The courses will run from 1 January to 31 March 2016, from Mondays to Fridays, 10.30 am to 1.30 pm. There are 12 seats in Book Design and 20 in Editing. For Indian citizens, the course fee is Rs 50,000, and for students from the rest of the world, it’s USD 3,000. The aspirant should be graduate, should have fluency in written and spoken English and should have the basic knowledge of Microsoft Office.

Both the courses promise to officer hands-on training, assignments, conversations with professionals from publishing houses in India and abroad, field trips to printing presses, research trips to bookstores, open-house discussions on current issues, among others. There will be classes ranging from copyright infringement to eBooks to the joys of reprinting War and Peace. There is also a computer lab featuring the best of equipment and software.

During the Editing course, an aspirant can learn copy-editing and proofreading different kinds of manuscripts; commissioning titles and building lists in different literary and commercial genres; contracts and foreign rights management and buying and selling right across the globe; planning production budget and publicity schedule for books; digital publishing, eBooks, and current innovations.

There will also be masterclasses with authors, editors, publishers, translators and foreign rights managers from India and abroad.

During the Book Design course, an aspirant can learn the essentials of QuarkExpress and Adobe Photoshop, interpret cover briefs; designing paperback covers and hardback jackets; the intricacies of typesetting different books; designing layouts of various genres of books; digital publishing, eBooks and current innovations.

There will also be masterclasses with authors, editors, publishers, translators and foreign rights managers from India and abroad.

Aspirants can apply at www.seagullbooks.org.