What I Learned From Interning at an Independent Press

This past summer, I did the ambitious liberal arts college student thing and was lucky enough to land an internship at a wonderful independent nonprofit press in Minneapolis, which was awesome because A. I could live at home and B. it’s one of the better/larger independent presses in the country and publishes badass books. It was also great simply because I really went in with no idea of what to expect and not much knowledge about how publishing works—hell, it’s really only been the past year or so that I’ve even been paying real attention to the contemporary American literary scene at all. When you’re an English major, you tend to be stuck in the literary past.

Since it was a small company, the interns had a lot of random projects to do. Most of the time, however, we read submissions. Since they’re nonprofit and independent, the publishing house took unsolicited manuscripts. While this is great, it also means that they get (if I remember right) around 3,000 submissions a year for 15-20 slots, with only three editors and one publishing assistant. Therefore, the interns, whenever they weren’t working on another project, would be the first to see submissions; we’d read enough to make a solid judgment, write a short report on the piece (author bio, plot summary, writing style, whether we recommend it or not), and then forward it to an editor.

I also did a lot of proofreading, fact-checking, envelope-stuffing, phone answering, and occasionally providing a second pair of eyes for substantive editing.

I learned a ton at my internship, from how to get by on a Mac to Chicago Manual Style to how to report on manuscript submissions critically in less than a half hour. (And yet it wasn’t until my last day that I learned where we keep the post-its.) Some other things I learned from interning at a publishing company:

• People do not read submission guidelines. Not only does the general public not read them, but even agents don’t always read them. What the hell? People need to seriously read every single bit of submission guidelines, including: what we publish and what we do not publish; how to submit work and how not to submit work; the names of the editors if you are going to address your cover letter to someone specifically, etc.
• MFA programs do not guarantee good writing.
• Nor does being published in many different literary magazines. Sometimes I’d get submissions from writers who had been published in pretty notable lit journals and I’d be shocked—what is this?
• People really shouldn’t lie in their cover letter, because Google is a powerful thing. We will find you online, no matter how little information you give.
• I will never know as much as senior editors about the publishing industry and books and writers. Holy crap. I have a lot of reading and research to do.
• Proofreading is actually kind of fun.
• Just because a submission is good doesn’t mean that it’s right for your publishing house. Good writing is not the only qualification for publication—which is why it’s important to read submission guidelines!
• The numerical system in Chicago Manual Style (when to write the number out, when not to) is way more confusing than MLA format.
• If you think your writing sucks, maybe you’re right. But there’s probably someone out there whose writing is way worse, and they’re more confident in it and sending it out. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work on your piece more, but it can help make you stop feeling like crap.
• Speaking of which, if all these people out there can write novels, so can I.
• I will never be able to read a book without thinking about it critically ever again. Then again, this also means that when I read something and dislike it, I’m better at being able to pinpoint why I disliked it, past even “the writing sucks.”
• Many of the best submissions don’t have a cover letter. They’re like little magical surprises. What is this? Oh, the next Marquez. NBD.
• You know that itty bitty catalog you just got in the mail? It was probably proofread at least ten times by five different people. That book you’re reading? That excerpt online? Yeah, you don’t even want to know.
• The existence of NetGalley.com
• I absolutely adore the short story. I never read short stories much before this summer, but now they’re totally my favorite. Each intern was given a gift of six free books of their choosing from the catalog (it was an unpaid internship), and I requested almost all short story collections. I really love the quick, strange, punch in the stomach kind of feel that really good short stories have that novels often don’t. I also have this strange feeling that I get more bang for my buck when I buy a collection of short stories. It’s like, you only have one story. I have fifteen. So there.
• Minneapolis’ publishing scene is way more awesome than New York’s, AND you can work in publishing there and not be living on the street…
• I still like PCs better than Macs.
• Poetry is scary.