Name: Ariel Price

Age: 25

College & Majors/Minors: Bachelor of Arts, English Literature

Current Location: Thousand Oaks, CA

Current Form of Employment: Associate Editor, Corwin

Where do you work and what is your current position?

I work at Corwin, a K-12 professional development provider, as an Associate Editor. In my role, I manage our educational technology list. This involves acquiring new books, project managing the books in development or production, working with authors to develop their manuscripts, conducting peer reviews of manuscripts, doing market research, and working with our sales & marketing team so that they know the authors and the content of our books. I also manage the company blog, Corwin Connect.

Tell us about how you found your first job, and how you found your current job (if different).

After college, I did a variety of internships at publishing houses and an editing company. I knew that I wanted to be in publishing, but I wanted to stay in California. SAGE, Corwin’s parent company, was the only publishing company within about six hours of where I grew up. I applied there a handful of times before I was called to interview for an Editorial Assistant position at Corwin. I had to go through about seven interviews, but I got it! A year later, I was promoted to Associate Editor.

What was another writing-related job that was important in your career?

My career really started with Corwin, but the internships that I did after college were invaluable in helping me decide what I wanted to do. Even though I had the same title as “Editorial Intern” at each internship, I completed such different tasks that I got a wide range of experience.

What did you do in college to prepare for your post-grad life?

In college, I was a research assistant for one of my English professors and an officer in our chapter of Sigma Tau Delta. I also did some student teaching, which helped me decide what I did NOT want to do!

What is your advice for students and graduates with an English degree?

Take some time to learn skills that interest you outside of your major. For example, if you think you might want to be in publishing, take some business or marketing courses as well—since book publishing is a business, after all! There are also a lot of writing jobs for websites or blogs, so it might be worth it to take some web design or coding classes. Having those extra skills could make the difference between you and another job candidate.