I thought I’d try my hand at writing a blog post, and as they say you should “write what you know”, this blog post is about me (apologies in advance).
I’m sure when most people think of us as a publisher it boils down to the 3 main departments, Editorial, Production, and Sales & Marketing. At least that’s the impression given by our authors when reading the Acknowledgements pages of their books (I’m not bitter, can you tell?).
But non-Earthscanners can be forgiven for forgetting about the people (meaning me) that don’t fall in to these three categories (although technically I work in the S&M department), in fact a high percentage of people in our own office aren’t actually sure what I do!
This is mainly because Website and Information Systems Co-ordinator (WISC) is not a standard job title you’d find in most companies (people’s minds seem to take the easy option and substitute it with ‘IT guy’). But it’s also because my position has evolved over time (I started as Sales and Marketing Assistant) so my colleagues have been used to me fulfilling roles that I am far removed from today.
So what does a WISC actually do then?
To put it simply, I’m involved in anything that involves getting information in to or out of either our company database or our website.
Our database contains all our book data, all our author data, and all our customer data (but no credit card details, calm down), so it’s vitally important that we use it to the best of its capabilities when producing mailing lists, catalogues, ONIX feeds, e.t.c. Our database also feeds directly to our website (so any changes to book information made that day get updated on the website over night).
Recent projects I’ve been involved in include getting our ONIX feeds up to scratch so they are accepted by Nielsen Book Data, with the next milestone to be using this ONIX feed to automatically populate an AI template (then hopefully a catalogue template?).
I am also currently assigning our own eISBNs to all of our eBooks (400+ now) so they can also be included in our ONIX feeds.
Website related, there are always multiple developments on the go at any one time (This blog being the result of a previous project – although it has been drastically improved since then by our Online Marketing Specialist Andrew). But the one that most interests me at the moment is a new faster method for subscribing and unsubscribing people to our ealerts. At the moment I have to manually unsubscribe every single person who emails requesting to be subscribed from our ealerts!
Thankfully we don’t get that many unsubscribe requests, as generally the people that do subscribe are interested and dedicated to sustainability and love to hear about our books, and it’s a real satisfaction to know that our customers are as passionate about the topics that we publish in as we are.
Which brings me on to the second topic I wanted to cover. As a WISC (about as far removed from the actual publishing process that you can get and still actually work for a publisher) how important is the subject matter that we publish in to me?
To be honest I don’t know a great deal about sustainability. I approve of it in a vague, ignorant sort of way, and it makes me feel good that I work for a company that has a moral compass and does actually care about the world it works in, but you’d never be able to have an in depth conversation with me about any aspect of sustainability (it’s definitely a good thing that I don’t work in editorial!). I joined Earthscan because I needed a job, not because I was particularly interested in sustainability. But the longer you stay here the more Earthscan’s values seep in to you, and having been here 4 years now, the guilt in not having taken the opportunity to educate myself is getting to be unbearable (not that anyone at Earthscan ever tries to impose their ideals on other people, all my guilt is self-imposed).
I’ve had The Principles of Sustainability by Simon Dresner sitting on my desk for about a year now (recommended to me by our Senior Commissioning Editor), the intention being that I would read it and use it as a springboard to dive into the myriad of fantastic books that we publish and begin my education on all things sustainable.
So far my foray into reading our own books is limited to attending conferences, and picking one up to read to stave off the boredom (not that all conferences are boring! And our stand is usually busier than most, but there are always quiet moments). In this way I’ve managed to work my way through a few of our more accessible books, mainly the ones in our excellent Atlas series, Animals, Ethics & Trade and Nanotechnology.
Once I was feeling brave and tried to read Planning and Installing Bioenergy Systems but quickly gave up as (although it is an amazing book, and one that consistently sells extremely well) it was far too advanced for a cretin like me.
But the book club (fiction only) that we have started up in the office has revived my voracious appetite for reading (I find these things happen in cycles). So who knows, maybe one day soon I’ll finish that copy of The Principles of Sustainability and just go on from strength to strength. I am without question optimally positioned in that I have access to the greatest, most authoritative and current collection of books, literally at my fingertips (I can reach out my hand and grab over a dozen new titles sitting on my desk).
Anyway, hopefully this post gives you some indication of the kind of work that goes on at Earthscan (besides the actual making of the books), and an indication of the kind of people we are (besides the stereotypical view of sustainability zealot).
