the internship, part five

As an intern, I was usually treated just as any other employee: I had my own cubicle, I followed the same hours and holidays, I received every company-wide e-mail announcement, and, in December, the company even invited us interns to the formal Christmas party. On the Friday of my fifth week at the company, it held its quarterly new-hire orientation meeting. Anyone who had been hired since the last meeting, including interns, would attend, and the session would last from 9 a.m.–2 p.m., with lunch provided. A dozen of us were new employees: all females, ironically; and the gathering felt a little more like a college dorm room than a corporate meeting. Over half of the other employees were young like me, several having attended a publishing institute, where the president and publisher of our company had spoken recently.
We met in the company’s conference room and listened to presentations by each department. The divisions followed one another in rapid succession: an overview by the vice president; a presentation from the acquisitions editors; meetings with bookmaking, publicity, marketing, sales, accounting, IT, and customer service. Finally our boxed lunches—bagels and chips from a local restaurant—came, and while we ate, the president and publisher M came in for the last and longest presentation.

M, who had been notably absent from my first-day introductions, defied any stereotypes I’d held about company presidents. She wore sneakers and jeans; her hair was wild and unruly; and her voice, a nasally sound tinged with a New York accent. She looked nothing like a corporate professional, let alone a company founder. Nonetheless, she was confident when she spoke about the company she’d begun, a company started with a few thousand dollars out of her personal bedroom. Using PowerPoint, M detailed to us the founding and growth of her company. She had originally worked in the finance world and had no formal training in publishing. That finance background came in handy though; M became founder, owner, and president of a thriving publishing house. She’d won awards, been in who’s whos, and become something of a publishing celebrity. Listening to her, I saw that M was the kind of person who continuously interrupted her stories with cues for feedback. “Do you know what I’m saying?” she asked someone in response to a nodding head.

She closed with a Q&A session. “Did you ever envision, when starting this company years ago, that it would grow to this size? Did you dream for that? And if so, do you have specific dreams for the future of the company now?” I asked, when M looked my direction.

“No,” she began. “I didn’t envision any of this. I just saw a market for financial books—then other books—and just went with wherever I saw an opportunity. Now, though, I see the future of the company as being more structured.”

For most of the attendees, the meeting, I’m sure, was exciting and inspiring. M waxed eloquent about poetry being her lifeblood, the thing that motivates her. She spoke of high ideals and a desire to change the literary world. For me though, perhaps because I was just an intern, perhaps because I was new to the world of publishing, I felt a little removed from the discussion. I’ve loved reading since I was a child, but the crunching numbers, the comparative analysis, the self-praise—seemed a far cry from the imaginative world of storybooks.

Editing lesson #3: publishing, and thus by extension editing, is a business. As with any business, the goal is to make money, to make a name for yourself, to be successful. Though most people, I believe, get into publishing because of an interest in literature—of some kind, in some way—the focus inevitably becomes the bottom line. This is not necessarily a bad thing, not necessarily a selling out; it is, however, a reality.

Filed under story of my internship |