My Sweet Cherry Work Experience Story
I was so excited when I received an email back from Divia, the Head of Sales and Marketing at Sweet Cherry, saying that I had been accepted as a Marketing and Design Intern at Sweet Cherry Publishing. It was the opportunity for my first publishing internship in children’s book publishing which is a sector I aspire to join after graduating.
The week-long internship began with a Zoom chat which included an informal induction and an overview of the exciting tasks ahead.
My first task was to complete a cybersecurity awareness course to help me stay safe online. I was then introduced to the Independent Publishing Guild (IPG) Skills Hub. The IPG Skills Hub was great because it offers up-to-date courses on a wide range of areas in publishing. I developed my skills in pitching to different audiences, such as librarians and booksellers, which I role-played with Divia and received constructive feedback on how to improve.
I also had the opportunity to explore educational marketing by reading an advanced copy of an upcoming children’s book and creating comprehension questions and teacher discussion points in line with the UK National Curriculum for Year 4. I hadn’t thought about the importance of not only helping a child to read a book, but to understand it too.
After completing a Publicity Essentials course on the IPG Skills Hub, I was given the task of drafting a press release to develop my copywriting skills. The purpose of the press release was to announce an upcoming series to the publishing industry and book trade, and this task broadened my knowledge of writing for different audiences.
The publicity side of my work experience involved researching different media outlets to compile a database of publications that offer review slots and feature articles. I hadn’t realised until now how many publications actually reviewed children’s books, in particular the national broadsheet newspapers.
I was also given the task of conducting my own market research to find out what works well on social media and what doesn’t. Following my research, I made a presentation for different social media posts for Sweet Cherry, with ideas on how to branch out from what they were doing currently on various social media platforms. I mocked up posts for Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and presented my ideas to Divia.
Overall, I am very grateful for the opportunity Sweet Cherry has given me to work alongside them on some live tasks. I learned a lot about marketing and publicity in children’s publishing and developed a wide range of transferable skills in publishing. I hope to use all the skills I was taught in other internships whilst I am still studying, and I know I will take the things I learned this week even further into my publishing career after I graduate from university.
Thank you Divia and Sweet Cherry for taking me on and giving me my first experience in a publishing house.
Abby is a second-year student of Media, Journalism and Publishing at Oxford Brookes University.