DPI week three
Jul. 28th, 2009 11:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anthimeriaThis is Marketing Week at DPI, and the sheer volume of stuff our wonderful lecturers bring with them is astounding. The table outside our lecture hall is full of interesting goodies; breaks the students usually fill with useful things like going to the bathroom or talking to presenters has been taken up with ooh-ing and ahh-ing over the bookmarks, catalogs, advance reader's copies, posters, cover samples, and whatever other items left out for our perusal.
See, the thing is, one of the main reasons I'm here is to figure out where I want to be in publishing. Editorial seems like the obvious choice, and probably the one that most broadly appeals to my skills and experience.
On the other hand, I've done a LOT of the other jobs because of Quiver (Knox College's collection of online genre magazines). I co-founded Quiver, got it off the ground with five other people, none of us with more practical experience than a high school lit mag. We designed and put up the websites, we begged for support from the English Department, we did all our own publicity and marketing, we solicited submissions, argued about submissions, wrote author letters (yes/no, why, here's what to fix, please come to the reception), edited manuscripts, wrote book reviews, squeezed summaries and revisions out of authors, did those things ourselves when an author didn't come through, and booked, set up, and gave three release parties a year. We expanded, we tried new things, we changed when our plans didn't work, we found new editors to replace graduates and those who'd served their years. The first six of us, then the full nine of us (when Diminished Capacity started up), did every job ourselves. The most our "faculty advisor" tended to do was make sure we had authorization for buying food for the receptions.
So . . . I'm thinking about Marketing. I'm thinking about Publicity (though we haven't covered that yet). I'm seriously considering just applying to every job I find palatable in the industry and hoping something sticks. I haven't actually gotten this desperate yet, mostly because we're only three weeks in, not four. I hope to be more decisive come week four.
Actually, what I'd really love to do is work with the backlist. I don't know how you get that job--managing the titles that are more than a year old, the titles that sell a few thousand (or a few hundred) copies a year, everything more than a year or two old that the publishing house has in print. Those are always the titles I gravitate to as a reader, and I feel like the frontlist, new-title, acquisition pressure would be off. There'd probably be a ton of fiddly details and lots of titles to keep track of, but that's a task I feel up to.
Last week went by SO fast, and this week bids fair to go by faster.
See, the thing is, one of the main reasons I'm here is to figure out where I want to be in publishing. Editorial seems like the obvious choice, and probably the one that most broadly appeals to my skills and experience.
On the other hand, I've done a LOT of the other jobs because of Quiver (Knox College's collection of online genre magazines). I co-founded Quiver, got it off the ground with five other people, none of us with more practical experience than a high school lit mag. We designed and put up the websites, we begged for support from the English Department, we did all our own publicity and marketing, we solicited submissions, argued about submissions, wrote author letters (yes/no, why, here's what to fix, please come to the reception), edited manuscripts, wrote book reviews, squeezed summaries and revisions out of authors, did those things ourselves when an author didn't come through, and booked, set up, and gave three release parties a year. We expanded, we tried new things, we changed when our plans didn't work, we found new editors to replace graduates and those who'd served their years. The first six of us, then the full nine of us (when Diminished Capacity started up), did every job ourselves. The most our "faculty advisor" tended to do was make sure we had authorization for buying food for the receptions.
So . . . I'm thinking about Marketing. I'm thinking about Publicity (though we haven't covered that yet). I'm seriously considering just applying to every job I find palatable in the industry and hoping something sticks. I haven't actually gotten this desperate yet, mostly because we're only three weeks in, not four. I hope to be more decisive come week four.
Actually, what I'd really love to do is work with the backlist. I don't know how you get that job--managing the titles that are more than a year old, the titles that sell a few thousand (or a few hundred) copies a year, everything more than a year or two old that the publishing house has in print. Those are always the titles I gravitate to as a reader, and I feel like the frontlist, new-title, acquisition pressure would be off. There'd probably be a ton of fiddly details and lots of titles to keep track of, but that's a task I feel up to.
Last week went by SO fast, and this week bids fair to go by faster.