Louisa in New York

Tracking Dan Brown in the city that never sleeps

My internship at Random House, Inc., in New York, fall 2009

It has always been my dream to live and work in the capital of the world – New York. In the fall of 2008, my dream came true and I moved to NY for a couple of months to work for Random House, Inc. When I found out I could do a second internship this year, I got
even more excited to return to the city that made my year in 2008. To encourage all of you to also try out working in different countries and cities, let me share my experience with you.

Both my internships at Random House took place at the Direct to Consumer Group (D2C), an online marketing department independent from the different Random House divisions and imprints. To give some examples (there’s so much more!) of what we do:
At D2C, we “serve” the different imprints with innovative online marketing campaigns, run the Random House website and work with customer feedback. D2C is a corporate division and is in an umbrella-like position, working with all the different Random House imprints.

At D2C, interns play an active role in the team. We participate in meetings, get to work on our very own, creative projects and are invited to have meetings and lunches with coworkers from different departments to get to know the corporate world of Random House a little better and learn about the responsibilities of the people around us.

When I first came to the Random House headquarters at 1745 Broadway this year, I already knew the team and felt at home right away. Every Monday, the team gathers in the conference room for the staff meeting, which was a great opportunity to meet the
team again and for everyone to share what had been going on this past year. I got assigned to the projects I should work on the next coming weeks and realized I came to work with Random House in thrilling times: like everybody else, the media industry is struggling in this economy we’re facing right now, but also there is the new Dan Brown novel “The Lost Symbol” coming out on September 15th. After the huge success of “The DaVinci Code”, Dan Brown’s new book about Robert Langdon raises hope to be a new big-time bestseller.

A typical day at Random House involves some daily responsibilities like responding or forwarding customer feedback that we receive through the website, meetings and trainings, but you never spend the whole day at your desk working on the exact same project. Very often we work with very innovative marketing instruments like personalized Google campaigns or Facebook fan pages and Twitter updates.

All of this taking place in New York of course makes it even more exciting. You get a thrill out of riding the subway and feeling like a real New Yorker heading to work, even without an actual iPhone. Also, there is just so much to do around here - imagine making plans for the evening and being able to choose from 5-10 very exciting options…
Living in the US, you will be surprised how friendly people are. Everybody is willing to help, and although I’ve learned that some people from the United States think that New Yorkers tend to be rude, I cannot support that. Sometimes after a rough day, being called "honey” at the checkout in a supermarket just makes your day a little better. Welcome to New York!