There's no one who's really not a reader.
They just clearly haven't found the right book yet.
I am very confident in saying that there is a book for everyone.
I am very glad that it's part of my job and
it's something that I take pride in doing is helping you find that book.
Hi, I'm Tyler.
Welcome to Office Hours.
This is what I do at HarperCollins.
[MUSIC]
I am a digital marketer at HarperCollins Children's Books.
Epic Reads is a digital brand within HarperCollins Children's Books.
We're all about the wide community.
As part of the digital marketing team, a lot of what I'm doing is putting out
content on Epic Reads to the website and social channels.
And then also kinda coming up with fun ideas for
how to market all the amazing books that we got.
If I had to describe my job to someone who didn't know anything about publishing,
I would say that I create really weird listicles and
quizzes for books that are really great and hit important topics.
But also help you find out who your God would be if you were in an elemental
gladiator match.
So it's the best of both worlds.
I feel like a lot of things that I did for fun growing up indirectly or
directly influenced my job at Harper right now.
When I was in middle school, I was coding layouts on Xanga and
making graphics and icons.
And now I'm self-taught in photoshop and HTML.
And now I do that for our graphics and our newsletters.
I write for fun and I feel that helps my voice because it's a very distinctive,
snarky voice that for some reason works on a published website.
I think one of the most important responsibilities that I have as
a member of team Epic Reads and being in the digital space and seeing all these
books is being able to know and help get the right books into the readers' hands.
I think whether that's creating an article that's, wow, you have to read these books.
And making sure we're hitting all the keywords just in case they happen to be
searching for something.
Or a Twitter thread with, hey, you might not know these books have this
representation, but they do thread, and just kind of listing them below.
Maybe it's an Instagram photo, maybe it's a weird Instagram meme.
There are all these different channels where things to social media and
kind of the digital space.
Out of all these different places,
we can only hope that kind of one of them will hit the target and find that reader.
And hopefully change their lives for the better.
[MUSIC]
A day in my life, I feel like no two days are ever the same.
Some days I'm writing a lot, editing and
looking through articles and kind of planning things out for the website.
I told myself I was gonna read today.
And instead, I wrote a quiz to see which Greek god would be your parent.
And I have no regrets.
Other days I am on Instagram and Twitter very closely.
Other days I'm going through the Facebook group and seeing what people are saying,
what they wanna do.
Other days I'm gauging reactions to books that have already come out.
Other days I am seeing how we can position books that aren't coming out for
another year and a half.
There's not as much reading in my actual day to day,
because I do that outside of work time because thankfully, it is still fun.
I think it's coming up with all these different ways.
It's working really closely with the team and throwing ideas around and
being like, can we do this?
But then we can turn it into this, and playing a lot of that.
It's trying to figure out how I can convince people who don't think that
they're really readers that no, you don't have to be a reader to love this book or
to read this book.
I think what excites me the most about what I do at Harper is that there's
limitless possibilities.
We can have an idea and be like, listen, this might sound crazy,
but we think it's gonna work.
Everyone at Harper is so
great they'll be like, okay, come up with a plan, let's see what you think.
I can kind of be [LAUGH] unhinged and have fun.
I can be like, did you like this TV show that only ran for
one season and hasn't aired a new episode in five years?
I think you'll like these books.
And everyone will be like, yeah, that's a good one.
You made a good point.
I think one of the best things about getting to work at Epic Reads
is that we really get to listen and talk to the community.
We really try to listen to what they're saying and what they wanna see and
what they like and what they don't like.
We kind of get to represent the readers in a way that a lot of other positions in and
outside of publishing, they don't have that kind of face to face with
the people they're actually selling books to.
I think what inspired me to seek out publishing as a career is that I
didn't know what I wanted to do.
I knew what I liked.
I liked reading.
I liked writing.
I liked being creative.
There was one marketing class I took in college where I got to make
a whole campaign deck, and I chose to do it around DC Comics and
how I would market their female heroes.
When I heard about the publishing course,
I was like, I could do things with books professionally, that's cool.
And at the course I found out about marketing, and publicity, and
all these different facets that I didn't know existed before that.
I can take all that marketing and creative stuff that I really like and
apply it to the book stuff that I really like.
That was kind of when I realized this is the sweet spot,
this is the overlap in the Venn diagram that I didn't know existed.
I think I've also gotten really good at recommending books to people.
You could tell me any three random things about yourself.
And it could be your favorite TV show or your favorite color.
And I'll be like, I think you would really like this book.
And I pride myself on the fact that I do think you would really like that book.
I'm probably right.
I think working in books right now is just a really great space to be because books
were already kind of at the forefront of getting more diverse voices out there.
So I think as we continue to do that, and we continue to hear from more and
more non-white, non-straight voices, publishing is really at
the top of that game and we're trying to get as many voices out there as possible.
And also kind of selfishly, I think it's great that more books are being adapted
because A, I love to watch them, even if the books are 98% of the time better.
And also it's exposing it to an audience that would never have picked up the book
because they either didn't know about it or thought they wouldn't like it.
There are so many great things that have come out of this and so many,
I think, more books that should be published are being published.
There's always something else you could be doing.
And whether that's helping out people around you or just talking to someone or
even just having fun, writing or reading for fun, or relaxing and watching TV.
There's always something you can do to better everyone around you and
also to not abandon your creativity.
Those are my two things, my driving principles.
I think the thing that drives me in my career is being able to see, I think,
even in the last four years, how much publishing has grown.
And there's still a long way to go.
But I mean, there's so many books now coming out by so many different
types of authors and authors who identify in so many different ways.
And being able to be a part of that from the inside and doing everything I can
to make sure that those books get into the hands of readers that need them.
I think that's a really great thing to be able to focus on and
say that that's what I do every day.
Thanks for watching.
Check out some of our other Office Hours videos.
Make sure you like and subscribe if you haven't already.
[MUSIC]