1. Unit 2: working in the creative media industry
Learning aima: understand employment and career opportunities in the media sector
The media industry and working in media is a very broad area of work because there are so
many faucets of careers and opportunities that accumulatively work together which can
range from Animation and Film which are more creatively based depending on what sector
in them careers you work in, to advertising and press which can be more straightforward
and business heavy however this is all circumstantial depending on the sector in the career
itself because their are creative and business sectors in each respectively.
This demonstrates how broad working in the media industry can be, careers in media are
extremely nuanced because each job has a mix of creativity and business, and each job is
vital upon one another. Creative and more practical jobs would be; Film, Television, Radio,
Interactive Media, Animation and Computer games. However to look on the more business
internal jobs that would work under the jobs previously mentioned would be ones such as;
Advertising, Publishing, Press and Marketing.
Each of these industries all provide their own unique role and have different subsets of jobs
that accumulate an industry as well as individual products that they all individually produce,
e.g Film, TV shows, Radio Shows, Music, Books, Newspapers and Magazines.
For my selected area of research, I will be choosing the publishing industry. Publishing is
making information available for public view. A publisher makes and sells literature or
information. Publishers can pay their authors or authors who want to be published can pay
the publisher. Sometimes authors are their own publishers.
Traditionally, publishing means the creation and distribution of printed works such as books,
magazines and newspapers but it is not just restricted to print publications and more
recently internet publishing has became prevalent. Some of the big companies in the
publishing industry are ones such as future publishing, penguin random house, the GVA for
UK publishing was valued at £11 billion pounds. However their are different types of
publishing and with publishing comes legal issues as it is more on the business side a big
legal issue in book publishing is Privishing (private publishing) which is a modern term for
publishing a book but printing so with few copies or with such lack of marketing, advertising
or sales support that it effectively does not reach the public. The book is almost impossible
to obtain through normal channels such as bookshops, often cannot be ordered specially,
and has a notable lack of support from its publisher, including refusal to reprint the title. A
book that is privished may be referred to as "killed." Depending on the motivation,
privishing may constitute breach of contract, censorship or good business practice e.g. not
printing more books than the publisher believes will sell in a reasonable amount of time
which can result is a serious law suit between the author and publishing team.
Job roles
There are many job roles within the publishing sector, in just the book publishing sector
itself there are many roles that goes into publishing,
An editor, who firsts receives a submission of a draft or manuscript from an authors agent
for a book, and then they read it, and once it goes through the process of deciding whether
2. the editor sees potential in the book and wants to publish it or not. After deciding to go
ahead and publish it the editor will then help the author to edit the book and make it
marketable from the perspective of a reader, an editor will do this by reading the
manuscript/draft over and make revisions to it and send it back and forth to the author to
iron out any adjustments and make it as enjoyable as possible. An editors responsibility also
involves internally overseeing the publishing of the book, by being involved with all the time
teams in publishing e.g the designing of the book cover, the edit which is their own
responsibility , the legal management such as sales and rights to the book, the marketing
and publicity for the book and project managing which is essentially holding meetings
liaising between both parties, the publishing house and author/agent.
Art Designers, the main role of a designer is to engage the target audience with a book
cover and making it as visually appealing to readers enough for them to buy it. What a
designer will do first is, get an idea from the book about its contents and designing a cover
that represents the contents of the book and designing a cover that communicates that to
an audience, a way of visually storytelling. There are many different ways of designing a
cover as a designer will have to understand what audience they are appealing to, and a
designer will choose to go for an illustrator or choose a designer themselves. Techniques
vary from designers but most will choose to read the manuscript first then create a mock
concept, designers will typically work in a team to cover with a speciality in different
mediums of art and design, and whoever creates a cover that is most appealing will then get
forwarded onto the final version or multiple covers are made for different editions of the
books.
