The Bookstagram Effect with Ex-English Major Jill

[MUSIC] Hello everyone and welcome to Dary of an X English Major, the show that discusses literature and media like in your favorite English seminar course. I'm your host, Deja, of [email protected], and in today's episode I interviewed Jill, an X English Major and Bookstagrammer from the account @booknerdreads. In this episode, we discussed her longtime reader status, publishing internships, as well as the ends and outs of the Book Instagram community. Happy listening. [MUSIC] Jill, thank you so much for agreeing to be on the show today. Yeah, I'm happy to be here. Great, so my first question for you, well first off, the questions I'm going to ask you will give me and our listeners a bit of background on your academic background studying English as well as your reading life. So my first question for you is what was the name of your major or concentration that you studied? I went to the University of Pittsburgh and my major was English literature and a minor in creative writing. Okay, cool, so English literature with a minor in creative writing. How did you come to decide on English literature when you were choosing your major for college? Yeah, I listened to you talk about your journey to becoming an English major and it made me really reflect on my own journey. Yeah. And I feel like I'm a little bit different from your story because for me, it's always been books. Okay. Like I remember reading just as long as I have known how to read. My mom even tells people that I taught myself to read, which I highly doubt that is true. Oh my, that's cool though. So becoming an English major just seemed like an obvious step for me. Okay, so you were definitely like the lifelong reader and did you have any like, like along the way where there are any points in time where you were like, well maybe I'll do it this instead or was it like English was always your top choice. English has always been my top choice but what has changed for me is what I want to do with English. Like if you would ask me when I was nine years old what I wanted to be when I grow up, I would have told you I wanted to be a famous author and I still love writing and I would love to publish some day but honestly I need like a day job especially once I actually learned what goes into book writing. Yeah, yeah. So these days I'm much more interested in publishing. I want to work in marketing or publicity within the publishing industry especially at like one of the big five publishers. Yeah, that's pretty cool. I feel like a lot of people have kind of gone through a similar mindset because for the longest time I didn't actually know that authors like that wasn't what they always did all the time. You get it. If you're lucky you can do that but actually when you're starting out as an author you still you know have your day job and then you have your other full-time job which is writing and I didn't I literally probably didn't even understand that until maybe five years ago. And I'm literally I didn't know the full extent until at least when I got into like book twitter and seeing author Twitter but even more so once I actually got into publishing and you see the advances, you see the actual graphs and numbers and you're like oh you can't live off that. Yeah. Yeah so you kind of shifted gears and have had more interest in working in publishing and like publicity. So how did that come about for you? This is probably an obvious answer but books to Graham. Oh yes. It obviously working with publishers put it more in the like in my head that for a long time I didn't know like what a day job would look like for me once I realized that I probably couldn't be profitable as an author. So it kind of connected in my head around the time I was like 15 or 16 like promoting books. I do that already for free and I get free stuff out of it. Why don't I just make that a job? So publishing seemed like an obvious connection to it and it got a lot got a lot easier once I actually started meeting marketers and publicists from my Instagram. Okay. That's really cool and I love like the kind of natural progression that that took because like it's true like books to Graham or at some point on books to Graham doing the free like marketing thing you kind of realize like oh like there's a person whose job it is to like reach out to me and say like hey like we want to send you this look like like it's a whole thing and there's someone who's you know like that's that's kind of a cool job like before I really understood what that was. Yeah. I thought that publishing was you know just like editorial but there are these different sectors in it and like yeah like you and I both have had that like I mean the connection that the personal connection through like having a bookstagram firsthand. So I think that's really awesome. So on that how do you think that studying English and creative writing has kind of I guess I'll say like informed your interest in publicity if it has at all like that like talking more about the analysis and stuff that you did in school how do you think that informs your new your new career path that you're interested in. Oh that's a good question. Honestly I feel like a lot of my publishing journey has kind of stayed isolated to my Instagram. Okay. But I did take a really cool class in my fall semester of senior year called writing youth literature. Technically I mean it is the English program it's just the writing class and actually the class was originally taught by Shavon Vivian do you know her. I think so she's a she's a YA contemporary author. Yeah yeah she recently worked on exo kitty actually. She left she left University of Pittsburgh to go write that show. Oh my gosh. Her students were like yeah you should do that you should leave. Yeah you definitely should that's awesome. But I had a new professor who's a local Pittsburgh author teacher and he went with more of a business approach to it. So instead of just saying here's how to write which is how a lot of the classes I took were especially for my creative writing minor. He said here's how to sell your book because obviously he knows how to sell a book because he's done it a couple of times. Yeah. And that was such a fresh perspective that I'd never gotten before then in academia. Yeah that's that's really cool and I mean I love that because it's true that some of the classes that you take are more about maybe like the writing process or like how to hook your reader and these types of things. But if you really want to make it a career you know like