My Time In Denver

As I talked about in previous blog posts, I went to Denver for grad school. I was enrolled in the Publishing Institute, and I thought I'd share some of what I learned.

Publishing is the "Accidental Industry"
Apparently, most people in publishing, up until more recent years, didn't set out to be in publishing. They fell into it. Even for people who had gotten into it in the last 20 years, many got their break largely because of good timing. Yes, they were doing something to advance their career- moving to New York, working at a bookstore, going on informational interviews, etc., but they were in the right place at the right time and that's how they got the job.

Everyone Wants to be an Editor
One of the primary goals of the program was to convince people to look at other areas of publishing. People who choose to go the editorial route spend a long time paying their dues to move up. It's also the hardest area to land a job in, because of the competition. I was slightly frustrated with this aspect of the program. As I came in with almost no interest in the editorial side, I felt that they spent far too long on it (nearly half the program!) and not enough on everything else.

Diversity is Harder to Achieve Than I Previously Thought
The publishing industry is overwhelmingly filled with white women. Books with authors of other races are often seen as not having mass-market appeal, only to people of that culture. Unless the author is a celebrity, of course. Without people of color entering the industry to fight for those authors, I fear that those voices may not get heard. Looking at my class at DPI, we reflected the industry. There were 98 of us- 92 were women. Of those 92, maybe 5 or 6 were WOC.

These Are My People
Look, I know myself. I can be kind of an awkward human. I don't always bond the same way other people do. But I didn't meet a single person in the program that I didn't like. If they're representative of the industry, then I can rest assured that this is the industry I want to be in. These are the people I want as my bosses, my coworkers, the people I interact with daily. And I think that was the most important lesson of all.