Chelsea Eddy: 2016 Summer Internship with Comma Press
Written by – Chelsea Eddy
https://uk.linkedin.com/in/chelsea-eddy-209b69122
Comma Press Placement
I’m now settled into the third week of my placement and I’m fully initiated in the fellowship of Manchester morning commuters, so here is a run-down of my experiences from the recruitment process to those initial days.
The Application Process
I usually apply for most vacancies, as I find the recruitment process in itself to be an invaluable experience. I personalised my experience to fit Comma’s requirements, particularly highlighting any marketing and production experience/skills.
Unfortunately, there is never a script you can follow in an interview, but this allows your personality to come through anyway. Generally speaking, you will be asked questions about related experiences that make you suitable for the role, problems you have had to overcome, and how you can contribute to the team. If you have a portfolio or have been asked to do a preparatory task, I always find it’s more professional to take these things with you.
For comma, I was asked to build a marketing and publicity plan for an upcoming novel prior to the interview. I used their creative from the press release to head my campaign, and broke it down in terms of target audience and relevant strategies to appeal to this demographic. Following my interview, I was asked to proof an afterword to one of their science-into-fiction novels. It was on general relativity – something, I’m not shy to admit, that I will never understand. However, I just stuck to what I do know, which is being a total grammar Nazi. Basically, I made sure it read correctly, and removed any formal inconsistencies. In my past experiences, I have been asked to draft tweets, write web copy, and edit a variety of drafts.
The Internship
So, this is my first two weeks so far. Predominantly, I have been compiling research databases to market different projects and streamlining their old ones. I updated copy on their website to make sure it’s all up to date, and added my own contact to the staff page. I have emailed print contacts, journals, magazines, and writers to source reviews for novels. I have emailed libraries and universities to advertise upcoming short story courses. I’ve been in discussions with film production companies to organise rights to novels and potential feature adaptations. I’ve wrote a post-Brexit related blog post featuring our European literature. I’ve been handed the production and marketing of our upcoming German novel, but as I haven’t got the proofs from the translator yet, I have just been building my marketing campaign in anticipation. I’ve studied up on the politics and implications of translation in preparation for some blog posts I intend on doing with the translator. I’ve done a little bit of proofing work, but more production will come later once we start looking towards the books in the pipeline. All in all, it’s going well.
I’ll let you how what else I’ve gotten up to in the coming weeks.
Chelsea.
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