Fireflies
I'm actually going to take those two questions in reverse order.
So. Why don't I ever update this blog? Two excuses, four words. Heat wave. New York.
The balmy days with temperatures that only barely stretched their way into the upper 70s or low 80s didn't last much beyond my first week in the city. The heatwave hit from both sides: it was hot, and it was humid. Everyone was complaining about the heat, the stickiness, the sweatiness. And when I say everyone, I mean all of the normal people who have air-conditioned apartments. Can you see where I'm going with this?
As a transient city-dweller, you're pretty much at the mercy of your budget and the availability of short-term housing. I lucked out on almost every front: the location is great and the price was right. The only downside? No air-conditioning. It was hot enough that I had a hard time sleeping one night. I looked at my phone around midnight, and the temperature was still in the mid-80s. Needless to say, staying cool and comfortable came before just about everything else, and the last thing I wanted was to sit with the little heater that is my laptop.
The one good thing that came with the heatwave was the sudden appearance of fireflies. I don't think they ever get less magical.
New York has plenty of it's own magic and adventure to offer—that's the other reason I've been reneging on my blogging promises. There's so much to see! So much to do! So much to eat!
More on these adventurey bits is coming later. So on to part one of the first question: what I've been up to at work.
I'm working as a marketing intern with one of the imprints at a big, fancy publishing house. There are twenty six interns here this summer, but we're all scattered in different divisions and departments. The marketing team I'm working with is small—just a few people. They handed me the keys to their social media kingdom on day one, so I've been doing a lot of tweeting, posting, and tumbling. I've also helped with outreach to bloggers—one day that might mean researching music or book blogs, and the next might mean writing a pitch to parenting bloggers. I've also helped with some of their advertising (if anyone is ever curious about how those Facebook ads end up on your sidebar, I'm your person—and yes, they really are effective). One of the fun things about book marketing is that you rarely do the same thing twice; something is always changing because the topic of each book is never the same.
Working in book marketing is great for someone early in their career because you get to have contact with almost every other department. Sitting in on meetings with editorial, design, sales, and production really affords you the opportunity to see how all of the pieces fit together to make a single book come together and then move out into the world where people can finally read it. And from a less pragmatic (though arguably no less important) perspective, it also gives you the opportunity to see how much people really love the work that they do. It's amazing to see enthusiasm turned loose on a project and to see the way it manifests itself in the day-to-day work that goes on in each department.
It takes a lot of people to turn an idea in an author's head into the type of book that sits on your shelf. With that, I'll leave you with this excellent video by one of my favorite YA authors and Youtubers, John Green.
