My work experience at Miles Kelly by Alex Hui

My name is Alex and I am in year 10 at school.

When my school first told my year that we would be doing work experience, I had no clue as to where I could complete it. It seemed as if everyone around me knew what they wanted to do and I was stuck being indecisive. It only occurred to me that working in a publishers might be interesting when a friend mentioned to me how much I enjoy reading. At first I was a bit sceptical as this was completely new to me and, due to no experience, I didn’t think I would be doing anything fun. However, despite me having no experience working in a publishers or even an office, every day at Miles Kelly I was given new and challenging tasks.

Americanisation of a book

What have you done this week?
Over the past five days, I have been given a huge array of tasks to complete. On my first day, I worked on some Americanisation of a book, key wording images for a book on ancient Egypt and stock checking. Over the next few days, I continued working on Americanisation and stock checking but I also did artwork briefs and references for three different books, picture research, checked converted files against printed books and created some boards for the Miles Kelly Pinterest page. On the last day, I also learnt some basics of Photoshop and helped create new banners for the Miles Kelly website.

Photoshop work on images for the Miles Kelly website

What have you enjoyed/found difficult?
The thing I enjoyed most this week was writing the artwork briefs for the new picture books because I liked describing each page of the book, as well as adding some of my own details. I also enjoyed the picture research for a science book because I came across a lot of interesting pictures, such as the northern lights, and photos of things I didn’t even know existed such as a shockwave truck.

I found Americanisation difficult because not only are the spellings different, the grammar changes a lot as well! It was challenging because there were so many small changes that I kept on missing.

Artwork briefs for new Bible picture books

What have you learned?
This week I have learnt so much about how much work goes into publishing a book and how a publishing company works. In almost each task given, I have learnt new skills that will definitely help me later on in life. Considering that I didn’t even know how to use an apple iMac at the beginning of the week, I would say that I’ve learnt a lot!

Did it meet your expectations of children’s publishing?
As Dumbledore once said to Harry Potter, “Yes…and no”. I knew that working in a publishers would require a very good eye for detail but I did not expect just how much work goes into publishing one book. I also didn’t expect the atmosphere to be so relaxed and I was surprised at how everyone was always so friendly and ready to help, even when they were in the middle of doing their own work.

All in all, although I’m still undecided, I would definitely not rule out working in publishing as what I want to do in the future as I have really enjoyed this week working at Miles Kelly and I definitely do not regret choosing this place to do my work experience.