Life as an Intern at the University Press
I think we can all agree that internships are one of the best ways to gain experience towards finding a career as a writing professional. This semester, we will be hearing from a few speakers in the field of publishing, and it occurred to me that some of my fellow classmates might be curious about what the day-to-day experience is like as an intern at a publishing house. As an intern for the University Press of Kentucky, I think I’m qualified to give you a general idea of what you can expect.
First, you need to know that I am a marketing intern. The marketing team is responsible for pushing books onto shelves, and getting customers to pull those books off the shelves. My experience is very different from someone on the acquisitions or editorial teams; most of the manuscripts that I work with are in the final stages of the publication process.
One of the things that surprised me about this internship was the amount of writing I am allowed to do. Most of my time is spent putting together press kits for upcoming titles. Most press kits consist of a press release, a pitch letter, a catalogue page, and any additional materials (such as photographs from the book) that the publicity manager wants to include for that particular title. It can be overwhelming at times, because there is a fairly strict deadline that has to be met and it is often necessary to write material about a book that you have only skimmed or read excerpts from. I had a difficult time learning how to quickly familiarize myself with a book so that I could write confidently about it. However, I can tell that the publicity managers at UPK are really committed to teaching the interns — through first-hand experience — how to write content for marketing purposes, and I really feel that my writing process has already improved as a result.
The marketing interns at the University Press also get to take turns creating content for UPK’s social media pages. We are each assigned a week to take control of the blog and of all the UPK social media accounts, and it’s a bit of a competition to see who can garner the most likes, follows, and shares.
Of course, there are also all of the far less glamorous, more typical intern jobs that I do at the Press, like organizing the office supplies for an upcoming publishing conference, proofreading ISBN numbers for the fall/winter catalogue, or stuffing envelopes with printed galleys to be mailed to reviewers. However, each of these jobs has introduced me to a different aspect of how the Press garners interest in the titles that they market to sellers and customers.
Overall, I’ve really enjoyed my time at the University Press of Kentucky so far, and I encourage any of you who are interested in learning more about publishing or marketing to apply!
