The Intern's Day of Fun

On my first day of work, Charlene and Dave (my bosses) handed me an Outlook calendar already scheduled with meetings, assignments and projects. The square of June 11th reads "Day of Fun." Today, my friends, was a great day to be an editorial intern.

After a marketing/editorial joint meeting this morning (that Dave and I bailed out of early), the three of us left on a grand adventure to Ridgedale Mall (of Juno fame). We stopped at several bookstores so they could show me how BHP books are marketed in different ways.

Our first stop was the regional chain Northwestern Christian Bookstore. BHP books filled the shelves in competition with brands like Thomas Nelson, Zondervan, WaterBrook, Tyndale, Multnomah, etc. I noticed that as Dave and Charlene moved through the books, analyzing displays and titles and cover art, they were rearranging the shelves. I'm proud to say that the Ridgedale Northwestern fiction section has only Bethany House books facing forward (called face-outs). All other publishers have been turned on their spine!

Next we visited Barnes and Noble (rearranged their shelves, too) and then Target (their displays are already all face-outs, no changes necessary). Finally, we visited a children's bookstore, The Wild Rumpus, in Minneapolis. Its name comes from Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak - a wild rumpus is a crazy jungle party. There are cats with no tails, ferrets, chinchillas, lizards, and chickens in the store! Also, I walked over a plank of glass, only to realize I was looking down into a cage full of pet rats - that did not go over well with me.

All in all, it was a pretty fantastic day. I learned about many things, like sales and marketing tactics, why books sell, and how the spine is actually important to sales numbers. I also learned some upsetting things about this industry, like the fact that the Christian Book Distributors Association strongly discourages ethnic diversity as cover art (read: book covers show white people).

I'm still reading lots of manuscripts. I cranked through one last night from 11:30pm-1:07am, but still have 5 more on my desk.
I drink coffee religiously (Ashley S, my goal is to be drinking it black by the end of the summer).
I try to be funny or insightful at least once in every meeting I attend (it's working thus far).
I enter editorial corrections, which means transcribing an editor's comments from a paper manuscript to the Word document.
I learn all kinds of things like proofreading codes (# means insert space) and official ways to spell and hyphenate words (dishtowel is one word).
I perform blue-line checks (the final stop before a manuscript goes to the printer) and caught a formatting error! I am not a useless intern!

Here is your Editorial Tip of the Day: When dialogue begins a chapter there are no opening double quotations. Example: not "Mom" but Mom!"