What is your guiding, underlying question?
My guiding question is how does a book go from an idea to what one sees on a shelf? What does this process look like for everyone involved, from authors to editors and agents and marketers? If my Senior Project were to involve interviewing people in the various parts of the publishing process, some sub-questions I have are:

• What do agents look for in books/manuscripts that show promise? How do agents distinguish between manuscripts that won’t make good books, and ones that need work but show promise?
• When it comes to editing books, who gets the final say: the author or the editor?
• How do marketers predict if a book will sell?

As someone who loves reading and books, these essential questions matter to me because I get to learn first-hand about something that’s impacted my life from a young age. Also, working in the publishing field is something I have been contemplating as a career, and this would allow me to experience it and see if it’s something I’m really interested in.

What if any steps, experiences, or products have you identified as necessary for answering your essential question?

Ideally, I would find an internship in publishing, or perhaps finding someone to shadow during this process. Additionally, it would be nice to interview or people from other parts of the publishing process. To do both of these, I would first need to figure out which publishing companies I would be interested in interning for. There’s so many in New York: bigger companies like Penguin Random House, Farrar Straus & Giroux, Henry Holt & Company, Little, Brown & Company, Picador; and indie companies such as Akashic, The Feminist Press, Holiday House, Skyhorse Publishing, just to name a few. Ideally, I would like to work with young adult/children’s fiction. I would need to reach out to people within the LREI community that have connections in these fields. Karyn mentioned she had some connections in the field, so I would see if I could find emails for those people. It would also be good to see if there’s any parents within the LREI community that have connections in these field, and exploring those too. It might also be helpful to possibly find people in this field through social media and email them for an interview that way.

What form do you propose your project take? Explain what you already know about the area of study or professional field you will be immersed in. Describe how you hope to spend your time during Senior Project.

There’s so many components to publishing a book, from writing the book, working with an agent, editing, art aspect, marketing, and then when the books make it to bookstores. I volunteered at a bookstore two summers ago so I have some idea of how that works on their end, but all the others are foreign to me. 

I plan to spend my time in T3 ideally interning at a publishing company. I would be going into the office (or however it will look like) a couple of times a week, doing whatever work they require of me. If I end up shadowing someone instead, I would learn from them as they do their job, helping them out with whatever they need. I would document the story of my project through a presentation at the end, which I would show at Senior Project Night.

What do you hope to learn through this experience? How do you see the proposed experience addressing your essential question? How will you know you have had a successful project?

I hope to learn about the full process of how books go from a concept to a reality, and what it would be like to be a part of it: what does being a writer, an editor, or a publisher look like? I see the proposed experience addressing my essential question by letting me figure it all out firsthand, as I would be working with/talking to authors, editors, and/or publishers. I will know I’ve had a successful project after I’ve taken part in meaningful discussion and work with whoever I end up interning/shadowing, and I’ve answered my essential question.