I took a bit of a detour on this prompt. Rather than focusing on fictional jobs, I focused on real jobs in the book world. All of these jobs are ones that I would like if I were ever to follow a different career path.
Top Five Wednesday is hosted by Thoughts on Tomes. For those of you that are interested in taking part, check out the Goodreads group here: Top 5 Wednesday.
Top 5 Wednesday: Book Related Jobs I’d Want To Have
This week’s prompt:
Any fictional career you’d want to have? Remember, T5W is always open to movies, tv, and video games as well.
5. Proofreader
Proofing is just something that I do without meaning to. I’m always finding typos, weird spacing, or other such things in anything I’m reading. Recently, I’ve made an effort to write to the person or company to let them know about the errors. Though I still feel a bit awkward about it, I email them because I would hope that if I made an error in my writing, that someone would point it out to me.
For example, I was reading a website a few weeks ago and saw a number of spelling mistakes on their events page. So I took notes and emailed them to the address provided on the site. The person who responded to me said they were very thankful to me for pointing out the errors.
In another recent situation, I was reading a book for an honest review and saw a few errors. I wrote down the page numbers and what errors I saw so I could email the author to point them out to him. He was also very thankful for the notes.
4. Bookstore Worker
I have a few years of experience working in retail. I worked at a shop in a mall, an off-price retailer box store, and two local gift shops. While retail certainly has it’s ups and downs, I enjoyed it overall! And for one reason or another, I just always wanted to work at a bookstore.
Unfortunately, my closest shot at working at a bookstore came too late; I was offered a job one week before I moved away from NYC and back to Maine.
3. Book Content Site Editor/Contributor
I follow a number of book content sites and absolutely love so many of the bookish communities. However, as stated in #5, I find myself catching typos and layout errors all the time. So to be paid to make sure the blog posts are polished would actually be really fun for me!
Then from the contributor standpoint, we’ll have to wait and see! Blogging here was a HUGE step for me. And I’m still working on content and layout and such. But someday I would love to submit one of my posts to a site with a larger audience.
2. Book Website Marketer
This job is in the same vein as my current job. I find marketing to be incredibly interesting! I’m always researching the latest and greatest tips and trick to use for both our company and our clients.
I see so many authors promoting their books in social media in a way that makes me cringe. Whether it’s an author tweeting in all caps, or misusing hashtags, I always want to reach out and offer my help.
I really think that helping an author create a new website, or add to their existing site, and optimize for SEO would be so much fun! And of course promoting their book through social would be very exciting as well!
1. Cover Blurb Writer
I love reading cover blurbs! Though I have to admit, when I see a “blurb” that is just one word, I get a bit irritated. For example:
“SUPERB!” – The New York Times
Like, really? Sometimes I worry that a word is thrown up there as a cover blurb, but that the person didn’t actually read the book. I definitely prefer the blurbs that have a bit more substance! And if something I wrote ever appeared on a book cover… I can’t even begin to imagine how happy I would be about it.
Thanks for reading!
What is your bookish dream job?
Honestly, no book blurbs will ever beat the one on Ellen's autobiography: http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5441/10034624725_645836a66c.jpg
YES. Those are perfect!! We need more of that!
A cover blurb writer would be so much fun!
🙂