PA encourages school leavers to #WorkInPublishing

The Publishers Association (PA) is speaking to schools and university students this week for #WorkInPublishing week, an initiative launched last year to encourage school leavers from under-represented backgrounds to consider publishing as a career option. 

As part of this year’s campaign, starting today (14th November), the PA has forged partnerships with online apprenticeships guide Not Going to Uni and graduate job website Milkround to see information about jobs in publishing disseminated even more widely by local authorities, schools careers services, colleges and universities across England and Wales. It is also working to create materials for schools to better explain the publishing process.

Activity on social media includes daily Twitter Q&As, and blogs about the career opportunities available in publishing. By using the hashtag #Workinpublishing, any members and partner organisations can get involved in publishing blogs, top tips and starting conversations, serving to highlight as many aspects of publishing as possible. Students have been asked to get involved with tweets, blogs and engaging with the hashtag to ask questions and delve more deeply into publishing with the PA and its partners on hand to answer questions. 

A number of physical events are being hosted too. These include on Wednesday a Digital Publishing Forum on "Routes to Retail and an "Insight into Publishing Day" with Hachette, where 60 young people are signed up to examine the life of a book at Carmelite House.

Penguin Random House has organised a "Job Hack” in Liverpool. PRH launched its firs "job hack" event- a day of creative, interactive workshops aimed at 18-24 year olds, intended to demystify publishing - in Birmingham in July. Students will have the chance on Friday to hear about career opportunities, get feedback on a practice interview and disappear with some "publishing swag", including unpublished proofs and classic Penguin totes.

Tomorrow (14th November) is the PA and LBF’s Building Inclusivity in Publishing Conference, for which The Bookseller is a media partner. The first panel concentrates on representation in the workforce, kicking off with a panel comprising Tamara Macfarlane from Tales on Moon Lane, Emad Ahmed, Isobel Dixon at Blake Friedmann and Natasha Onwuemezi, reporter at The Bookseller. The session will be chaired by Nigel Warner from Creative Access. Keynote speakers are Crystal Mahey-Morgan, founder of story-telling brand OWN IT!, and Robyn Travis, author of Mama Can’t Raise No Man, which OWN IT! publishes.

Seonaid Macleod, campaigns manager at the PA, added: "The Publishers Association's #Workinpublishing week is a chance for students, young people, and those who don't have contacts in the book industry, to discover what really goes on in publishing. By promoting the range of careers available in publishing, we hope to break one of the biggest barriers to a representative publishing industry and show entrants from whatever background that there are opportunities for them in the industry."