Publishing and promoting more than 300 new books each year is no easy task. That’s why our interns are invaluable! We love our interns and we hope the experience they gain while working at Lerner will help lead them to a lifelong love of publishing.

Now, to give you a look inside a Lerner Publishing Group internship, here are a few thoughts from our wonderful sales and marketing intern, Collin!

Upon completing my junior year of college, the pressure of having an ever-so-important internship was beginning to set in. Being a business student, I had always pictured an internship to be more of a chore in business casual attire than an actual job. After participating in the game show-like atmosphere of being cut from or advancing to the next round of something a little less enjoyable than Jeopardy—interviews—I found my preconceived notions not far from the truth. As cliché as it may sound, this all changed when I started working as a marketing intern for Lerner Publishing Group.

So far, my experience at Lerner has been great. Most interns worry that they won’t receive any valuable knowledge from all the hours they feel may have been wasted, but in my case, it has been quite the opposite. Sure I had the usual doubts when I first started—would I be able to live up to their expectations? Would they give me meaningful and challenging assignments? Would I learn something to help me in the future?—but after the first week all those doubts vanished. During my first two weeks, I was given a press release and pitch letter to write and catalogs to revise and edit. After that, I knew I was looked at as a valuable member of Lerner.

Part of the reason why I chose to work at Lerner was because of its association with the publishing industry. Apart from the fact that my work consists on promoting children’s books all day,
which is great for me since I’m basically a 6’ 2” child, one of my goals in life is to write a book by the time I’m twenty-five—I have three and a half years left to compete this and I haven’t even started… I may need to bump it up to thirty. Working at Lerner Publishing Group continues to present me with a better
understanding of exactly how the publishing industry operates which will help me to accomplish this goal.

With just over half of my internship completed, I feel as if I have already not only learned a lot to help me in the future, but contributed a great deal as well. This experience has certainly been one-of-a-kind and I continue to enjoy every minute of it.