if you've stuck around for my channel for a while now you'd have seen i have some editorial
assistants on here but this editorial assistant in particular works at bino which is comics magazine
i studied at aberdeen university i did english and legal studies um there while i was at aberdeen i
did a placement i sort of did a work experience at something called the general teaching council
for scotland or gtcs they have a magazine that they design that they make and it gets sent out
to all their members and i did a placement with the magazine i'd been writing and dabbling in sort
of journalism and publishing high school but this sort of really reinforced to me that that's what i
wanted to do and it was a month long so i really got to see the process of a magazine being made
making researching stories making blog posts i also did at one point a placement app internship
at the preston journal the newspaper in aberdeen which was really great fun i actually got a byline
and a front page story which i always forget that i did because it's a daily newspaper so by the
next day it's gone it's forgotten about but it was really interesting i got to go out on site
interview people speak to people collect quotes and things like that if while i was at aberdeen
i also was part of the student newspaper so again i was writing i was editing i really really got
into editing at that point because it gets sent in lots and lots of articles or maybe people send
something in and you had a word limit and it had to be 800 words max you get set in 3000. that's
that kind of thing has happened so you have to edit it right down to get it within the
word limit and and still make it as readable as story as possible after i graduated from
aberdeen i sort of spoken to some people that i'd met when i was doing my placement one of
them actually suggested to me that i should have a look at edward napier's publishing
course because they do a lot on magazines but they also get like a really good basis of the public
publishing industry plus great connections to the act to people in the industry which was
a really big thing i'd lived in aberdeen for four years i'd done a year abroad and so i hadn't even
spent the four years in aberdeen didn't really have much of a base for a network and things
like that and from what i could gather that was a lot of what made helped you it would help you
along in the publishing industry so i went and did um the msc for publishing at edinburgh napier
university i got to do loads of really cool things i got we had a book project which mine got printed
which is really cool i think it's actually on my bookcase somewhere yeah it's a it's in among the
bookcase somewhere a copy of it i also got to do a few internships placements one of them actually
i got offered i went to an event there and i ran into someone that i knew from my connect from my
um gtcs remembered me from that time and said well if you need a placement for your you know
your placement module give me you know give me a call things like that that's where suddenly you
go that makes sense to have a network to be able to sort of speak to people and get advice learn
but also it creates this thing if you're maybe in need you're looking for a job or help
people people are able to provide it which always reminds me that people in publishing are so lovely
like they're so happy and willing to help did that i did a placement at foodies and i did a
placement at deco comics which they're really great companies to sort of have a look at and
see what they're doing all very different so i really got a basis on magazine publishing
as well as a little bit of children's publishing after i graduated i was looking for a job and the
job at bino came up i applied and then i got an interview which i didn't expect at all because
i was a massive bino fan as a kid i thought that that job's gonna get so many applications so many
people are gonna apply they're not why would they want me and then um i got a i got an interview
um the same day i actually got my dissertation results which was fantastic it was really great
because i did really well so it was a really happy day yeah and then i got offered the job
because we're a weekly comic i tend not to think of my job as i don't think of things in day-to-day
basis but more actually on a week by week basis because we have to do very similar things every
week there'll be certain things i do every single week without fail that is what i do and those are
actually easier to explain and more interesting because just on one day i might not do too much
to do with one aspect but another day i'll do loads on one another aspect so it's always useful
that's why it's easier to think of it in that way every week i read scripts when they come in i'm in
charge of dangerous dan billy wiz calamity james and nasher and nipper at the moment so i get to
read all of their scripts when they come in we also get artwork in every week because we're a
weekly comic you deal every week we deal with about 10 different comic 10 different issues
all in a different stages of their production schedule so you have to sort of be able to know
which bits you're getting so i'll get scripts in for one week artwork in for another week writing
features for a third week i'll be doing other things for another week that kind of thing so when
i say i'm getting artwork in it's not the for the scripts that i'm reading then it's for the artwork
for the stuff that i'm writing up this time same with reading pages i'll be reading pages for a
different issue all together compared to all the other ones the characters i'm in charge of
