Julie is a professional book editor and runs her own publishing company Roving Press  near Dorchester, specialising in local interest books. After leaving college with an HND in Agriculture and Business Studies, she hoped to get into journalism but couldn’t find an opening that suited. Instead she landed a job with Farming Press in their Books department (the journalists were upstairs!) where she discovered she loved working with authors and producing books. She then moved to Blackwell in Oxford as a Production Editor, handling up to 14 new titles at a time and responsible for all reprints. Married to someone in the Forces and always on the move, after some years she went freelance, continuing to work for Wiley-Blackwell, Springer, Elsevier, OUP, etc. on journals and books. ‘These days I seem to work on a lot of “difficult” texts (multicontributor, specialist subject matter, highly scientific, technical and medical) as apparently my “attention to detail is impressive”. That’s why I love the break I get working on our own Roving Press books.’ In 2006 she set up Roving Press Ltd to publish travel and local interest books. To kick off, she wrote A Slice of Apple Pie: Your One-Stop Guide to Living in America  while living in Ohio for two years with husband Tim on an RAF posting. Her second book Lesser Known Swanage has done phenomenally well, and she’s progressing with more titles in her spare time. ‘We aim to publish four titles a year, many by debut authors, but also offer editorial and publishing help for would-be authors and local groups who want to self-publish. The latter worked very successfully with a book we produced for the villagers of Sixpenny Handley, near Salisbury. We’re happy to receive synopses of book proposals – preferably non-fiction – that have a strong local (Dorset) basis. Also we’d consider trading professional services, especially for help with marketing.’ For more than four years Julie contributed monthly articles to two regional newspapers on wildlife and countryside topics for Dorset Wildlife Trust (‘until the papers slashed column space’), and has written nature reserve guides and video scripts. She gives talks on writing and publishing to groups, has run workshops on proofreading, and been a panellist on the Yeovil Community Arts Association Man Booker Debate. She is a member of Creative Dorset and Buy Dorset. JULIE MUSK HOME HISTORY COUNCIL MEMBERS MEMBER PROFILES MEMBER NEWS SOCIETY NEWS NATIONAL EVENTS COMPETITIONS REGIONAL GROUPS REGIONAL EVENTS OVERSEAS SECTION MEMBERSHIP FEES JOINING CRITIQUES WELFARE LINKS Back to Member Index