Monday, July 25, 2011
AP National Writer
NEW YORK
Book publishing may be an industry that never stops predicting its own demise or mourning better days, but it remains golden enough for young people such as Lindsay Neff.
“It’s the big time; it’s where everything happens,” says Neff, 22, a Stow, Ohio, native who recently graduated from the College of Wooster with a double major in English and philosophy. “I’ve always loved reading, and I’ve always loved writing, and I’ve always enjoyed analyzing texts. So, that’s what really did it for me and made me want to be in publishing.”
Neff is among some 100 young women and men who attended the Summer Publishing Institute at New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies, where CEOs, editors, booksellers, agents and recruiters give talks and teach seminars, and students immerse themselves in a business that has changed, and not changed, in profound ways.
For decades, college graduates eager to break into publishing have been attending programs at NYU, Columbia University and the University of Denver. Alumni include publishing executives Morgan Entrekin of Grove/Atlantic and the Weinstein Company’s Judy Hottensen, Alfred A. Knopf editor Gary Fisketjon and HarperCollins sales president Josh Marwell.
The programs remain in high demand even through the worst of news about the industry.
The decline and impending liquidation of the Borders superstore chain has not deterred NYU student Ben Zarov, a graduate of Grinnell College in Iowa. Borders’ fall makes Zarov “fear that people don’t care about books,” but he still believes that it’s possible to “make things better,” and he wants a career in publishing.
“It seems like an excellent way to engage in the world of ideas. I like reading, and [publishing] is a way to participate in the national conversation,” says Zarov, 23.
The students share a love of books and a modern willingness to read them in new ways. E-books are now more than 20 percent of the overall market, more than the double the rate of a year ago.
Publishers and school officials also say students are more business-minded and better informed than a decade ago.
Lindy Hess, who directs Columbia’s book program, says most students initially wanted to be editors, but by the end were also considering marketing, sales and other departments.
NYU publishing student Darcy Latta, who majored in English literature at the University of Pittsburgh, says she is interested in publicity because she loves how “business departments combine the creative and commercial aspects of the industry.”