A Taste of Harper Perennial

The phone rang on Friday morning. It was HarperCollins: would I be interested in coming in for a work experience placement next week? Yes, yes I would. If there is one thing you learn as a student trying to break into the publishing industry it is don’t stop and think, don’t turn anything down, do everything. Maybe that counts as three things, but it all amounts to the same — come Monday morning, at the crack of dawn, I was on a cold bus journeying down the motorway towards Hammersmith, and the Harper Perennial division.

Walking through the iron security gates, through the revolving doors, and into the airy, arty entrance hall, I felt very much like an outsider; a small, young nobody, summoned to the Big City, out of the provincial comfort zone that is University Life. A scene from a film flickered in the recesses of my mind: Emerald City. We’re off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of OZ…

But, into the offices, and everything was normal, down to earth and friendly. I was working for Essie Cousins and Lizzy Kingston, who both quickly made me feel at home and useful. I even had my own office. I got to write some cover copy for the paperback edition of Patrick Bishop’s Bomber Boys, create a couple of press releases, and update their audio book reviewer database. The variety of tasks kept me occupied and interested, and I was grateful they did; I would not have been able to keep up the commute from Oxford to London every day if I hadn’t enjoyed what I was doing.

I was intrigued and quite amused by the meetings to discuss cover designs because they were so similar in their method and discussion to our own group meetings at Oxford Brookes. I had imagined that in the Real Publishing World I would discover how these things were really done, but I guess, after all, we all work in much the same way. It’s reassuring; it feels like an organic process.

On Friday afternoon, just a week after the phone rang, I said goodbye the man at the front desk and walked out through the revolving doors, out through the iron security gates, and out onto Fulham Palace Road. I didn’t feel so much like an outsider anymore. I hope that they were happy with the work I did while I was there; I wouldn’t mind coming back.