Monthly Archives: May 2019

Tips of the Month: May 2019

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  • Inbox Etiquette: I find it helpful to keep emails in your inbox until you’ve accomplished the task included therein, or responded adequately to any questions directed your way. This way, there’s a visual incentive to promptly completing short-term tasks and communications.
  • Calendar-Secured Communication: If your manager(s) is very busy—and not always available to respond to questions—it will be life-altering to implement a 10-15-minute daily check-in for you both to ensure everything is on track. This more frequent structured communication will help you both move forward with all of your shared goals and maximize efficiency on both ends. A good time for this check-in is first thing in the morning.
  • Protecting Your Headspace: Publishing offers a wonderful community of smart, passionate, funny, irresistible people. It is easy to be immersed in friendships that originated at/around work and spend much of your free time within that network. Do your best to reserve time in your life for people and hobbies completely unconnected to publishing. This will help you keep a balanced perspective on your personal vs. professional identities. 

Day in the Life…of Hannah Milton, Assistant Editor

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Name: Hannah Milton (ECC Committee member)
House: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Position: Assistant Editor

6:10am: My alarm goes off. This is the ideal time for me to wake up. But instead of getting out of bed, I hit snooze by accident and fall back asleep. This goes on for at least thirty more minutes.

6:40am: I actually manage to get out of bed this time around and check my email. I don’t have any early meetings today, but my goal is to get in early and finish up as much work as I can before I start getting new emails.

8:40am: I meant to get into work by 8:00. Needless to say that that did not happen. But 20 minutes early is still better than nothing! I make a beeline for the kitchen, where I get my first cup of coffee for the day. Now it’s time to sit down and answer some emails…

9:00am: I’d planned to answer all of my emails at this point. Instead, I have only answered two…

9:30am: We have our weekly Acquisitions meeting on Wednesday mornings, so I grab my second cup of coffee before heading over. I’m looking forward to today’s meeting—not only are we discussing a YA fantasy project that I’m super excited about, but also a really cool graphic novel proposal. Since I work in Editorial, I always find it fascinating to hear how other departments think as they critique and evaluate manuscripts.

10:30am: Acquisitions is over, and it’s now time to answer more emails. I’ve gotten a dozen in the last hour alone. And since we just finished launching our Spring 2020 list last week, I need to spend some time catching up on all of the admin work that fell behind. So I spend the next hour reviewing a few second pass queries on one of our Fall 2019 middle grade novels, taking care of some routing materials in my inbox, and, of course, trying to answer all the emails.

11:30am: One of my managers and I have a call scheduled with an author to discuss her most recent round of edits. We’re all on the same page about her ideas, which is always gratifying and exciting.

12:10pm: It’s almost time for lunch!! Except…not quite. MORE EMAILS.

12:30pm: It’s actually lunchtime, now! Today, I’m eating a microwave dinner from the freezer aisle, and chips from the vending machine. (I’m clearly living the height of luxury.) I spend my lunch break trying to read a few projects for our upcoming weekly editorial meeting, but I keep getting distracted by Twitter. I’m something of a reformed weather nerd, so in between reading reactions to last Sunday’s Game of Thrones episode, I’m also analyzing tweets about SPC Outlooks and CAPE levels. It’s all very fun.

1:30pm: Now that we’ve launched the Spring 2020 list, our Marketing and Publicity teams have asked all the editors to attend an informal brainstorming meeting where we can share any interesting details about our books and authors. We have a great Spring 2020 list coming up, so it’s a super cool meeting to prepare for.

2:15pm: I want to spend some time reading a YA horror project for one of my managers, but since I’ve gotten a dozen more emails in the last half hour, I spend time answering those, instead. Edits will have to wait until tonight, I suppose…

3:30: We have a marketing and publicity call tomorrow morning with one of our UK authors. These calls serve as opportunities for the author and agent to talk to the Marketing and Publicity teams and ask them any questions they have about their proposed plans. Since this author lives in the UK, the call requires a bit of extra coordination on my end, so I spend some time troubleshooting our video connection.

4:15pm: Some beautiful finished copies of a few June titles arrived in the office, so I’m wrapping up a few copies to send to the authors and agents. This is always a fun part of my job!

