The Bookseller.com

30th August 2008

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Schemes driving diversity

16.07.08 Hannah Davies

The Bookseller’s roundtable on cultural diversity in the book trade, published last week, revealed that there are several diversity initiatives currently in place to help students and graduates from ethnic minority backgrounds break into the industry. These include Pearson and Arts Council England (ACE) traineeships and a new publishing diversity scholarship.

The Pearson internship launched in 2001 was the UK’s first publishing diversity training scheme. Accepting 20 to 25 candidates for six weeks each summer, the placement gives interns hands-on experience within either Penguin, Pearson Education or Edexcel Learning and provides a training allowance of £1,100 a month.

The ACE scheme launched in 2005, partly in response to research published in The Bookseller confirming there was an industry-wide problem with ethnic minority under-representation. Since it started, ACE has funded 11 candidates from black African, Caribbean, Asian or Chinese backgrounds in six month to a year-long traineeships in various London publishers, literary agencies and bookshops.

This year, the Publishing Training Centre (PTC) has teamed up with four universities—City, UCL, Oxford Brookes and Napier—to launch a publishing diversity scholarship. Funded by the PTC, four students from ethnic minority backgrounds will be awarded £5,000 towards their tuition fees for an MA in publishing studies at one of the universities.

Below, two successful candidates, who have taken part in diversity schemes and now work in editorial roles within Pearson Education and Puffin respectively, reveal how the training helped kick-start their careers.

Yosef Smyth
2006: Editorial intern at Pearson Education on the Pearson Diversity Summer Internship Programme
2007: Editor at Pearson Edexcel Learning

"The internship was crucial to me getting my current job at Pearson. It put me in touch with key people who I could rely on to give me information and direction when I was looking for my first job. I also got to do so much in the six weeks, enabling me to understand the publishing industry a whole lot better. If it weren’t for the internship I think it would have been very difficult for me to get into publishing.

I heard about the scheme during my second year studying philosophy and creative writing at London Metropolitan University. I looked up publishing as a possible career on our student union website and it had information on a publishing workshop run by ACE at my university. I attended and at the end all of us from ethnic minority backgrounds were told to make sure we applied for the Pearson internship coming up that summer.

I was very fortunate to be picked as an editorial intern for Pearson Education and BBC Active, focusing on primary school publishing. Straight after the internship, I carried on working for BBC Active on a freelance basis as an editorial assistant, one to two days a week during my final year at university. Keeping in touch with the team and the HR department was really useful. Within four weeks of graduating I’d been told about a vacancy for an editor at Pearson Edexcel Learning, which I was lucky to get. Nine months on, I’m managing my own editorial projects.

I’ve stayed in touch with most of the other people on the internship and a good number are now employed full-time in publishing—clear evidence that it is helping to increase the number of people from ethnic minority backgrounds in the industry.”

 

Rebecca Oku
2006: Trainee at Foyles, Puffin and Curtis Brown on the ACE diversity traineeship
2007: Editorial assistant at Puffin

"As soon as I graduated from the University of Reading with a first in English literature in 2006, I began trying to get into publishing through all the usual routes—applying for work experience and speaking to specialist recruitment agencies. But work experience is so oversubscribed for every major publisher and it is sometimes about the contacts you have already made. The ACE initiative is good because it enables different people to get their foot in the door.

I came across the traineeship during my search for a job in the Media Guardian. It was offering two slots: a year spent working for Random House Children’s Books, and the other split between three different companies. I applied for the second option and was able to prove that I would embrace the experience and make the most of it.

During the traineeship I got to spend three months in the children’s department at Foyles on Charing Cross Road in London, assisting with both buying and selling; six months at Puffin working across all of the departments; and a final three at literary agency Curtis Brown assisting the agents and meeting new authors.

I made great contacts within Puffin during my time there and after my traineeship ended, one of the Puffin team told me about a job opening, which I was lucky enough to fill. I’m now editorial assistant for both the character and picture book teams and am now starting my own projects.

I’d like to think that I’d have eventually made my own way into publishing without the traineeship, but it was a great way for me to get the initial experience I needed while still being able to afford my rent.”

Arts Council England Hannah Davies Diversity job