1. You can find great work experience on Twitter

It’s true, I got this work experience from a desperate appeal over twitter. Jess (publicist in chief) took pity and one cover letter later, here I am.

2. If you work in international rights and sales, you can go to book fairs in South Korea!

My first job on Monday morning was adding new contacts to a database. They were contacts that Lara, the foreign rights and sales manager, had met at a book fair in South Korea. This might sound dull, but for someone like me who finds rights and sales really interesting, this was heaven.

3. There are 15 Wizard of Oz books.

My next job was crafting a rather excellent blog post to go up on the website, promoting Sweet Cherry’s excellent taste and keen understanding of the market. I had just done a project on middle-grade fantasy on my MA publishing course so we ran with that.

4. A sales meeting can be three hours long.

It wasn’t meant to be, I think Lara, Jess and Daniel (marketing maestro) were aiming for two, but there were so many exciting new plans for all their great new books that they needed to discuss. Either way, I was very lucky to be there and my specialist knowledge of Cornwall holiday camps was invaluable to the dialogue.

 5. My mum was right, Twitter is time-consuming.

I shall never blithely scroll past a company twitter post again. I’ve discovered how hard it is to come up with lots of original and interesting twitter posts. I have to admit, it was exciting that I was allowed to do this.

 6. Two hours of a Photoshop class does not get you very far in the real world.

It took my entire Thursday but by the end of the day I had produced two gloriously average review shoutout graphics. Daniel even graciously lied and said he liked one of them, before he promised to fix them.

 7. Amazon is crafty.

My last morning at Sweet Cherry was spent learning more about everyone’s favourite online bookseller. I was set the task of designing a list of keywords for a new sponsored ad we were rolling out for a new book.  Learning how these kinds of ads work is something that hasn’t even been covered by my masters course but now I know and I have an even greater understanding of how Amazon have made such a fortune.

 8. Sweet Cherry actually care.

The biggest thing about this week was that, unlike friends of mine getting work experience in the bigger houses, I wasn’t just stuck in the corner with irrelevant busy work that matters to no one. I was doing tasks that actually mattered to the business. If I Google certain books, I can find  work that I did on them. They really cared that I was leaving with the actual ‘work experience’ that I can take to my future employers and get me a job as cool as the ones they have here.

9. Everyone is super friendly.

I mean it, thanks everyone for a great week.

10. They made me pose for the photo…. I take back every nice thing I said.