majors
English majors of America, let it be known:
That it is possible to graduate with an English degree, and two months later land the first job you interview for, which is technically in finance, in central New York City. In this economy.
All is not lost!!!!!!!
dreamingfor-days:
I'm sorry if you've answered this already, but I'm going to be a sophomore in college. My plans had always been to major in something for publishing, and I was going to go to Emerson in Boston to do so. Now I'm just at a state school majoring in creative writing. I know that's my enough, so I was wondering if you had any advice on what to major in for publishing? Thanks!
WAHOO I went to Emerson and I HATED IT just didn’t feel it was right for me, so I transferred to UNC-Chapel Hill, which is also a state school. So rock on with your bad self, girl, you are on the right track in my humble opinion.
I majored in English which is the classic future-publishing-person major, but I’d also suggest looking into marketing, because a LOT of publishing is marketing and that’s something I wish I had more experience in.
But for publishing (and a lot of careers these days) it’s not really your major that counts, but your extracurriculars, internships, and general knowledge of what’s going on in the publishing world that will help you get a job. If there’s a book club or lit mag at your school, join it. Look into internships with your summers off. And I’d start subscribing to websites like Shelf Awareness and Publishing Trendsetter (I helped launch PT’er at my internship last summer, it is SO helpful and awesome).
Publishing has a lot of departments and pieces—editing, acquiring, design, marketing and publicity, printing, packaging, sales, shipping… the list goes on and on. I’d look into all of those departments, see which one interests you the most, and then start working towards learning as much about that aspect of publishing as you can.
Hope this helps!
