What Is The Point?

It's a question we ask ourselves a lot no matter what stage we're at in life, and one that was presented to me today during a lecture. The lecturer was the President of an independent publishing company and proposed the question "what is the point of publishing?" All of us (about 110 people) looked around thinking the exact same thing- "I sure hope there's a point because we're all here for 6 weeks studying and learning how to be successful in this business." Luckily, this extremely intelligent lecturer gave us an answer that we all seemed to find satisfactory. He said, very simply, that

"the book is the point."

That five word sentence has resonated with me all day. The "book", in a more general sense, is the reason I decided to take a huge leap of faith and apply to this course in the first place. Books are important. They allow us to hear the voices of authors all over the world. They allow us to be imaginative and stretch our minds beyond the limitations of reality. The "book" stresses the importance of words and the impact they have on us whether they are read or spoken.

~

Well anyway, this blog post is coming to you a little later than my usual ones because it was a BUSY day at CPC (Columbia Publishing Course). We had our three typical lectures-one from Oxford University Press and then the other two from Independent Publishing Companies. They were all incredibly inspiring (as you can see from my reflection above).

Another really cool think about this course (besides literally everything) is that sometimes we get free books! Today we got a really well known, popular YA (Young Adult) book that I am super excited to read, especially because of my newfound interest in that area of publishing!

We also had our first Sherry Hour today, which essentially was a networking "mini-party"where all of us CPC students could have wine and get to know each other better! They really emphasize networking and making strong connections here, especially amongst each other since we will all be out there in the industry soon enough working together!

After our evening lecture, it was tradition that this particular speaker took the entire class out for a drink at a really fun bar a couple blocks away from campus.




(FUN FACT: The speaker in our last lecture was Ron Chernow's editor. Ron Chernow was the author of the book Alexander Hamilton. This book inspired the musical Hamilton. For those of you who know me you know this is a very big deal and can imagine how starstruck I was.)

Anyway...

 After a long day it was really nice to get to hang out, make weekend plans and talk to some new people outside of our lecture hall. It is also so much fun getting to know this area (there are so many good places to go for food and drinks around here, its great...but a reminder of how expensive NYC can be :)

(Below: Bernheim & Schwartz-the bar we went to after our final lecture for the day!)

This is getting very long but I can't say enough about how wonderful today was. I can't wait to see what tomorrow has in store!