knowing how to sell it is is there or like knowing how to be along the way like if you're not someone who wants to like submit the book yourself like being in that space of you know knowing when a book is like has that potential you know to I guess get get to the publishing company at all. So I think that's really awesome and it's kind of cool that you had like those connections through your school with someone who like now on this Netflix show that I I've been in a weekend you know so how cool is that. Yeah yeah she and Jenny Hawn are really good friends. Yeah man that's that's really awesome. You're like what is that like one like person removed from knowing Jenny Hawn. Literally my roommate took the class wish of on Vivian I was too late though. Okay I mean still it's still there. So I love that that's all really good information. So do you think that so we've we've talked a little bit about the sector that you're interested in. Is there like a well I guess first I'll ask is when did you know that you wanted to kind of leverage your like content creation and like books to grand professionally like was it when you decided that you didn't want to do you didn't want to be an author and you wanted to go into publicity or like how did that happen I guess. I'd say it happened around the time I was 16 and 17 in that area because that's when I had to start thinking about college. Okay yeah that's really cool. You're like one of the first people that I really have talked to that have had I guess like the content creation as something that aids their professional career which I just find so it's really cool because like not everyone can say like hey I have like this bookstagram account and I've been doing this a long time and now I'm like stepping into a publicity. So I think that's really awesome and I make sure it's pretty unique. Thank you. So within that do you have or do you know what your dream career would be. Still working on it at the moment. Yeah I'd say like marketing publicity I mentioned. I'd say marketing manager or publicist those are some of the higher level. Okay yeah. The roles within those industries. You're right yeah that's really cool. I mean I'm still in the same boat of figuring out what I want my dream career to be in any sense but I think that I don't know like knowing that you've already kind of seen one thing. inside of like the marketing industry as like someone who, you know, was on the receiving in. I feel like that's going to give you a really like unique perspective. Have you already kind of dipped your toes in it with like internships or anything else to inform your decision? Yeah. Last year I interned at gallery books, which is an imprint for Simon and Schuster. And at the end of last year I interned at McMillan Audio, which is the audio book imprint for McMillan. Okay. That's really awesome. Like between the two, did you like one more than the other or were they both like really fruitful experiences? I can't pick between them if this is going to be public. Okay. But I wasn't I wasn't McMillan Audio for six months. So I'll admit I, I mean, I was working 35 hours last summer. Oh wow. So that was like three months. I'm working almost full time. Like I got very comfortable with that imprint and the people I was working with. Yeah. That's that's really cool. That's really cool. Or like your internships and stuff. Did you have a requirement within your major of like having internships for a class credit or whether it's something that you did on your own? It was on my own. I'm actually like really just that's something I'm proud of that I was able to use my Instagram to get those roles because yeah. It's weird looking back and realizing like I didn't use any of my school resources to get those roles. Wow. I mean that that I mean that is really cool though because that's usually not the case at all. But the fact I know I had this platform to do that. Did you have to get to a space of I don't know like how I say like did you have to get to a space of becoming like comfortable to do it or were you like I'm on it and I think this is going to you know make me really unique in the application process. Oh I have a little story about that. Okay. The first time I applied to for publishing internships was around August 2020. I applied to McMillan didn't hear back at all very much expected that. So I had to like you know reverse my steps and think about it and I ended up I mean I had no office experience. I had never had a part-time job like I was very much sheltered in that case in my teen years because I didn't drive and I live in a suburbs. So I just I wasn't able to work. So everything that I like my resume was just like my Instagram. So after like once the pandemic happened I spent that summer getting remote internships off a LinkedIn for just like little startups that would accept me. So I was I did two unpaid internships for startups. One was like a we'll say like a medium Instagram stuff and the other one was more like tech related and that was I got that from like study Graham. I don't know how well you know my account but I also have a little bit of a study gram. Oh I know yes I know. So I did that. So that actually gave me a little bit experience working with working under other people and that helped me build up towards my publishing internships. So I had the so I had the Instagram which was like the book side and then I had my unpaid internships which was more corporate side and that was just sort that was like a nice coalition that I was able to use to actually like build my resume. And then by 2021 I actually started getting some success applying for publishers. Wow that's that's awesome and I love like how you kind of like followed those steps. I hope hopefully our listeners can get a lot from it because you know like it's it's really not uncommon to like apply for an internship and you're like I really want it but it's like with this big name you know like whatever and then it's just like radio silence and you're like well I guess I'm not the right fit but it's like no like you can be. So especially like during you know I wasn't really in the same boat as you like especially during you know like 2020 like in the pandemic like that was the time that I was supposed to like be doing tons of internships and just like really getting ready for like my final year and a half of college and like everything remote and I was like I don't know what I'm gonna do but I just started applying for like a lot of remote stuff and I was able to do things and that you know kind of informed