Educational Publishing from an Intern's Perspective
This summer, I had the pleasure of interning with a great
company called Publishing Solutions Group based in Woburn, MA. As I finished my
freshman year at Emerson, I was at the cusp of my career; I had no experience except
for the minimal work I had done for a few campus organizations and I had a lot
to learn.
PSG is a full production publishing company that takes on
projects involving writing, editorial work, art production and management,
design, and translation. They handle assignments in educational publishing and
work with sectors of companies like McDougal-Littell, Pearson, and Harcourt. It
is a small company with less than fifteen full-time employees, so as an intern
I was trusted with a lot of work that was important to the company. I never
felt like I was just a decoration or formality as some interns at other
companies may feel.
Going into the internship, I knew that I wasn’t interested
in educational publishing; I was much more interested in working with creative
fiction or nonfiction books. However, for my first internship, PSG wasn’t a bad
place to spend two days a week. Even after my internship ended, I’m still more
interested in working with books, but I wouldn’t trade my first internship
experience for anything.
Educational publishing is an important industry that often
gets left behind and is never truly appreciated. It embodies every aspect of
publishing through every step of production and, as an employee of the industry,
you are never afforded the opportunity of ignoring a process or factor that
might not necessary be in your “department.” That’s just the thing—it’s all
your department.
Projects in educational publishing are large-scale and you
can’t work without the end product in mind. Every person assigned to the
project is involved in every step of the process. Having an understanding of
every aspect of the project and industry is completely necessary. It’s all a
big intertwined web of team members, so working together cooperatively becomes
essential.
Though I may not have necessarily interested in the
educational publishing industry when I accepted my internship offer with
Publishing Solutions Group, I contribute a large part of my understanding of
the publishing process to my time with them. Even as an intern I was required
to know the intricacies of each step and each aspect of the industry, like any
other employee. I came out with a better understanding of the industry I will
one day work in than all of my peers.
By: Hayley Gundlach
