Watkins Toolkit for Publishing Hopefuls

Welcome to our Peek into Publishing: Watkins Toolkit for Publishing Hopefuls! This is a new initiative where we want to pull back the curtains to the publishing industry and give you insight into different departments and how they work together.

We’ve asked a wide variety of our colleagues to write profiles, telling you more about their jobs: the daily tasks, the best bits, the challenges. Our aim is to also share application and interview advice from our senior team, as well as general tips and publishing content.

We hope you find some useful content within these posts and best of luck on your journey as you apply to and work in publishing! If there’s content you want us to be creating on this page, engage with us on Twitter and let us know.

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  Watkins Insider – Audiobook Appreciation Month with Gigi St JohnJune 21, 2024
  In case you hadn’t noticed yet, it’s Audiobook Appreciation Month! In honour of the celebration, I asked our Digital Production Assistant Gigi St John to chat with me about the future of audiobook production.  “Audiobook production is a relatively new and exciting area of the publishing trade, and it’s an area which is currently experiencing… Read more: Watkins Insider – Audiobook Appreciation Month with Gigi St John
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  Watkins Insider – Recent Deals in Foreign Rights with Melody TraversMay 1, 2024
  The world of foreign rights publishing is an open and exciting one. Having secured some intriguing deals recently, I asked Rights Team Manager Melody Travers to tell me more about her team and their latest success.  One recent highlight was the sale of Italian rights to ‘The Japanese Art of Living Seasonally’ authored by Natalie… Read more: Watkins Insider – Recent Deals in Foreign Rights with Melody Travers
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  Haunted Lighthouses of Britain by Roger O’ReillyApril 2, 2024
  There can be few lighthouses that do not have a ghost story or some tale of the ethereal attached to them. Often isolated and watching over vessels of all stripes slipping into an out of port under cover of darkness, they are witness to a shadowy world that often leaves more unexplained than illuminated. At… Read more: Haunted Lighthouses of Britain by Roger O’Reilly
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  A Brief History of British Lighthouses by Roger O’ReillyMarch 18, 2024
  The earliest lighthouses in Britain used whatever materials were available locally; wood, brick and stone. The life of these structures was predictably short, especially if they were offshore. The rebuilding of the Eddystone Rocks lighthouse off Plymouth Sound by the engineer John Smeaton set a milestone in the progression of lighthouse design. This, coupled with… Read more: A Brief History of British Lighthouses by Roger O’Reilly
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  Behind The Cover – Make Good Trouble with Karen SmithMarch 8, 2024
  Last night (March 7th) was the The Academy of British Cover Design awards where Repeater designer Hollie Smith was nominated for the non-fiction category for the cover of Collapse Feminism. In honour of the awards, I spoke to Karen Smith, Head of Book Design at Watkins Media about the decisions behind the cover of Make… Read more: Behind The Cover – Make Good Trouble with Karen Smith
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  A Peek into Publishing: Publishing AssistantJanuary 26, 2022
  We’ve asked Desola to answer questions about her job as a Publishing Assistant for Angry Robot.
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  Top Ten Terms: Editorial in PublishingJanuary 12, 2022
  We’ve asked our editorial department about ten terms they wish they’d known when they started in publishing.
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  A Peek into Publishing: Audio with Sneha AlexanderDecember 15, 2021
  We’ve asked Sneha to answer questions about her job in publishing as an Audio Assistant.
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  Top 10 Tips:
  First Week in PublishingDecember 8, 2021
  We asked our recent starters what ten things they would recommend you do in your first week.
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  A Peek into Publishing: Interview Tips from Hiring ManagersNovember 15, 2021
  Our senior hiring team have answered your questions about interviewing for entry-level publishing jobs – what stood out, what not to do and what they were specifically looking for.