like a little bit of what I do now but I like that you kind of took those steps and then you know like went back to it because you know I mean it would be really easy to get discouraged but you had a plan Jill and that's awesome. I am curious to know if you remember when you like discovered Bookstagram. Yeah okay so before I actually joined Bookstagram I had a bookish to be in my account oh cool in 2013. Like it would make me so bad I would use it like Hung Games divergent the maize runner you know all the dystopian books that we loved at the time. Yeah so probably could find it it's still like it's still there because I lost the password but I'm not sharing the username. Okay but that was that was sort of my first experience with like bookish social media and Bookstagram was like a natural progression I just stumbled upon photos of books around like around like summer 2014. Yeah that's really funny that's really funny like also it's it's very relatable of like having an old account that you like can't find the password too because before I had a bookstagram I had like a like a fan like a bookish like fandom just like a council like make like edits for the fandom. Yes for the same like series that you mentioned like they per day like hunger games but it was like edits like I wasn't supposed to like bookish photography or anything but fun there I found Bookstagram and my my life just like changed I was like I really want to have my own account doing this so I abandoned the other account I had like multiple to or maybe I had multiple user names because I can't even find the account it's it's definitely still up and out there somewhere and then it's and then Bookstagram came around and I was like I really want to do that and so there we go um but that that's really cool and I like that we kind of both found it around the same time because let me tell you 2014 Bookstagram was a different world was it not it was so different it was like Instagram itself I feel like wasn't like people's main social media at the time so it was its own it was its own little world but it's it's so great that you still have um you're saying my account and you can kind of see you know how far you come and how it helps you in your professional life because how cool is that um so what's like you what do you think transitioning a little bit what is like a skill or something that you've learned from either studying English or just from your internships that you've done that is like stuck with you the most you what do you say and from studying English in academia I'd say media literacy is the biggest skill that I've taken away obviously like books and news stories aren't exactly the same right but my English studies like a big part of its foundation was critical analysis yeah and I'm sure you've heard those memes about like the English teacher who sees blue curtains and is like it's it stands for depression yes I like the idea that you can read between the lines and you know read and dissemblism I think it's really important when you're just especially with like all the misinformation online just being able to understand beyond the surface level is like really important yes I would I would really agree with that and I feel like that is a skill that has also stood with me the most from studying English because you know it's so easy to like just read something and kind of take it as fact or like not really I don't know get like what the author's intent is like whether for good or for bad or whatever so just kind of being able to make up your own mind about what it is you're consuming is a huge thing that I feel like studying English has has totally taught me as well so I totally agree with that um sure transitioning a little bit to talk about your reading life I know we've like discussed books a grand little bit but now I'm super curious to know what are you currently reading if anything yeah so I just started reading you don't have a shot by Raquel Marie okay she's the author of Ophelia After All which was one of my favorite YA books of 2022 oh good you don't have a shot I can explain a little bit about it okay yeah it's like a sapphic love story between these two teenage soccer rivals um I only just started it but I'm just really excited and I love it so far good that's awesome I feel like YA um contemporaries like when you find like the right one for you that just like checks all your boxes like I feel like there's not really a greater feeling it's like when you like watch a Netflix show that's you know you're like oh I just I'll watch this random Netflix show but then it ends up having so many like tropes or whatever that you love I feel the same way about um like contemporary um I feel like I've heard of this author so I'm gonna have to look into that book yeah she's I don't know if she's exactly I mean I guess she's like a bookstagrammer she's adjacent to the community so I think she's really interesting and I love her I love her first novel so okay cool on the book or for the books that you read do you rate them or review them yeah I read I read every book that I read I use good read But I don't usually review by reviewing explicitly reviewing for a publisher. And sometimes it's very rarely. I'll actually post reviews on Instagram these days just because they they tend not to do very well. They don't know really unless they're like really popular. So I tend to I tend to do like annotation posts. And that's the review. That's the review because annotations do really well. Right now in books to grab. They do. They really do. I actually kind of love seeing like this such like how the trends on books to ram come and go because I feel like you just blink and like one day like this is like the new trend. So I love like watching the like not only watching the rails of the annotations, but like seeing people's like slideshow, you know, or that's not a slide show. So carousel posted them. It's really cute and fun. So you kind of use that as you are like sort of like review to kind of give give your your audience an idea on what you thought that's that's I think it's actually a really interesting way of doing it because I love reviewing books. I love reviewing books so much. That's why I was just like I need to put them somewhere and I started like putting them all on my blog instead of like only on Instagram or only on good reason because it's true. People people. I mean, even me like on Instagram how often in am I am I actually going to read like a really long caption. Not very often at all. So you got to know your audience for