I’ve got a new post for today, and it’s from a guest. Another project I’ve been working on recently is getting an internship program started. I was lucky enough to get a great response from an ad I posted with the Denver Publishing Institute, and I’ve got a couple of young people (I know, that makes me sound really old — but hey, I am!) starting with us. I had them do an initial “assignment” of writing a blog post for me; I was curious what they’d come up with. So here’s the first; I hope you enjoy these fresh new voices!

Guest blogger: Chad Hamilton

It has finally happened. I have been birthed into the world of publishing—and what a wide, blurry world it is.

Nearly two weeks ago I graduated from the Publishing Institute at the University of Denver. It was an intensive, four week course designed to give recent college graduates a crash-course in all things publishing. The once-a-year program primarily churns out future editors for large publishers, and so the curriculum is heavily weighted toward that goal. Yet for those of us who did not swoon at the romantic notion of reading manuscripts well into the night, every night, there were a plethora of other topics covered. From the role of the editor to the subsidiary rights department, we were exposed to nearly every step in the publication process of large and independent publishers of all types of books.

Yet, despite all of the recent growth and future growth potential—self-publishing was not covered. So how have I ended up writing this guest blog for Self-Publishing Resources?

I am a baby in the publishing industry. Though I have been given a head start with experience working for a print production facility, and having attended the Publishing Institute, I have years of proving myself to do. Frankly, I am scared to choose a particular area on which to focus: be it public relations, marketing, editing, or anything else in publishing.

With the industry in flux, the last thing I want to do is specialize in an area that may soon become obsolete. There will always be editors, marketing departments, and PR people to help get the book out, but the traditional ways of doing those things are changing. I am afraid that I will spend my “proving” years learning the wrong processes and that at some point in my career I will have to start over, or worse yet, become obsolete myself.

Self-publishing seems like the perfect opportunity to learn various processes, to remain flexible and open to new emerging opportunities, and ultimately to remain valuable to the publishing industry.

I believe these are some of the same reasons why authors are choosing to self-publish. After all, where to publish is a critical career decision for a writer as well.

Note: Chad Hamilton is a recent graduate of the prestigious Denver Publishing Institute. He also has a bachelor of arts degree in English and creative writing from Colorado State University. His present position as leadership development associate for a publicly traded printing company gives Chad an excellent overview of the production end of publishing. As a new intern for Self-Publishing Resources, he has much to offer. Hopefully, I can teach him a thing or two as well. — Sue