It feels like forever ago now that I was on the 6 am train from Oxford to Leicester to start this week of work experience at Sweet Cherry. The early start put a slight damper on things but all that was forgotten and my excitement returned when I arrived at the offices and was greeted by smiling faces.

 After a quick tour of the offices and warehouse, I sat down with Cecilia and Jess for a chat about the areas I was most interested in and what I was hoping to get out of this week. I’d read the other work experience blog posts so I wasn’t expecting to be making much tea, but I also wasn’t quite prepared for just how much real work I would have the opportunity to do! It was so great to have a list of tasks to complete and feel that I was actually contributing to the team in some way.

 My first task was to prepare tweets for the next couple of weeks; I hadn’t realised just how time-consuming this could be! I certainly have a new found respect for all the people behind my favourite Twitter accounts, and will be a lot more liberal with my likes and retweets after seeing how much effort goes into them.

 Next up was some research into an upcoming title, no spoilers here but I will say my afternoon was particularly intriguing…

 On Tuesday I was lucky enough to listen in as the sales and marketing team made plans for the next few months and then when the whole team came together to discuss an international trip. It was really nice to see how everybody could contribute and have their ideas heard, I don’t know if this is true of all independent publishers but it seemed to sum up the nature of Sweet Cherry.

 Ticking off tasks as the week went along, I really enjoyed researching and writing a blog post about summer reads, looking into potential advertising opportunities and ways to promote author events.

 Looking back over the last week, the thing that stands out the most is just how welcoming and friendly everyone has been. It’s been a brilliant week and I’d encourage anyone interested in working in publishing to spend a week looking through the pink lenses!

Gemma Fitzgibbon is an MA Publishing student at Oxford Brookes University.