Life in children's book publicity is many things - the one thing you can count on, however, is the variety! If you really want to test this theory, start a new job in September! It's one of the busiest times of the year, with all the big Autumn blockbusters being published in time to get on the Christmas present lists. With big books, come big tours and public appearances. So I pretty much guaranteed myself a start in the deep end! So here, in photographic form, here is a brief catalogue of my first few weeks as a press officer:
Ok so technically this happened before I started - just wanted some photographic evidence that I had REAL CHAMPAGNE bought for me. Thanks bookboy :)
Day 1 at work - sneakily took a photo of the huuuge stack of the new Oliver Jeffers book Stuck - I am a huge fan and working at his publishers is WIIICKEDDD! Then of course, the next thing I did on day 1...
Oh who's that? Oh yes it's Oliver Jeffers, signing in Cambridge Waterstones. HC knows how to draw me in...
The on day... 3 I think it was, I was at the YLG conference a Goldsmith's college, setting up my stand next to the lovely Random House stand coincidentally! Mmm... look at all the books... tasty!
I was with the lovely Harriet Wilson from editorial, who also used to work for RH so we had a lovely old catch up and gossip with those on the RHCB stand next to us (I mean, it had been at least a week since I'd left).
One day in my first week the post man came around looking confused at where exactly this mysterious Rosi was sitting - after waving my arms around frantically I found myself presented with these lovely flowers! These were a really sweet good luck present from Vogler and Burchett, the lovely Gargoylz authors - sooooo sweet!
I have been really lucky so far in that I've been hanging out with several LEGENDARY kids' book people - I spent one sunny morning in the super swanky St Pancras hotel with illustration royalty Judith Kerr and Tomi Ungerer.
They had some shared history in their experiences during the war which was fascinating to listen to. You can still hear the extended version online here.
I could go on and on but I think this blog post is already majorly long!!! The last thing I have photographic evidence of is the bizarre day I spent pretending to be Michael Morpurgo. I don't mean I actually donned a dusky pink suit and became an amazing author - in fact I was just accepting the Oxfordshire Children's Book Award on Michael's behalf. It was a lovely ceremony although I was very scared I had to stand on stage in front of 300 people, even if they were tiny children... Later though, I accepted my place a prize winner...
Hi Rosi! It didn't occur to me that publishers may have blogs too. I'd love more entries on your job as I am a budding publisher myself!
ReplyDeleteVery interesting post Rosi, I'm glad HC are treating you well (though that was never in doubt :D)
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