Publishing as a Career Option (Alumna-Interaction) Ms. Meenakshi Singh

Alumna-Interaction

The Department of English organized the first in a series of Alumna-Interaction Sessions on May 8, 2020. For the same, the Dept. invited Ms. Meenakshi Singh of the class of 2007 to interact with the students on ‘Publishing as a Career Option'. Currently employed at Bloomsbury India, New Delhi, and having also worked at Roopa Publications and Aleph Books, Meenakshi had a treasure of knowledge to share with all those who wanted to make a career in publishing and were exploring the various options available therein. 

Meenakshi began the session by introducing herself, briefly tracing her career trajectory and talking in detail about the field of publishing. She put much emphasis on the fact that its ambit is broad and has a lot of scope for multiple roles. Publishing houses, she opined, offer a host of roles and opportunities from Copyediting and proofreading to publicity and marketing. She also broadly outlined the tasks that each of these roles entailed and insisted that a holistic knowledge and experience of each of these varied tasks, including digital literacy, could go a long way in establishing a stronghold in the field. 

She further dwelled on the fact that Publishing is a dynamic territory and requires one to keep up with the changing trends, whether they be related to the drift towards social media and online promotions or to the increasing need for protecting and monitoring author-rights in a world where books are increasingly being adapted into films, web-series and other forms of media.

Towards the end of the session, Meenakshi entertained a host of questions from students and faculty members with regard to the specific courses that one could pursue to give themselves an edge in the profession; the difference in the work culture of Indian and international publishing houses; on it being a lucrative career option or not; and, finally, the qualities that editors look for in a commissioned manuscript which could help budding authors tailor their work in a manner that could escalate their chances of being a published author.