Announcement: Seeking interns in 2010

I just got back from the post office, where I found so many submissions that they wouldn’t all fit in our post office box. This is what we want, people!

Now that we’ve got a few submissions in hand, we’re on to the next step: lots and lots of reading.

One of the ways we’ll be able to get started on the shoestring budget we’ll have is to seek interns who can help us with editorial, art, marketing, and PR duties. We need interns, preferably college students looking for publishing experience, to read submissions, assist the art director with design duties, and assist with the website, among other duties. We hope that as we grow we’ll be able to also use the talents of freelance professionals and in-house part-time and full-time employees.

We would prefer to work with students who are located in Utah, preferably Utah County, due to the need to meet in person from time to time, but we will consider well-qualified candidates from other locations who can work remotely. (In fact, I would really love an intern who can help me find a way to organize email in a way that would work for taking submissions electronically, because right now we’re just not set up in a way that we can. If we can get that accomplished, we’d be able to work with remote interns much more easily.)

The first interns we’re looking for are editorial, because of course the first work we’re going to need to do is editorial: I need people to read the submissions we’re getting and to give me reader reports on them. This entails answering essay questions about whether a particular piece fits the mission of Tu Publishing (diversity + speculative fiction for young people), whether the writing is good enough to be worth investing further time on, that kind of thing. Reader reports will be brief for sample chapters and more in-depth for full-length manuscripts.

I’d also love interns who are interested in helping us design our website to become a destination for readers, and of course anyone who’d be interested in assisting with other publishing tasks as a way to improve your resume/build your portfolio.

What we promise to give you: experience in publishing that will help you to decide whether publishing is right for  you as well as to give you skills that will be useful in later employment. This is an unpaid internship.

If you would be interested in working with us, please send your resume and a cover letter to us at info AT tupublishing.com by Jan. 22 (we will continue to take resumes after that date, but those whose resumes have been received by the 22nd will receive first dibs on any work available). If you are interested in design or art, please include a link to work you’ve completed in the past (this might be work for a class project, etc.) or we can look at your physical portfolio in person. Tell us your goals in publishing (do you want to become an editor? artist? designer? writer?—that kind of thing) and how you feel about multicultural science fiction and fantasy. Let us know how much you know about the YA and children’s market (it’s okay if you’re still learning—that’s what an internship is for!).

This is currently not associated with a class for credit, though if you can make it work for your department, we are willing to fill out the paperwork you need.

We’ll get in touch next week with applicants to arrange a time to meet and discuss a sample reader’s report.