I’ve never liked phone calls. They’re demanding, they’re time-consuming, and they usually result in a wave of scammers trying to reach me about paying a non-existent parking ticket. Thanks to this, I have conditioned myself to ignore my phone when it starts buzzing. Yet when I saw the Rochester, NY area code lighting up my dim screen, something pushed me to answer the call.
“Hello?”
The conversation that followed changed my whole summer. A hiring manager at the University of Rochester Press was on the other end of the phone, and after a few words of greeting she spoke the sentences that countless undergraduates long to hear in the weeks leading up to the end of spring semester: “Congratulations! I’d like to offer you the internship.”
For the past two months, I’ve been working as an intern in the editorial department of the University of Rochester Press. I’ve listened to prospective authors gush over their projects, learned about what factors cause the press to accept or reject manuscripts, spread word about the press to dozens of university libraries and departments, scoured manuscripts for errors in grammar and formatting, created lists of keywords for scores of books, and learned more about British plastic surgery during World War II than I had ever imagined I would.
It’s been a whirlwind of a summer. I’ve met many skilled and friendly people, and undergone dozens of new experiences. I think it’s safe to say that this internship has changed the way I look at published books.
I came into this internship knowing next to nothing about publishing, and assuming that it was a simple process to publish a book. Surely, I thought, the hardest part of bringing a book into existence was writing the thing in the first place. Surely once it was written, it was as simple as the click of a button. Right?
How very wrong I was.
Little did I know that an academic manuscript would be in the publishing house for months after being written. Little was I aware that the publisher and author would hand a manuscript back and forth to each other, time and time again, before the document reached its final form. Although I anticipated that people would have to read through each manuscript to ensure that there were no errors, I did not realize how lengthy and thorough this process would be. Not only do staff at the press examine the manuscript; but so do freelance editors, as well as the authors themselves. What a careful process it is; and what a long-lasting journey each manuscript embarks on!
It was a dream and an honor to help bring books to life this summer. I’ve been a lifelong lover, reader, and aspiring writer of books, but somehow before this internship I had never thought about what it took to publish them. As I have learned, it is no easy feat to publish a book–but it is a magical enterprise, and one that I will forever be grateful for having experienced.
NATALIE OPDAHL
Interested in interning at a university press? Check out the Association of University Presses for information as well as internship and job listings.
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