SUNY Oswego welcomed four established professionals from the field of publishing for its biannual Publishing Festival on Oct. 27, courtesy of the English and Creative Writing Department and Career Services.

“Today, it’s all about access,” Juliet Giglio, associate professor of English at SUNY Oswego, said at the event. “A lot of times, we know how to write, but we don’t know how to take it to the next step, how to sell it, or how to work in that industry.”

The panel of publishing experts included Sian-Ashleigh Edwards, Alicia Hughes, Vedika Khanna and Mia Robertson. Edwards is an agent at the William Morris Endeavor (WME) agency and Hughes is an associate editor at Sleep.com as well as a 2017 SUNY Oswego alumna. Khanna is a senior editor at Ten Speed Press, which is an imprint of Penguin Random House, and Robertson is an assistant editor at Gallery, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

With AI platforms such as chatGPT on the rise it would seem that the publishing world would be in a panic. But that is not, nor should it be, the case according to Hughes, who offered her take on the issue. She said that it took special relevance as her job is primarily blog posting and search engine optimization, which is made easier by AI.

“I would really lean into it and learn how to incorporate it into your process. I think AI is a kind of double-edged sword – it’s really good for certain things, but you have to be very specific on the information you feed it, to get good results,” Hughes said. She acknowledged that while it is scary that the technology could threaten jobs in the creative world, “nothing is going to replace the human touch.”

There was also the topic of the burgeoning genre of fiction for college-age adults and what the industry has decided to name it. Natalie Shah, a student in attendance, asked the panelists for their perspectives on the issue and whether the industry had an opening for work in the genre. 

“I’m team ‘New Adult Exists,’” Edwards said. “You need to have a solid hook, a solid concept and then a solid execution, right? And so, no one’s gonna look at a good book and then be like ‘Well, I don’t know which group to put it in, no thanks.’ No one’s gonna do that.” 

Khanna said that this is a commonly seen issue when she deals with agents who are unsure where a piece fits in. She agreed that New Adult is the name for the genre, and that the publishing industry has “sort of killed [the genre] by mistake” the genre. “For me it goes back to the author, like, ‘Do you see this in the YA space? Do you see this in the adult space?’” Khanna said. “I’ve had three, four or five books in the past where some characters have YA tendencies and the plot is moved forward by lack of communication, which I think you can do in YA, but I think for an adult readership that’s just annoying.” 

While three of the four panelists mentioned going to graduate school before landing their jobs, Khanna offered an alternative opinion: graduate school can be helpful, but it isn’t mandatory. 

“I don’t think grad school is necessary,” Khanna said. Instead, Khanna said that apprenticeships are a more hands-on route that can also translate into a job. 

Each panelist also answered questions about how they came to choose the field of publishing in the first place, and the paths they took to get where they are today.

Edwards told the audience that she changed paths radically before finding out she had a passion for publishing. 

“Life isn’t linear, okay?” Hughes said. “I was a pre-med at Fordham University in the Bronx. Pre-med is a track, not a major, so I was pre-med but I was a communications major with a concentration in TV and radio, […] then I decided to go into publishing and not go to med school. It was great.” 

After graduating college Edwards interned at Foundry Literary Media and then Seven Stories Press, both small literary agencies. “They were super important because one, they taught me about the process, but most importantly they underscored what I wanted from a workplace environment and what I was looking for,” Edwards said.

On the topic of finding jobs, Edwards echoed the importance of networking. 

“I would recommend internships and reaching out to people. I’ve reached out to a bunch of people and I was like, ‘Hey this was super cool, I had thoughts,’” Edwards said, “and then they’re like, ‘Do you want a job?’ and I’m like, ‘I just had thoughts.’” 

Robertson said that connections through internships also proved highly important in her path to publishing, and that some internship experiences can seem unrelated at first but can turn into helpful assets along the way. 

“I think having any type of experience is good, whether you’re in the service industry or maybe you had a complete career before then,” Robertson said. “The thing that I’m looking for is someone who can learn quickly and someone who has transferable skills and is not gonna make my life hard.”

Hughes described that her path to publishing was winding and fraught with extremely early mornings and hard work. Before coming to SUNY Oswego, Hughes went to Niagara County Community College (NCCC) for a year and got an associate’s degree in public communications. After that, Hughes came to Oswego for a year and a half as a journalism major with an English minor.

“I really developed that love in about like sixth grade, fifth grade,” Hughes said about her passion for storytelling. “And I asked my dad, ‘What is a job where I can just read books all day? That’s all I wanna do.’”

During her time at Oswego she interned at WYRK, a country radio station in Buffalo where she handled content creation and writing. “It was pretty cool because they interviewed me on air, and I got to see that aspect of that industry,”  Hughes said. She also talked about her experience as a public relations intern at InterFaith in Syracuse, a refugee resettlement program. There, Hughes assisted with press releases, media releases and video editing. After working through the financial hardships of relocating to New York City, Hughes attended Pace University for graduate school thanks to a connection with another Oswego alumni through Career Services. “It was a huge, huge help,” Hughes said.