Ceileigh Mangalam

Ceileigh Mangalam graduated from Humber's Creative Book Publishing program (CBPP) in 2015 and is currently the Editorial Intern at Simon & Schuster Canada. She told us a bit about what she's working on and how Humber helped her get there.

ON INTERNING:

I'm very enthusiastic about working with Simon & Schuster Canada's editorial team on their second-ever 100% Canadian book list. Before Fall 2015, S&S Canada distributed titles published by its US imprints. Fall 2016 saw the debut of their first batch of Canadian-originated titles, which included several national bestsellers. This has been a huge opportunity to be able to work in a part of the company that's still developing, and just being around the energy and creativity that keeps it moving forward is incredibly educational.

ON HUMBER:

One of the advantages of the CBP program is how short it is, because the pace at which you have to absorb new concepts is pretty much the pace at which I've continued to learn since my first day on the job. The four-month intensive course added enough publishing know-how, lingo, and resources to my base of book-passion to let me hit the ground running.

As well as preparing me for the environment of a publishing office, Humber also provided lots of hands-on learning without which I would have been completely lost. Our small, class-size Pubfight was essential to my understanding of book production and distribution, how well particular books perform in the market, the lifespans of trend topics, and how essential educated guesswork and risk-taking are in the publishing industry.

Humber gave me a much-needed crash course in the history of book publishing, and then contextualized the state of Canadian publishing today. Household names like Coles, Chapters-Indigo, and Amazon took on entirely new significance as I learned more about how the digital revolution has shaped what gets published and how, what the merging of book retailers means for the editorial process, and what on earth I needed to learn before I dove in and declared myself employable.

Find out more about Ceileigh on Twitter @CeileighTM