Farewells and welcomes

Friday, my second day, was the last day at the publishers for the Editorial Assistant and for another intern. This meant:

• There were cakes in the office
• We were all invited out to lunch at the local Thai by the Director (tasty but quite spicy!)
• I finally got set up at a desk and was given an e-mail account upon which the Director officially welcomed me!

The other intern wasn't leaving until lunchtime though so the morning was spent on filing (26 folders down, 4 to go!). The Director also asked me to remove some jacket sleeves from some FCs (finished copies) as the printer had used a wrong margin size so the title was a bit skewiff. I also found out that the main Editor is on holiday until mid February. I hope that I will get to support her!

Just before lunch we did a clean out of the office as they are moving premises in March to Soho, so we got rid of old equipment and I was asked to throw out about 20 dummies (blank books that had been made to the right size & format for a specific book to see if it's suitable). I snaffled a couple for myself then threw the rest out with a broken heart. In my last company, I was Secretary to the Environmental Committee and we introduced a recycling system to the office of over 350 people, so this was quite hard for me to just throw out perfectly good paper!

There was a slightly more stressed atmosphere in the office as Chinese New Year starts this weekend and the celebrations last for over a week in China, the place where the publisher's books are produced, so everyone was trying to finish off their projects and submit them before the Chinese offices closed.

Another thing I discovered was that the publisher where I am interning started off by selling sex books! The gift-style ones, tongue-in-cheek and coy that you can give to friends and have a giggle about.

Towards the end of the afternoon, we had the editoral handover meeting which the Editorial Assistant led. I was handed 2 books that I will be responsible for! I am not sure in what way yet but I was given weekend homework of reading the synopses so I know what they are about. Looking forward to getting stuck in!

Also, the ball has started rolling with the London Book Fair appointments. I am responsible for all German appointments (as I speak German) and the first confirmation has already come through! The LBF takes place in Earls Court in April but planning is already underway. Each meeting is scheduled for 30 minutes and they run back-to-back for the entire day, with only a half-hour break! It sounds like gruelling work but it's where the publisher can sell rights to their book concepts.