Publishing profile: Steff Lever

Exeposé Books chats with Steff Lever about career paths and joining your student newspaper…

Steff’s advice: get involved with your student newspaper!

Steff Lever, publishing intern turned professional, gained a coveted job at a top media company before she’d even graduated. Only four weeks after finishing her university course, the numerous placements she’d completed throughout her degree landed her a job at IPC Media. Her blog, Diary of a Publishing Professional, offers insights into Steff’s professional development as well as posting up to date lists of placements in both the book and magazine world. Steff speaks to Exeposé Books about her experiences and offers some pertinent advice for students thinking of going into similar careers.

Like many students, Steff had not decided on her career path when she arrived at university. Instead, she realised that publishing was for her when she began doing internships which proved  to use both her interest for reading as well as allowing her to explore the different options that a career in publishing provides. Currently whilst working as a PA and Office Manager at IPC Media she is able to dabble in editorial, publishing and marketing “to really gage what career [she] would like”.

However, she doesn’t believe it’s necessary for a graduate to know exactly what career path they want to embark on – “when you’re young, it’s the perfect time to experiment with new things so there’s certainly no rush in deciding upon a career path”.

In 2011 Steff started Diary of a Publishing Professional because she felt that whilst students are constantly encouraged to take placements and do internships they prove difficult to find and gain. Therefore her blog not only offers hints and tips for those hoping to break into the industry but also advertises the current opportunities that are available, such as paid internships and job vacancies.

The current plan for Steff’s blog is to continue to record her career as it progresses and provide readers with further information about the publishing industry. She hopes that by ‘document[ing] [her] own experiences.. others will find it insightful’.

Some tips that Steff has for new students who are considering a career in publishing is to join your student newspaper  as “that’s publishing experience that can go straight on the CV”. She would also recommend “getting involved in anything that you enjoy and anything that will put useful skills on your CV, such as teamwork”.

As a final question we caught up with what Steff has been reading recently. Apart from the reviews that she regularly posted on her blog she particularly recommended Letters from Leaders by Henry O. Dormann since “it’s a great choice for a book that you can dip in and out of whilst studying”.

More information is available on Steff’s blog: diaryofapublishingintern.blogspot.com and she is more than happy for any one who is thinking of going into publishing to contact her by twitter (@steff_lever) or email (steff.lever@gmail.com).

 

"An Insult to Women Everywhere": Faber celebrates Plath's anniversary

Sylvia Plath is an icon of Feminism. The troubled poet used her writing to challenge, not only the patriarchal world of poetry, but also the confines of the female domestic sphere. With her 50th anniversary on the horizon, publishing giants Faber celebrated Plath’s legacy in style: with a “chick-lit” makeover of her iconic work “The Bell Jar”. Bethany Stuart discusses the consequences of this design direction, and considers what Plath would have made of the new cover…

Faber celebrate Plath’s anniversary with a “chick-lit” makeover

Sylvia Plath has always been to me a literary figure that stood out for being exceedingly, and often painfully, honest through her work, the autobiographical elements clear as both her poetry and The Bell Jar highlight her personal struggles for identity. I therefore tried to find some hidden meaning in the image used for Faber’s 50th Anniversary edition, certain that the publisher would have appropriately marked the occasion – and maybe there is something in it that I’m missing. However, it is hard to look beyond the painted face of a cover girl whose sexualised reflection suggests little more of the novel than an adherence to stereotypes and an entirely superficial narrative centred on the trivialities of a socialite, aided by the sickeningly bubbly blurb – “in between the cocktail parties and piles of manuscripts, Esther’s life begins to slide out of control.”

The novel’s supposed re-branding as a “chick-lit”, placed next to the likes of the 50 Shades saga, seems utterly disrespectful to such a significant writer, whose work allowed the reader to see the most intimate of emotional and psychological struggles.

Plath’s original cover is a world away from Faber’s new design

I hope that the phrase “never judge a book by its cover” will come into play here, as I put my faith in those familiar with Plath to continue her legacy and spread the word to those who may be misguided by the cover. Indeed, the thought that her works should end up on the shelves of those who cannot fully appreciate her work, their expectations having been lowered by its rebranding, is a very distressing one.

The backlash it has received by both the literary community and fans of Plath is encouraging, showing that we will not allow such an influential writer to be reconfigured for the benefit of profit margins. Neither will we accept, as Fatema Ahmed states, the “treat[ment] of fiction by women as a genre”* in itself.

