Publishing By Degrees

Becoming a publishing intern has been challenging but also more rewarding than I could ever have imagined. After a voluntary position in December that ended in tears, I felt like a failure and that nobody would ever hire me again. The way I described the experience to my mum was “it was like being thrown in at the deep end with a boulder tied around my neck then laughed at for drowning”. By far the worst part was the way the person supervising me just couldn’t stop herself from scoffing at my inexperience. It was an unpleasant couple of days that I have put behind me and I’m happy to say I have come a long way since then.

After putting the negative experience behind me I approached Ringwood Publishing where I was already a volunteer reader and asked if there were any internship opportunities available. Ringwood Publishing is a small independent Glasgow based publisher that is dedicated to publishing quality works of Scottish fiction and non-fiction on key national themes of politics, football, religion, money, sex and crime. The company takes on a number of interns who contribute considerable skills for reading, proofreading, editing, copyediting, design, promotion and marketing. After an informal interview I was very pleased to be offered a long term internship and I was excited to join the team, however I would be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous. The negative experience I’d had not long ago was playing at the back of my mind and I was scared that I would crash and burn a second time. I was desperate to impress my new placement provider and atone for my previous failures.

However I soon realised that my fears were completely unfounded. In just three short months I have already learned so much about working in publishing. My time at Ringwood has allowed me to experience different roles, including producing the monthly newsletter and recently I was given the fantastic opportunity to take over the role of Submissions Manager (shared with a fellow intern). In December when I was crying down the phone to my Dad because I thought I was a quitter, I never could have imagined just how confidently I would step into my new role at Ringwood just a few months later. So far taking charge of submissions has been the most rewarding part of the experience. Some of my responsibilities include manning the submissions inbox, doing the initial quality check for all submissions, sending manuscripts to volunteer readers and collecting the finished reader reports. Not only have I had the valuable experience of corresponding directly with authors but the role has allowed me to be actively involved in the decision making process and this month I will attend my first ever Editorial Committee meeting. My new role has been challenging in a character building way and I have surprised even my slapdash self with how organised I can be.

When writing about my placement, I debated with myself whether or not to include the bad experience I’d had. It may feel better to airbrush it from my memory but in the end it happened and I learned from it. Bad experiences help us grow too and now that I have experienced such a positive internship where I feel supported and encouraged I realise just how important it is to share the message with other young publishers that you should not be discouraged by one unfulfilling placement or by one person who makes you feel bad about yourself. Under no circumstances should you allow someone to devalue you. You are there to learn, not to be belittled for your lack of knowledge. That’s not ok, it really isn’t. The bad experience didn’t break me and it certainly didn’t put me off publishing. Thanks to my placement at Ringwood my confidence in my own abilities has not only been restored but it has grown tenfold. I am gaining so many skills from the experience but it’s the feeling of confidence that is worth its weight in gold to me. I believe it will serve me well when I start my career in publishing.

Undertaking a work experience placement is definitely an invaluable way to learn about working in an industry and understanding the roles available. I knew when we had a little less class time in semester two, that I could supplement my learning with another placement in order to understand more about a part of the industry I knew little about: literary agents. I contacted Jenny Brown, one of Scotland’s biggest agents and began working with her one day a week.

Jenny Brown Associates was founded in 2002 and aims to represents authors based in Scotland, writing fiction and narrative non-fiction. Jenny has a comprehensive list of over 50 authors including Malachy Tallack, Lin Anderson and Alex Gray. She needed someone to help her work through submissions, help design her Rights Guide for London Book Fair, to post on social media, and to assist with one of the books that is coming out this year. I was more than happy to be involved in all of these tasks and to be learning from Jenny about the inner workings of a literary agency. She was always answering questions I had and helping me when I was unsure.

The first few weeks I read a lot of submissions and wrote readers reports for Jenny, as she had just opened her submission window and was receiving a lot of emails daily from authors. This gave me a great insight into the kind of books Jenny was looking for, and we often discussed books that we found interesting and why.

Throughout my time with Jenny, I also did a lot of social media posting for her. As an agent, she has so many authors to promote and various launches and events happening almost every week. I would take photos for her Instagram, construct tweets and post on her Facebook to promote her authors and their books.

Finally, I helped with the Rights Guide which was probably the most valuable thing I did in my time with Jenny as it really gave me an understanding of the role of agents when it comes to rights and how she works at the London Book Fair. I was able to use InDesign to work on the guide, as Jenny usually had to send it away to be worked on, so I was glad to be able to put my InDesign skills into use to make her life a wee bit easier. It was also great to know that something I had helped to work on was being used in all of her meetings at London Book Fair. Whilst at the Book Fair, I was lucky enough to be able to sit in on some of Jenny’s meetings. This was probably the best part of the fair for me, as I was able to get a real understanding about the kind of work that goes on at the fair and to see Jenny’s job in action.

Overall, work experience with a literary agent was an amazing experience for me. I was able to learn about another side of publishing I knew nothing about, to learn some new skills, meet other people in the industry and even sit in on meetings and see an agent doing their fascinating work. I would definitely recommend anyone to seek out a placement with an agent as it is a brilliant learning experience.

For the Publishing Placement and Professional Development module, I did my internship at Dekko Comics. These are educational comics created with an aim to make learning fun and enjoyable for children including those with learning difficulties such as dyslexia, autism, and related conditions. Honestly, before my internship, I didn’t know much about innovation in the field of education and more specifically, how educational comics are turning out to be the ultimate game-changer.

Although educational comics primarily aim to communicate information, they are also in equal measure entertaining. In most schools around the world, as regards the academic subjects like biology, history, geography, mathematics etc. information is communicated in the same format. In this scenario, learning depends on the student’s ability to read, write and listen when the teacher is explaining the concepts in the classroom. But in the case of a student facing any learning difficulty, the ability to read or write quickly is affected and he/she lags behind in schoolwork, which in the long run, can possibly lead to the child developing low self-esteem. Secondly, both exam revision and schoolwork is something, which students do not necessarily look forward to. Hence, not surprisingly enough loss of concentration is of the most common problems faced by students.

Educational comics can provide a practical solution to these age-old problems and the simple reason for that is the way in which information is presented. It certainly does not look like a lesson. The knowledge thus imparted is narrated like a story as a comic format usually does. The sequence of a beginning, middle, and end aids the understanding. The information is also divided into chunks, which helps in engaging the reader. Importantly, the text is accompanied by visuals which are the characters in the story and they give meaning to the words.

In its prototype stage, Dekko was tested on five different schools in Scotland and different age ranges and learning types were used. All unanimously appreciated it and teachers found it to be great learning resource as students were able to both understand and retain the information. But creating this comic which doubles as a learning resource was no mean feat. The ‘colours’ used were considered as important as the humour in storytelling for an interesting mix of colours made the comic eye-catching and engaging. Dekko also uses dyslexia friendly font along with colour-coding important bits of information.

It’s about that time these comics find their way into the classroom, ultimately making learning enjoyable for teachers, students, and parents alike. Educational comics can benefit the education system as a whole for they have the entertainment factor, which the traditional textbooks lag. It might soon be the next big thing in academic publishing.