles Publishing

LORRAINE FANNIN

Chief executive, Publishing Scotland

PUBLISHING SCOTLAND BOARD

c/o Dundee Street, Edinburgh