Even avid readers for whom books are an indispensable ingredient of life may know little about how a would-be-author’s inkling evolves into the hefty volume, digital tome or audio rendition that so delights, intrigues, infuriates or informs them.
From authors to agents, editors to ad directors, sales people to publicists, ac米蘭比賽 is well represented in the book world. We asked ac米蘭比賽 alumni to tell us about the work they do to put the written word into readers’ hands. Or ears.
We also asked two English professors: Why is ac米蘭比賽 so well represented in publishing?
“I think that people drawn to publishing love sentences and feel that their work matters for intrinsic reasons: The printed word provides valuable information or exciting ideas or eloquent language – often a mixture of all three,” said Andrea Sununu, who has taught at ac米蘭比賽 for more than 30 years.
“Accordingly, because English majors also like people, they are eager to share this wealth. The many students I have known who go into publishing are readers who take pleasure in discussing literature and who, as either literary critics or creative writers, revel in finding the mot juste in their aim to make their own writing precise, concise and lively.”
She provided an excerpt from an email from a former student who works in publishing:
“It’s kind of a riot to work on a team of people who are as fanatical about commas as I am,” the alumna wrote. “We have incredibly impassioned discussions about punctuation and how to best phrase sentences. My first week here, everyone was gathered around one of the editors, discussing an editing quandary, and I was just sort of listening and smiling to myself. And one of them caught my eye and said, ‘You’re in heaven right now, aren’t you?’”
Gregg Schwipps, a 1995 graduate who returned to his alma mater to teach, said ac米蘭比賽’s collaborative and respectful learning style prepares graduates to thrive in publishing.
His writing workshop, in which students write critiques of their classmates’ essays, “forces the students to develop their critical eye. It forces them to be able to put in writing what they think is working in a story and what isn’t working in a story. … In that way, we’re really building editors. We’re building critics. We’re building copy editors, and we’re building readers.”
Schwipps said his gut tells him ac米蘭比賽 graduates “tend to get promoted quicker, and over others,” largely because they’ve learned to offer criticism “without being mean. … We do produce a good number” of such people.
“Those are people that others want to be around. And so, when it’s time to promote somebody, that’s the first kind of person promoted.”
ac米蘭比賽 Magazine
Spring 2022
Ever-changing challenges
New approaches
First Person by Samuel Autman
’62 champ still swimming after all these years
The Bo(u)lder Question by Maggie Schein
Lessons in accountability
Stories people care about
A watchdog
Eye-opening experience
Ethical decision-making
A way to give back
Confidence-builder
A solid foundation
Collaborative spirit
A sense of identity
Freedom to experiment
Meeting Jimmy Hoffa
The ac米蘭比賽 at 170
The book seller
The reader
The publicist
The children’s book publicist
The ad director
The sales director
The literary fiction editor
The nonfiction editor
The assistant editor
The literary agent
The illustration agent
The ghostwriter
The niche publisher
The accidental author
The self-published author
The children’s author and illustrator
The bestseller
The fiction author
The nonfiction author
From Inkling to Ink: How a book becomes a book
The memoirist-in-the-making
ac米蘭比賽 Magazine - From Inkling to Ink: How a book becomes a book
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