Arguably, Faber was merely trying to reach a new audience with Plath’s work, however as we are all aware of the power of advertising and marketing and the instantaneous judgements we draw from book covers (though no-one dares admit it!) their move was a foolish one and, sadly, leads me to conclude that rather than a celebration of Plath’s work, this edition was thought up by someone in a boardroom who wanted to ride on the coat-tails of the “chick-lit” trend.

By Bethany Stuart

Ed. by Georgina Holland – Exeposé Online Books Editor

* Quote taken from the Independent.

 

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The rise of self-publishing

Writers such as Francesco Piscitelli have joined a history of brilliant self-published authors.

The world of reading is changing, and it is changing fast. The book market is moving at an exponential rate onto the internet with sales of E-Books rising by 188% in the first 6 months of this year – matched by a steady decline in the sales of hard-copy books*. Along with this change comes a growing phenomenon: self-publishing.

Gone is the time when writers had only the means of securing a traditional publishing contract in which literary agents and their authors will commit to printing thousands of hard-copies of books. Now, writers are presented with a new option – the option to upload their work to the web, self-edit and market, and print “on demand” only when a book is sold. For a higher price, writers can have their work edited and have their layout and graphics designed by a bespoke self-publishing company (once again, web based.)

The country’s leading Publishing companies have not only responded to this change, but have embraced it with both Harper Collins and Penguin creating websites dedicated to the production of unsolicited freelance work from upcoming writers not yet represented by a literary agent. It is important to note that 50 Shades of Grey began as fan fiction that was then picked up by an agent and sent into the sonisphere of global publishing. As well as this, self-published writers such as crime fiction writer Kerry Wilkinson, are joining a history of brave literary figures who dared to self-fund and publish their own works, including Virginia Woolf, Beatrix Potter and, more recently, John Grisham.

One writer who has joined the self-publishing market is Francesco Piscitelli whose sci-fi thriller Cryptids is already flying off Amazon’s cyber-shelves. The story centers around three down-and-out teenagers who plan to leave their dead-end lives behind when they discover that their biological parents are residing in Paris. Taking the journey by foot they are soon embroiled in to much larger, and dangerous, mystery; the reason? Oh yeah, they can each morph into animals. I asked Piscitelli what made him choose to go down the route of self-publishing and what this has meant for his writing. Piscitelli told me that “taking the direction to self-publish seemed pretty much a-given and it was a matter of convenience, really. I’m still astonished at how easy it is to self-publish a piece of work nowadays. Once upon a time going through the intricacies of publishing and editing was the hard part, and now it’s the other way around – writing it was the “hard” part (although I still enjoyed every minute of it), while the process of formatting and uploading the file to Amazon was finished within a mere 12 hours!”

For Piscitelli and many new self-published writers the sense of writing as being instant and direct is very important, he explained that “it definitely gives writers a chance to share and distribute their work quickly, efficiently and to a wider market previously impossible via paper (for example within 12 hours, I made my novel available to the UK, America, Canada, India, France, Spain, Denmark and Italy, whereas if it was on paper, shipping would take an indefinite amount of time and money).” Infact Piscitelli began by going down the traditional publishing route by sending off the first three chapters to about 10 agencies: “Getting a publishing contract is not the finish line, however. After that it would have been another 6 (or possibly more) months before my novel would have been ready to be printed, distributed and released to the public. This way, as an e-book, people can enjoy the first instalment of The Cryptids Series as soon as it was edited and ready to read, and my sales and marketing strategies are up to me.” Here Piscitelli raises an important aspect which attracts many writers to making the decision to self-publish, an ability to be totally in control of their creative work. He told me that “although straightforward, the market is extremely competitive, especially for fantasy genres. On the other hand at least I’m in total control of what happens, and that lends me some comfort.”

This signals a change towards a new reading experience, one that mirrors the experience of using the internet as writers now write in response to their readers with instant electronic feedback and imput through sites such as Twitter, Amazon reviews, and blogs. Piscitelli told me that many writers are now so reliant on the use of social media and web-based marketing strategies, it is hard to imagine a time when this was not a case (“I know of a lot of authors via Twitter who work full-time and simply do not have the free time to seal a publishing contract with an external agency.”)  Thanks to the rise in self-publishing and the options that it presents to authors, readers are taking control and seizing the chance to take on the role of writer.

 

Article by Georgina Holland, Exeposé Online Books Editor.

To download Piscitelli’s novel visit: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cryptids-Origins-Part-1-ebook/dp/B009MPXIVC

*E-book figure taken from:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/9550154/E-book-sales-up-188-per-cent.html

For more information on the self-publishing industry read: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/30/your-money/the-rise-in-self-publishing-opens-the-door-for-aspiring-writers.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0