Monday 9 November 2009

Visiting Penguin publishing in London

So last Thursday I travelled up to Penguin Books for a day called "Getting Into Publishing". As you can see, it wasn't hard to find the place :)
I met some fantastic people: editors, publicists, publishers, sales and finance and marketing and book production people, assistants, and students and graduates looking for work. It was exciting to be amongst so many great people who were really passionate about books.

This has thrown up some more questions for me: I love working with words, ideas and communicating the best aspects of a book, the experience I've had with it, the fresh take it gives on big themes. So do I want to work in marketing, focusing on how to promote a book through its cover, informing the trade press, writing newsletters, etc. Or do I want to work on actually producing the books themselves? And then, there's other questions, such as children's or adult? Fiction or non-fiction?

Hearing how publicists make opportunities to spotlight books by generating news stories was interesting, and explains a lot. I guess this fuels the book industry, and gives newspapers a lighter story or a story in a completely different area that wouldn't have come up otherwise. Of course it also helps sales in independent book shops (which are struggling) as well as helping Penguin make money!

It was a really interesting day, and hopefully not the last time I visit Penguin. They gave us lot of tips about how to start with Penguin, and generally in publishing. We were also given some books, including "Twitterature" which is so WRONG but so FUNNY.

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