Well it’s been 2 fast paced weeks since I started in the Books Team and I have enjoyed getting to grips with how to publish a book! Books is my final rotation; I can’t believe a year has gone by already!
Leaving the Industry Team behind was hard as I had enjoyed being part of the team. I had been helping to organise the
Chemistry Means Business: Industry & Technology Awards dinner ceremony in London and learnt a great deal about events management. Working across many different departments in a matrix was challenging but I enjoyed having the responsibility in managing the project. I created an online
map of our Enterprise Plus companies- which is now live. The map was created to help our companies to network with each other and find potential customers or partners.
Now I’m in Books and the team have been great- getting me up to speed with the many applications and software packages we use to publish a book. At the moment I’m looking after 6 books at various stages of production. Most books go through a review process and once approved we inform the authors or editors and contracts are signed. Authors then write the content and send us the final manuscript. The production team then take over and edit the manuscript. They then send the manuscript to type setters and then finally to the printers. The process takes 6 months from the manuscript being submitted to the hard cover copy being printed. All our recently printed copies hold pride of place on the shelf in the Books area. Some of our books are part of a subject specific
series. We also have popular science books, textbooks and special periodical reports that highlight research carried out in a subject area within a certain year.
Take a look at our books.
I’m also working on updating pages on our Books web pages so that they can be much more engaging for the website user. To help with this I’m getting trained in Google Analytics to help monitor the site and how it’s being used to help us create better user environments.
Ive been working with the Book Sales Team as well. I’m researching about the books trade environment and booking appointments with distributors and book sellers at the London Books Fair- where anyone who’s anyone in Books publishing comes to.
This weekend past I helped out at the
Cambridge Science Festival at the University of Cambridge’s Chemistry department. We had 5 stalls- representing
our global challenges drive with various fun activities for children to learn more about how chemistry can be used to. I helped to create the Health stall with my partner
Katrina. We created a Protein- Drug puzzle (out of plaster, paper mache and chicken wire!)- to help children understand the drug discovery process. The protein models were time consuming to make but I had a lot of fun creating an activity from scratch. The whole day was a blast and was managed expertly by
Debbie. All the grads and our volunteers worked very hard to get children inspired in chemistry!
Helping kids make medicines at the Health stall
Creating medicines that fit the shape of a protein's active site
An aardvark popped by to see the Chemistry Department's experiments!
Anu is a Graduate currently working in the Books Team on the Royal Society of Chemistry's Graduate Scheme. To see if we are currently recruiting for the RSC Graduate Scheme click here
