ABOUT

So what do you actually do?

I’m a senior marketing executive at Farshore, a children’s and teen publishing division under HarperCollins UK.

I work on marketing campaigns across our entire list, so that includes picture books, fiction, teen / young adult books, and brands such as Mr. Men.

What has your career path been?

It took patience and a bit of luck.

After graduating university with an English degree, I tried my best to get a foot in the very heavy door of the publishing world. After a few weeks of unpaid work experience at PRH and Hachette, countless rejections for entry level roles and a year in a non-publishing job, I stumbled across Creative Access.

A friend of a friend mentioned the organisation in passing to me. After a little more research I discovered that Creative Access was formed to get individuals from under represented backgrounds into the creative industries - from publishing and journalism to radio and theatre - in the hopes to even out the playing field for people of colour, and make the the creative landscape a more inclusive and diverse one.

They operate as a recruiter (and your biggest cheerleader), listing the internships they have available with details on duration, job description, and, crucially, salary. At a time when most publishers were not paying for work experience, that was a game changer. You apply via their website and they let you know whether you made the interview shortlist for that particular role, as well as coaching you through the entire process.

But CA was still competitive. It took a while for the right internship to crop up and for me to reach the shortlist stage. Eventually I landed 12 months at Egmont Book as their digital marketing intern, and in the two years since my internship has ended I’ve managed to work my way up to my current role. 

I often wonder whether I’d even have a journey had it not been for Creative Access and the serendipitous manner in which I’d discovered them. They’re doing amazing work (to this day they celebrate my career progression) and I’ll take any opportunity to shout them out.

It’s also worth mentioning that CA have reached milestones since I was an intern too. They continue to partner with publishers to launch industry leading initiatives, they’ve placed over 1000 interns in the creative industries and they’ve expanded their website to also advertise permanent and senior level job roles.

I’d definitely recommend checking them out.

What is the best part of your job?

I’m about to hit you with so many cliches, I’m already sorry. But genuinely, no two days are the same.

Because I get to work on books from our entire list, each day is different. On Monday I was briefing in an animation for a karate chopping rabbit and by Wednesday I was writing book club questions for a hard hitting young adult thriller. The variation means I rarely feel like I’m not learning new things. It’s easy to get caught up in routine and sometimes that can feel sluggish and mundane, now more than ever. So having opportunities to switch things up week on week keeps things refreshing and engaging.

Within marketing you get the opportunity to flex your creative muscle, but there’s also the data and analytics side of the job that allows you to measure success in real time. The balance is perfect. Not feeling as creative today? No problem, let’s run a report on some Facebook and Instagram advertising. Now sick of numbers? Jump into some influencer collaborations instead. Sometimes it’s about letting your job fit around you and not the other way round.

Also, if you go about it the right way, free books.

Why do you do your job?

I’ve been obsessed with books for a long time.

Reading and visiting libraries are some of my earliest memories. Having said that, I can’t pinpoint the moment I consciously decided to pursue a job in publishing, so I don’t think it was by any means a light bulb moment. I was just drawn to it. The more I learnt about this mysterious industry, the more I wanted to be a part of it.

The idea of sharing stories feels important. Marketing can get a bad reputation in other fields, but when you’re helping get books into the hands of excited kids, I’m not sure there’s a bad way to spin it.

There’s also something so universal about children’s books. As you grow up you develop your preferences for genre and style, physical books or audio, or no books at all. But chances are, we all started off with The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

As for why I stay in my job. For as much as I loved books growing up, I look back now and wonder, ‘how much more could I have loved books if I’d seen myself in them?’.

The industry has been striving for diversity of late, but the ink is barely dry on those diversity initiatives. There’s still a long way to go, and children’s publishing has an even longer distance ahead. In my role I want to see and be a part of that change, whether that means engaging with plans and ideas, amplifying voices, or just holding people accountable.

Every time I get to work on a book by an author of colour I feel my heart sing a little, and it’s a reminder that I really love what I do. And I’m so happy to now be a connection to this mysterious industry for any POC publishing hopefuls.

It’s been an unexpected perk of the job.

