One of this years student opportunities

Visit Plexus

'Over the years, we have had quite a lot of students from your course - in jobs and as work experience - and I have always found that the grounding they get with you is brilliant for our type of illustrated publishing'.

Plexus Publishing is a small publishing company based in Clapham, London. Publishing between 15 to 20 titles per year and specialising in high quality illustrated trade paperbacks with a leaning towards popular culture: music, film and photography. We pay our work experience person £80 per week to cover expenses. If interested please send CV by email to Sandra Wake.

First of all, you should know that literary lunches, launch parties and intellectual banter about the decline of the English novel do not feature in our daily work. As in all offices, documents have to be photocopied, files have to be maintained, standard letters have to be cobbled together, invoices and production orders have to be typed, mass mailings have to be stuffed into envelopes, post has to be taken, tea and coffee has to be made.

Other duties will include proof checking, telephone answering, the odd bit of copy writing, drafting cover blurbs and press releases, publicising the books to the press and of course marketing. You will also be required to go through US publishers'catalogues, and rights guides of which there are hundreds, highlighting titles that could be of interest to us, constantly badgering the US rights people to send proposals, manuscripts and or copies of the finished books. You will also be expected to read and reject unsuitable proposals and manuscripts and write reports. You will also need to be dogged in your internet research.

Initially the work experience graduate works for Sandra Wake (Editorial Director) and or her partner Terry Porter (Publisher). They both need an individual to whom they can delegate the more routine aspects of the publishing list we are running. There are 2 non-fiction editors here also who occasionally need help (with a particularly urgent proof reading job, for instance) or clearing permissions.

Therefore the work experience graduate needs to be adaptable and outgoing, and something of a diplomat, able to concentrate steadily on one task at a time, while surrounded by the distractions of us asking whether or not you have done something or are able to do it now. In short, capable of doing twelve things at once.

You will also need to know how to use a PC and Microsoft Word for Windows. It is just as important, that you know how to use Quark XPress and Photoshop on the Apple Mac. This is because we frequently need to check and correct the designer's (we have one in-house designer but also use freelance designers) disc before we send a book off to the originator and all corrections are always done in-house at this stage usually by our editorial assistant.

Our list is made up of titles that we create in-house and titles that we buy in from the USA. As you will see from our catalogue some of our titles are illustrated non-fiction from the USA. If the work experience person we take on does well and proves to have what it takes to move on to more demanding tasks, these would include creating prelim pages (title and copyright) in our house style, incorporating cover changes from the American jacket to the UK cover. All of this editorial work is done on the Mac, in Quark, on the books we buy-in from the USA.

The work experience graduate will be required to help with publicity and marketing. If they have a flair for writing, they will be able to help write press releases, tip sheets and editorial fact sheets for both our US distributor, PGW, and our Sales people in London. The press releases are also used for publicity that we obtain in the press. We send out at least 100 copies of each book to the newspapers and magazines and this is another good role for the work experience graduate to actually get on the telephone chasing the Literary Editors and Feature Writers interested in writing about the books we publish.

The Plexus catalogue is usually put together by one of the editorial assistants on the Apple Mac. There is also an enormous amount of checking spreads and layouts, plus writing filler text and captions when necessary or if there is a rush on. Other editorial duties involve checking at every stage of the publishing process that quality is maintained; checking proofs and checking ozalids, and also scanning in pictures.

At Plexus we have the original idea for the book, either create the title in-house or commission an author to write it; organise and arrange the design and layouts; do the picture research; edit the manuscript when it comes in; choose the pictures and the cover shot; arrange for the cover to be designed; get estimates from printers, and arrange the printing. Promotion, publicity, sales and marketing are also handed here in liaison with our Sales Reps plus constant liaison with our distributor Bookpoint to make sure the books get into the shops on-time. Presentations for WH Smith and Waterstones are also created in-house.

Sandra Wake handles all foreign language rights sales so much presentation is done at Book Fairs to foreign publishers. The work experience graduate can also gain experience here if they are interested in this area of publishing. Initially they should be able to help do all the follow-up on these presentations to different foreign publishers.