THE SCHOOL AND IT’S MISSION
The Norwegian School for Bookselling is a foundation, and it was established in 1915. It is a non-profit organisation formally owned by the Booksellers Association in Norway.

The school is supplementary training for employees in the book industry, both booksellers, publishers, and others. We also welcome qualified students who are not in the book trade yet, but want to get some formal basic knowledge and start in the business.

The school is situated in the center of Oslo in the Book Trade House. We have our own offices, a class room, a small kitchen and group meeting rooms. The building is also housing the Booksellers’ Associaton, the Publishers’ Association and some other smaller literary organisations.

THE COURSES
Every year around 15 students participate in our courses. The students combine the school with their ordinary work. The students have usually been working for 3 or 4 years, or have several years in the business when starting at our school. They participate in class room education for 11 weeks, in 3 different periods, starting in October (4 weeks), next in February (2 weeks) and ending in May (5 weeks).

Going to school this is a full day exercise. All together this means about 400 school hours. It takes 12 months to finish the course and in addition to the class room education they have to answer 10 letters in a correspondence course in literature. All together it is a very hectic year for the students combining correspondence letters, class room courses, their ordinary work and their private lives. The courses is ended with three exams; two individual and one group exam.

We teach the students in 8 different courses. They are:

• Economic: calculation and budgets

• Retail Operations: how the chains run their concepts/how single book sellers run their shop

• Marketing and market planning: Theory and practical cases

• Law: consumer rights in selling and buying

• Publisher Operations: how is a publishing house operated

• Leadership: to lead as a leader, to act as a leader through your own skills

• Literature: History and today’s writers

• Book Trade Knowledge: the book trade today, its actors and organisations, the value chain.

The school is not intended to develop leaders only. The students could become leaders, but emphasize that the school is also for those who wants to be better employees.

FINANCING/FOUNDING
Our finance model is a combined model. The major part of our economical income is state finance.

Very often it is the student’s employer who pays this fee, but we also have students who are paying this themselves. In addition to the Study Fee (2000 Euros) the students have to pay for the books and for the annual study trip we make abroad every year.

LECTURERS
Nearly all of our income is used to pay our lecturers and speakers. We have a tremendous wide range of highly skilled persons teaching in the different topics. In each of the basic subjects we have one specialized teacher working as a professional when not teaching in our school.

In other subjects as Book Trade Knowlegde we have representatives from the trade, spending 2 to 4 hours talking about a specific topic.

MANAGEMENT
The headmaster at the school is Mrs. Cecilie Brun Løwe.

Our board has representatives from different parts of the book industry:

• Anne Schiøtz, Chairman of the Board, The Booksellers Association

• Sylvi Rommetveit Steine, Sales- and marketing manager, Akademika (Acadmic retail chain)

• Jan-Frode Brenna-Hansen, Sales manager, Gyldendal Literature

• Ingvild Kogstad Brodal: Senior advisor, The Norwegian Publishers Association

• Eva Svoldal: Norli AS (Retail chain)

• Eirin Marthinussen: Norli Haugesund, (Retail chain)

For more information please contact:

Cecilie Brun Løwe, headmaster
Email: info(a)fagskolen.no
Mobile: + 47 934 42 425