all the stuff comes through me to sort of keep continuity so that if maybe an artist has read
a script wrong or something like that maybe they've misinterpreted what's supposed to happen
you'll be able to pick that up really quickly because you've already read the script
so we have four editorial team members and they all deal with different characters and those are
the ones i deal with i'll also when i get scripts in we come up with feature ideas to go with those
characters those scripts we like our features a feature is just an activity page attached to
a script things like word searches joke pages prank pages about the difference code code
breakers where's wally type things maze puzzles lots and lots of different things we can do i did
one that was like the mento and coke trick which was really good fun you got to do that and then
you looked up the science behind it to help teach the kids come up with feature ideas that relate
to the script that we've just been doing just been reading sometimes features aren't chosen
but you can still have you still have to think up um ideas for every character just in case we need
a spare page um it's always good to have a bank of ideas in there i'll also be writing features for
another week and so yeah they'll have been they'll be decided by my editor when we get our lay down
in and i'll note them down and get the script written get the sort of brief the commission
for the artwork to get done and then i will and it will get sent off to an artist to draw i also
do a lot of our competition admin first one i do which is my favorite is the beano boss competition
that's when a kid gets to be boss of the bino for a week they get cartoonified appear in their own
story get to choose a star letter because our reader's letters get sent in um and we choose
them to appear on our letters page so the boss gets to choose their favorite they get to so they
obviously get to see it before it's in print they get the prank before it's in print they also get
to see the jokes that appear at the foot of the pages before they appear they also get super super
amazing sneak peek which is um they get to see the long story or our longest story sort of four pages
um before it appears in the comic so while it's still script form which is really cool for them
and they get to sort of see how comic script strip will develop go from just words they get to see
storyboarded versions of it so it's some words in a bit of art to fill artwork with balloons all
that kind you can see all the changes that we make i also have sort of weekly feature pages that i
write specifically which are the prank pages joke page and the letters page which relates to the
fact that i do the beano boss competition so it's easier if i for me to collate all the information
together if it's just me dealing with it the other competitions i do are the letters pages
so i choose the winners of those letters pages sort of email them out to let them know they'll
be appearing when they're going to appear and that they'll win a pry or they'll receive a
prize for appearing so i'll be dealing with that i also organized the prize which comes from our
lovely team in london who do the merchandise or online shop and they have always have some great
ideas for me to cool prizes first to send out to the kids and the third sort of like group of
competitions i do are our weekly competition i don't choose those competitions um but i do all
the admin for them so contacting parents getting sending pr companies their details getting prizes
sent out that kind of thing so that's kind of i do so those are the other competition stuff
that i do i also write an online sort of like summing up easer for the week ahead if the issue
that's coming out next week is the 6th of april i'll be doing a little sort of blog style piece
for the week before that will go on the website just in case anybody's wanting to know what's
what's going to happen in this week's video oh i'm going to find out so yeah so those are kind of all
of my weekly tasks that i have to do i also proof pages i proved pages um as they come around as our
designers balloon them so when we get our scripts when we get our artwork in we will take the script
that we have we will take the artwork and we will sort of write up write up just means removing all
of the description and names of people what like you know when you say smithy is saying
da da da um so we remove all of that kind of like extraneous text to just what people are
saying what is in the caption caption panels and what is any sound effects we need to add
take it down to that and then you mark it on the artwork or a copy of the artwork where
who's seeing those balloons which per character on this panel is saying it um and you do that for
all your characters and then they get sent to the designers where they balloon it ballooning for it
for people who maybe don't know an awful lot about comics more commonly for most people they tend
to assume it's putting the speech bubbles on but no officially they're called balloons not speech
bubbles once the designers have ballooned it put the balloons on put the text on caption panels
all that kind of thing it gets sent round our editorial team for reading we read it and then
they you know if there's any changes to be made we note them down we call them cars and then we send
the cars back with the uh with the page um back to the designers they apply the corrections put it
all together in one big version called the dummy which we call the dummy the dummy essentially