Production - a production manager or assistants role is to turn the manuscript and artwork
into an actual book, it is up to them to make sure a book hits it's deadlines, and to schedule
and is optimal for the business and they work closely with the editors and design teams to
work out how to best produce it by deciding on things such as the laminates of the books
and overall producing the actual physical copy of the book, they also work closely with
external parties such as printers and it is essential to form a good relationship with these
external parties, and also checking for any errors in the book itself before it gets sent off to
be made into advances
marketing, a marketing directors main role is to think about how they can sell books to
audiences and finding new ways to engage audiences through campaigns, working with
social media and creating new content to engage with audiences, but also includes
traditionally marketing which is things such as posters, billboards physical ads and then
gorrila marketing which is outdoors advertising in unconvential ways.
a publicists job is connecting the book with the reader, a publicists job starts much before
the book is even put on shelves and their main job is to create publicity for the book and a
main part of their job is having a relationships between journalists and the author. A
publicist is always pitching books to journalists that can be somewhat reviewed for the book
to gain traction and also that can be speaking to new or established journalists about books
to try and get them to promote it and with authors it can be hiring appearances for signings
and accompanying an author traveling helping them promote the book.
3. Distribution, is the receipt, storage, processing of customer orders and transport of books, it
is a very important part of publishing as it handles all of the customer sides of things, the
distribution team will normally decide who they are shipping to whether it be wholesalers
or retailers and work closely with the marketing and publishing team to meet deadlines and
demand.
Recruitment
In the publishing industry and through the majority of the media industry, most of the
advertisements of job vacancies are spread by word of mouth, personal contacts and most
commonly social media and specific company websites. In regards to penguin publishing,
they mostly hire through their website, where they often post about job opportunities and
have a section on the type of careers available through their company, because they are
such a big company, they have their own separate careers website where they list off the
job vacancies and it is very common within large companies to have a separate website, in
which they also offer internships and work experience for students, there are many benefits
that come from advertising jobs online because it means that they are accessible to
everyone and is a cheaper way of advertising while maintaining a level of fairness,
publishing companies tend to hire online more than from word of mouth because it is not a
technical job unlike cinema they need people who are passionate about books however the
requirements often met to be hired are that these people need some work experience and
have evidence of campaigns they have been on. However there are some cases where they
hire from social media’s such as instagram, facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, which are all
highly populated but also means that they are guaranteed someone who will know a lot
about the company already and have an interest in that industry, but social media allows
people to easily share it which means there can be a greater reach which in turn is free
advertising. Sometimes in rare cases jobs can come from personal contacts or from word of
mouth which means that the company directly knows this person because they have done
something for the company before be it from an internship or work experience helping
around or a piece of work they have done independently that has caught the attention from
the company, this is effective because the company has a good idea of who they are hiring
and have especially picked them out to do a specific job.
Contracts of employment
There are many different types of contracts within employment such as Full time contract,
Part tine contract, casual labour, temporary, permanent, voluntary etc. When you work in a
full time job you are normally working 40 hour weeks max and are entitled to many work
benefits such as; a pension, holidays, sick pay and parental leave, most jobs are full time and
permanent e.g. editor, publicist, production manager etc. however depending on the job
the contracts can differ there are things such as part time permanent jobs where you
receive the same benefits but the pay will be less because of less hours, job roles that
provide this tend to be in finance or marketing, however the same applies for temporary
jobs where you are still entitled to company benefits depending on the contract, temp full
time jobs to stand in for someone or temp part time jobs for busy periods around Christmas.
Freelance jobs are ones that the pay, work hours and responsibilities is on them and what
they are hired to do in publishing freelance jobs tend to be art designers or illustrators who
4. have been commissioned by an editor or production manager to design a cover in which
they are also credited in. There are websites available that list jobs for freelance workers to
do certain jobs that the company at hand can’t do.
Finding employment opportunities
As a employee it is important to showcase work and have evidence of work that can support
your chance of employment, often a way someone does this is through a website, which is a
good place to showcase work because it can showcase many mediums, and is easily
accessible to employers, on a website, examples of work that could be showcased can be as
show reel, which is a short video that compiles your work showing the process and the
actual work itself, show reels are great for artists such as designers or illustrators where
they can record they process of work.