sure. Actually, I was going to say I had an experience kind of similar to that. I used to write I used to write on a book blog. But I actually like abandoned it about three years ago. Because I just like I just got tired of writing blog posts. And it reinforced the idea that I don't want to go into editorial. Like that's so funny that you know edit editors are such a big part of like the view of publishing and I was like wow I actually hate this. Yeah. That was good. It was good that you kind of like realize that in yourself from that because that's all blogging is and it's true like that's all you know that was like editing was going to be. It's kind of great that you kind of found your own niche through through it like first it was like through books a gram and like marketing and working with publishers and you were like but I also have a blog but the blog isn't really giving me the same. Yeah, passion. So it kind of shows you the different the different sex people like like exactly Instagram has levels. There are so many things that you can like take away from it as Jill has taught us today. You mentioned that you use a good read so are you like an avid goodreads user for your ratings or do you sometimes just rate books and put it on Instagram only. I use good reads a lot. Yeah, Instagram I just don't I don't always review on there so I'd say good reason is probably the best place to find out like what I thought of a book I like doing like I like to do one line of reviews that are like. It means you know me yeah I'll be like this book room in my life and that's like my review that's the review and that tells you all you need to know. I love that so where do you get most of your book recommendations what you say definitely Instagram because I'm spending so much time on there. Yeah, I I used to get recommendations from book Twitter but honestly it's like really fallen off since somebody bought it so. Twitter in general I haven't been on Twitter in years but from the outside you know from the outside looking in I see that it's just it's not really the same. It's a dumpster fire over there but I still I still pop on sometimes to see what's going on yeah to kind of dip your toe in the water I see. I get a lot of my book recommendations from Instagram too. For you do you feel like you get it more from like other content creators that you follow or from like publishing companies with like new books coming out. Definitely people that I follow when I say that I get a lot of my recommendations from Instagram I'm also kind of saying that I'm getting a lot of reviews from book talk even though I'm not on tick talk. Oh yeah obviously there's such a huge exchange between the platforms now they're honestly inseparable I follow so many big book talkers on Instagram so I'm basically always seeing their content and I it's it's weird because I'm like on the outside but I also feel like I have. Such a good idea of what happens on book talk it's it's an interesting phenomenon. It really is and I like what you said about how like the two are almost inseparable now because I feel like that I feel like that too like I'm not on tick talk I gave book talk like a good try last summer. But I just kind of gave up on tick talk and I did I gave it a good try but I kind of just gave up on tick talk I didn't really like having like another app that I was spinning way too much time on so I decided to just like not be on tick talk at all which was fine because I felt like I was still seeing so much of what was happening on. Like tick talk in general and on like book talk on Instagram because of Instagram reels and I know that like technically you're not supposed to like post like your actual tick talks as an Instagram real like you need to like make it its own real but you get what I mean like the same thing I was still getting the same you know like high books and like conversations and stuff from there. Yeah does anybody even follow that rule because I swear it's it's like same day posting reposting tick talks right yeah I mean I don't know if they follow it or not I know I've definitely posted like some of the tick talks that I made at that time but I just kind of rework them as a real because I was like I don't know. They're saying that you should do it but maybe it's just because of the competition between the two but it's kind of cool to see how I guess like Instagram has responded and like changed because of like this other community like that was book talk because now since they are so enmeshed like I mean if someone's going to have if someone's going to have any kind of like bookish I don't know like platform at all they're going to have an Instagram and whether they call it a books the grammar not like you're still like that. I think that's all the questions that I had for you yeah that's that's really it and thank you so much for all of your very thoughtful responses and you know just the kind of insider info on books to grab hopefully our listeners can get a lot of good info from that and if you're thinking about starting a bookstagram I feel like this episode is probably you know what I'm going to do is this episode is probably you know this is this is the sign saying that you should just go ahead and do it. Exactly I've had it for about eight and a half years now so I feel like I have a lot of experience that I can contribute. Yes definitely and you contribute a lot in this episode today you know I feel like Instagram is such a fun like well specifically books are just like such a fun place to be like even if I'm not like constantly making content like I just I love being a spectator of the community because you know it's really special to me and it's probably because I've also been in it a long time like you so thanks again Jill for all the good info and thanks to our listeners as well. And that was our interview speaking with Jill felt so surreal as I have been a follower of her account since I discovered books to grab all those years ago so thank you so much to Jill for being on the show I really appreciate it her insight on utilizing her account as a professional tool and just how her platform continues to inform her career interests I'll have it linked down in the show notes so make sure you go give her a follow on Instagram. Thanks for listening to Dary of an X English major if you enjoyed this episode make sure you follow the show on your chosen podcast listening platform leave a review on Apple podcast and follow the podcast Instagram at Dary of an X in major that's E and G and I'll see you all soon. [BLANK_AUDIO]