5:45pm: One of my managers decides that she wants to bring a project to Acquisitions next week, so I start prepping acquisition materials to distribute to the Sales, Marketing, Publicity, and Subrights teams later this week. At our Acquisitions meetings, we prepare a P&L (a Profit & Loss statement, which essentially just shows how much money we expect to make by publishing the book), a memo detailing the book’s plot and our editorial thoughts, and comparable titles from the marketplace.

5:30pm: My hopes of getting my email inbox down to zero have been dashed. But maybe I can get it down under 30 by the time I have to leave?

6:15pm: I was too ambitious. My inbox is only at 25. I tried!!! But now it’s time to go home, make some dinner, and try to finish taking notes on that YA horror project. And respond to a few submissions. And finish reading another manuscript for edit meeting…

10:00pm: I’m now regretting the decision to read the horror novel late at night. I’m going to have to watch an old episode of Schitt’s Creek before I can sleep.

10:45pm: Time for one last email check…which turns into half an hour of Twitter surfing. But it’s finally time to get some sleep, and do this all over again tomorrow!

What I Didn’t Know

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When I started my second publishing internship, I didn’t realize how helpful it would be to write down all the general publishing or editorial questions I accrued during the previous week, to bring to my supervising editors during our weekly one-on-one meetings. One of my supervisors suggested this practice, and not only did I get so much more out of my internship, but it prepared me for the various one-on-one meetings that publishing professionals frequently have with one another. Everyone’s busy and time is precious, so it’s extremely helpful to prepare your discussion points and questions ahead of time!

The Mentor Corner: Kristine Enderle, Editorial Director, Magination Press

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What was your first job in publishing?

I was a development editor at Human Kinetics, a sport science text books publisher in Champaign, Illinois.

What was your career path like getting to your current role?

Completely convoluted! I actually have a Bachelor of Science degree in microbiology and minor in psychology from Indiana University. After college, I worked as a research tech in an AIDS research lab at National Cancer Institute and cancer research lab at Northwestern University Medical Center. I eventually grew tired of bench work and immunology and viral research, so I started taking fiction writing and journalism/communication courses at Northwestern, all those classes I missed as an undergrad. Eventually, I got a job as the Medical and Scientific Affairs manager at the National Alzheimer’s Association where I wrote newsletters and fact sheets but mostly explained the neurological science of dementia and treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease to non-scientists and caregivers. Believe it or not, all the science work and then translating and communicating complicated neurobiological biological processes to people, prepared me to develop and work on sport psychology and anatomy/sports text and trade books. It was about taking jargon and technical language, making that understandable to the audience, and then packaging that information (either visually or with words) into a way that is assessible and interesting to read.

What advice would you give to those who are either just starting out or are in their first few years in publishing?

Know your audience and read their books. Books for that age group (in particular) should be consumed daily! Figure out how to do every part of a book and realize that it is all CONTENT not product necessarily—from picking paper and endsheets, designing a page, choosing fonts, looking at the visual pace of the story, editing the words, collaborating with authors and agents, writing flap and cover copy, choosing a title—but know that all those decisions aren’t yours alone (and be fine with that.) Surround yourself with book editors who deeply care about books and the needs of the audience.

What have been some highlights of your career so far?

Having the guts to publish a book win that ended up winning a Stonewall Award (This Day in June by Gayle Pitman) and become listed as an ALA Office of Intellectual Freedom’s Top 11 Challenged Books for 2019. It is really beautifully illustrated, and the story is authentic and affirming and shows a Pride parade through the eyes of child. Plus there are all kind of illustrations showing men dancing together, interracial couples, gender nonconforming folks, loving families, dykes on bikes, leather daddies—it is delightful and one-of-a-kind. I couldn’t be prouder of that book.

Having published (developed and edited too) GIRL by Karen Rayne—it’s edgy progressive modern inclusive growing up guide for anyone who identifies as a girl. It received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and was selected as one of 7 Best of the Best Nonfiction Teen books from the Chicago Public Library.

I also have been lucky enough to launch a whole bunch of authors, publish their debut book, and then work with them to develop into incredibly talented house authors. And they call me their editor! I love that.