A portfolio is great for people who have a broad range of work and showcases different
mediums of work that a show reel can not display, a portfolio can either be digital or printed
and can be uploaded to a website its effective in showing employers your ability, a portfolio
is effective for all types of people as it can not only showcase work but also campaigns
someone like an editor or a production manager has worked on.
Social Media is also really effective for showing you work as their are many social media’s
that can display different kinds of work and can be easily linked to a website so it is all
interconnected and accessible to an employer, social media’s like instagramand twitter are
great for more freelance artist jobs as they can easily showcase for images and video work
they’ve done whereas more business heavy jobs like an editor or someone in marketing can
better showcase their work on LinkedIn or FaceBook where business pages can be created
which can showcase events they’ve helped or work they’ve participated in.
A CV (curriculum vitae - Latin for “course of life”) is a short document that efficiently sums
up a persons work over life, which includes; a persons span of education and the respective
grades from each school, work experience, hobbies and interests, skills and career
prospectives. A cv is a great way of encompassing all of the work you have done and
showing ur ability to an employer, it can also be really accessible if it is up on a website or
printed out for hand out, however the downside compared to a show reel or portfolio is it
does not fully showcase your work and an employer is basing your ability off experience
rather than work itself, a CV is a must have for all employees as it is always requested from
an employer.
A letter of application also known as a cover letter which is usually presented alongside your
CV, and is a more in-depth personal introduction as to why you should be employed and is
there to highlight and further explain your already developed skills and experience
References are also very useful to be employed as these can be applied anywhere especially
in your CV and your websites or business page and act as supporting evidence as to your
previous work and gives a secondary source as to who and what you have work wether,
references can be work partners/collaborates or people that you have previously worked
for or been hired by, it is a great way of reinforcing all the skills and abilities you have
already established
5. Interview techniques and professional behaviour
Your ability as an employee is just as important as you are as an employee and an employer
will look for a certain attitude and presentation in candidates as to why interviews are
extremely important so it is important that as an employee you present the required
amount of professionalismfor a job however there are a few key factors that are objectively
important which is things such as time management and a good way of doing this is showing
up the interview on time or even earlier and meeting specific deadlines, its all about
showing to an employer why you are a stand out candidate and as to why you should be
hired. For the interview specifically its great to prepare and research about the job itself
which communicates interest and enthusiasmtowards the employer, and in the interview
itself its good to have eye contact, good communication and clear speech, being prepared
and bringing a CV or cover letter or something that you can show to an interviewer that
helps effectively sell yourself. If fortunate enough to get the job you must maintain a level of
professionalismby being appropriately dressed just as the interview and be organised and
being organised helps stay professional as you are adhering to deadlines effectively, ways
you can be organised are have a schedule through a calendar or dairy to help remember
things and have efficient time use. Not only that you must also maintain a good level of
communication between colleagues in a professional manner that is respective because
when you openly communicate it creates more efficiency but also helps maintain morale
not only that it is also good to fairly contribute and also take criticism when it comes to
group projects and have the company in mind first.
Increasing Job Opportunities
As the media industry is constantly evolving it is important to stay on top and be up to date
within the industry and to increase the chances of being employed, a good way of doing so
is having the appropriate education for the job whereas it be a degree or lower even after
education it is a good idea to continue doing courses that help you adapt to the ever
changing industry and continue developing your professionalism, it is good to have some
knowledge in the field of work you are in as it makes you more employable not only this
education and trainings helps develop on skills that are you able to use in this field of work.
As much as having the skills is important it is also just as important to gain valuable work
experience or shadowing someone in the field wether that be voluntary or an internship or
part time any form of it that can be applied to your field of work is extremely useful as that
type of experience can not be taught, and it is good to add it onto your CV because a
employer will see work experience as a valuable asset and more of a reason to hire you.
Furthermore it is very important to be updating your CV, portfolio, show reel or website
anything to make it more current and standout to an employer, this is key if you want to be
employed as it shows your keen interest in the changing work environment and showing
how you are adapting and how you can adapt in the workplace.
