Sarah LeHan

I. B. Tauris, the academic publishing house where I interned this winter, invited me to the biweekly meetings where editors and executives gathered to pitch new books. From my hours of observation, I gleaned significant insight into how the company was run. I also learned about what they valued in a proposal. As an aspiring writer, I found it invaluable to see what editors and executives sought in prospective projects.

And then, of course, there were the proposals themselves, packet after packet pitching books with titles like Contraception in Postwar British Society, Family Life in Soviet Lithuania, Hidden Cameras of the Holocaust, and Manhattan: A Literary Guide for Travelers. From Soviet soccer and Argentinian politics, to eighteenth-century London landlords and ancient Timbuktu, the topics were far more interesting (at least to me) than sales charts and pie graphs!

One post, about WWI soldiers and suffragettes, I wrote for the 100th anniversary of British women winning the vote. Another post, about a politician who lowered food prices, I photographed in a local grocery’s bread aisle. Quick and creative, Instagram became my favorite marketing task.

I name this task in my top five not because copying and pasting ISBNs was particularly fascinating (although I did enjoy sneak peeks at book summaries) but because it provided the perfect complement to podcasts. From NPR’s Code Switch and Hidden Brain to BBC 4’s In Our Time and Nordic Food Lab’s, well, Nordic Food Lab, I learned about brain science, sociology, current events, food history…and an industry that I might someday like to join! While I’m glad metadata was just one of my many assignments, it was, as my co-worker put it, a “meditative” way to spend Friday afternoons.