All summer in a day

What's a librarian to do with no job, no job prospects, and years of experience in librarianship?

Change professions.

This summer, I'm very excited (and very scared) to be taking the Columbia Publishing Course, formerly the Radcliffe Publishing Course, which includes one of my heroes, Arthur A. Levine, among its alumni. Since I've had some questions as to what the CPC is, I'll explain as best I can.

The CPC is publishing industry boot camp. They cram a year's worth of information on book, magazine, and new media publishing into six weeks. It's not the only publishing graduate course in the country; similar programs are offered at NYU and the University of Denver (see more on those here). They accept 100 people per year, most of whom are recent college graduates. Lecturers include current industry professionals; the opening day lecturer is David Young, Chairman of Hachette Book Group. There are also two hands-on workshops for book and magazine publishing. Part of me is absolutely dying to do the magazine workshop at Lucky but alas, I am only stylish when it comes to beauty products and jewelry. (Also I'm short and curvy, two more strikes against working at a fashion magazine.) Anyway, this is more than just "how to edit," it's "how to edit, agent, market, promote, distribute, and generally survive." In preparation for this course I've been reading a lot of industry blogs and completing the advance assignments, which cover marketing and acquisitions.

All of this means I'll be on hiatus, save for possibly blogging about the CPC, for the rest of June and all of July. If I'm lucky enough to have spare time to read, I'll be reading books for Kirkus and re-reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. And also The Ask and the Answer, which I was beyond thrilled to receive last week.

Will I come back to libraries? I don't know. I'm certainly not opposed to it, but right now I'm going to pursue this publishing thing and see how it turns out. Right now I'm most interested in agenting, but perhaps Columbia will show me that I have a talent for an aspect of publishing I never even considered. Stay tuned for future revelations.