is if you've seen ugly betty this might be a wee bit older a reference if you haven't watched ugly
betty i recommend it but they call the book and it's like a big file of all the pages of that
issue all printed out put in this file in order so you can see it as if it was an actual magazine
that's kind of the idea so you can read it on pr imprint in person as if it was the printed
magazine unfortunately now we don't we used to print it out when we were in the office but now
we um it's done by a big pdf so i'll read that every week as well making changes if we need to
if you don't have this kind of sense of humor i'm sorry one really interesting thing that
we've got to do was i got set we got sent an email round asking us to judge the best fart sound yup
that was that was my job that day um we had to listen to various recordings of fart sounds made
with their hands made with elbows i don't know don't know where they got them from
um and we had to judge which one was the best which one was the funniest that's a weird one
it also discussed about what color you should paint you should have dog poos in a magazine
that's that's a really odd question to us to have as well the fact that you can have
an argument about it shows the level of maturity and sophistication that we have at the bino office
my favorite part about my job is definitely interacting with our readers i get a really
great insight into sort of our readers and what they're into what they like what they're you know
what they're all about because i do the letters page i do the bino boss pages i read every single
letters page and you know boss entry that comes in so i do get a sense of where you know what kind
what what our readers are all about they send in the most amazing creative things
when you then email them to tell them they're going to appear you just get
the loveliest emails back our readers are just fantastic and they just they're what make it
we've had some really amazing letters from parents thanking us i'm thanking the bino team
for creating the comic every week because their kids just love it so much it's always lovely to
hear those kinds of things just because it's good to know that you're being appreciated
dc thompson obviously owns bino which is the longest running longest running weekly
children's comic we hold the guinness world record for that but also did you know there
is another way our most famous character in beano is dennis menace but there is another
character called dennis the menace and he was created in america the first published on exactly
the same day as our dennis the menace but due to time differences ours was published first
for advice for to get a job like mine i think my main piece of advice particularly at the moment
is don't give up don't give up get yourself out there and get involved in things it can be really
hard when you're sitting at home by yourself just applying for jobs either not hearing back or just
are constantly getting rejection it's really tough it's really competitive particularly for editorial
it's competitive for any publishing job editorial is particularly bad for that and there aren't many
jobs going in editorial so it's always just don't be disheartened the rejections and things like
that they do not change anything about your worth as a person but if you're maybe struggling and
you're maybe not don't know why have a maybe look at how you're writing your cvs your cover letters
that kind of thing just going back and redoing them and reworking them we might actually be
doing amazing and writing amazing cvs and cover letters for every job but there's just so many
that it's hard to stand out make sure that you're paying attention to what experience
you have and why that makes you special why that makes you stand out why they must have you as
their employee why you will bring so much to this role as i said it's so hard but don't give up keep
trying stay positive and be passionate and follow your passions because inevitably they will lead to
they will they will lead to opportunities when i say follow your passions yes reading reading lots
of books fantastic but maybe you find a niche that you go oh that's really interesting i want to find
out more about that say as i said like comics say you're like i'm really into graphic novels
maybe i want to find out have a look at some other artists and things that are making comics
how did they do it find out about those kinds of things go beyond surface level i love books
i mean i always end up with like a list of like 10 instead of just one the first one that generally
comes to mind is the great gatsby i was 17 when i read it and it really invoked like it sparked
sorry it sparked my love of english and studying it and i just got it it made me want to do english
at university like that's probably if i'm gonna sum it up that way that book was the one that told
me that in recent years i've moved away from books that um everybody should read and you need to be
reading at the moment because actually there is no book you should be reading i've done an english
degree and i came over and i didn't enjoy reading because or reading for fun because i always had a
list of books i needed to be reading i should be reading and then suddenly i'm let out in the wide
world and actually nobody's marking you and what you're reading nobody's marking you on
the fact that maybe actually i just quite enjoy reading things that let my brain
lets my brain stop thinking sometimes i want to read hard stuff but mostly i just want to
read good books so what i would say is just read read for fun read often read widely and enjoy it