One piece of advice for someone starting in your role?

No one knows what they’re doing!

It’s easy to get intimidated by a group of people who have all been in the business for a long time, and who know how to throw around publishing specific acronyms like it’s their own secret language. But this industry was once as much of a mystery to them as it is to you, so don’t even worry about all that. 

Ask as many questions as you need.

Ask them to as many people as possible.

When you start understanding what other teams do, it makes your job so much easier. Ask for introductions, to sit in on regular meetings and to shadow if possible. Dedicate a small amount of time in your early career to drinking up as much knowledge as possible and you’ll be set for life. Mentors can be really helpful with this too, and if you’re given the chance to get one, take it. Just make sure you feel comfortable talking to them.

Find your tribe. Publishing isn’t always unicorns and rainbows (even in children’s publishing), and having people to confide in is as important as the quality of your professional team.

Lastly, less a piece of advice and more of a reminder, because I know I found myself forgetting: your voice is valuable and crucial.

Never worry about using it.

Check out Jasveen’s socials below!

DAY IN THE LIFE

(Lockdown edition)

Emails. No day can start with peace if my inbox is full. And with call fatigue hitting everyone hard, there has definitely been a bit of overcompensating for the lack of face-to-face time with floods of emails. So I dedicate the first fifteen minutes of the day to skimming through outlook, flagging anything that needs to be dealt with that morning and noting anything else down on my to do list.

On any given month I’m working on the campaigns for around two to four books, plus any seasonal marketing (Mother’s Day, Easter etc.).

But before I jump into those, I dip into social media. I manage the Twitter and Instagram for Electric Monkey, our teen and young adult imprint, so I glance at the notifications, DMs and the engagement on the content I’d scheduled for the night before. I also check to see if anything is trending, eyeing up news (or scandals, you never know) and any opportunities to jump on some reactive social media.

Then it’s campaign time. The work done on campaigns can be split out in a few different ways. I usually look at it as: individual work, briefing out work, collaborating and design.

Individual work includes taking your title and budget and creating the foundation of your campaign. You look at who you need to reach, what the targets are and plan out the marketing tactics that will help you reach your goals. Once you’ve done that, you need to get everyone on board, including the author and agent, and start actioning your campaign.

We often work with third parties for tactics: animation studios, parenting websites, print and online publications, influencers, event agencies, photographers, companies who create teaching resources, printers and more. To make sure these partnerships operate as smoothly as possible, I write up briefs or set up calls to book in activity, then manage these relationships until the activity is done.

I also have to action my own work. This might be planning the look and design of the campaign, setting up the targeting and creative for Facebook and Instagram advertising, drafting an organic social calendar, launching Amazon advertising and A+, planning and creating mailers, securing promotional slots, shortlisting the right influencers or monitoring NetGalley, to name a few.

We have a marketing designer on our team, so my days also include making sure the vision for the campaign comes to life with their help.

I’ve also recently taken on the general marketing for our Electric Monkey list. I therefore dedicate parts of the week to organising our teen and YA newsletter, blogger outreach and brainstorming strategies to expand our list awareness and reach.

There’s a lot of collaborating and communication in my role, usually in the form of meetings, so my day is broken up by calls with teams across the company. Probably my favourite, we have marketing updates and brainstorms; a session to bounce creative ideas around for all campaigns and gain some fresh insight. I always leave these feeling reinvigorated and with so much to think about.

Other meetings I go along to include some with editorial about proofs, design and activity updates, cover meetings, updates with export, with HaperCollins networks, with the other children teams or International teams for cross promotional opportunities, and there’s always a company wide town hall or two.

And every now and again we drop everything because an email lands in our inboxes with the subject line ‘URGENT SUBMISSION.’ This usually means we all need to speed read a brilliant new book for feedback and sometimes, when some extra spice is needed, we’ll turn around a campaign pitch within the day to impress the author and agent.

All in all, it’s a mixed and chaotic bag. Some days are all of the above. Other days you tick one thing off your to do list. But it’s all about balance and understanding priorities, and there’s always tomorrow to give it all another go.